The Builders

A Christmas Eve keel on the Kennebec

Three weeks after Pearl Harbor, on 24 December 1941, workers at Bath Iron Works on the Kennebec River in Bath, Maine, laid the keel of the destroyer that would become USS Cony. The date is printed in the ship's own 1949 recommissioning program and confirmed by the Fletcher-class construction record — a wartime yard working at wartime tempo, starting a ship on Christmas Eve.

The yard

Bath Iron Works had been building ships on the Kennebec since 1884, when General Thomas W. Hyde incorporated the company. For the Fletcher class — the workhorse destroyer design of the Pacific war — Bath was one of the Navy's principal yards: it built 31 of the 175 Fletcher-class destroyers. Cony was one of them. The Bath Iron Works shipyard profile on Asbestos Atlas provides additional context. For general background, WikiMesothelioma offers an overview of asbestos in shipyards. WikiMesothelioma is published by Danziger & De Llano, LLP, which also publishes this tribute. This general background does not establish whether asbestos was aboard Cony or whether any individual was exposed.

She was built as DD-508, named for Joseph Saville Cony of Eastport, Maine — an acting ensign in the Civil War who commanded small-boat expeditions along the Carolina coast, and a merchant captain lost at sea off Cape Hatteras in 1867 when his command, City of Bath, burned and sank. A Bath-built destroyer named for a Maine sailor: the yard could hardly have drawn a closer namesake.

The launch — a documented event, and a record that disagrees with itself

On Sunday, 16 August 1942, the Maine yards held the largest mass launching of the war shipbuilding program to that point — and the largest in the state's history. Eight ships went down the ways in one day: five British Ocean-type freighters at South Portland, the Liberty ship SS Ethan Allen at the adjacent yard, and the destroyers USS Conway and USS Cony at Bath. The event was big enough that NBC carried it: the Marion Star reported on 15 August 1942 that the network would broadcast "the mass launching of eight ships" the next day, naming Conway and Cony among them. Cony's sponsor was Mrs. William R. Sleight.

The record conflicts — printed, not smoothed

Contemporary evidence — the press account above and the Ocean-ship launch record — places Cony's launching in the 16 August 1942 mass-launch event.

The Navy's official history, the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, gives her launch date as 30 August 1942, and her own 1949 recommissioning program prints the same date. We print both. The contemporary record supports 16 August; the Navy's record says 30 August; this site does not silently overrule either.

To Boston, and to war

Cony was commissioned at Boston on 30 October 1942, Lieutenant Commander Harry D. Johnston in command. The ship the Bath yard had turned out in ten months — from a Christmas Eve keel to a commissioned destroyer — escorted a troop convoy from Norfolk to Nouméa, New Caledonia, and was in action within four months.

What her builders made possible is told on The Crews. What she was is on The Ship.

Further reading: BIW: Building America's Navy, Maine Maritime Museum's permanent exhibit, produced with Bath Iron Works, on the people, processes, and ships of the Bath yard.

Keel date: the ship's 1949 recommissioning ceremony program (PDF), corroborated by the Fletcher-class construction list. Builder: DANFS. Sponsor's name: Mrs. William R. Sleight — DANFS initials her "Mrs. W. R. Sleight"; the 1949 program prints the full name (a contemporary press account's "William E" is garbled). The first commanding officer prints as Johnston — wartime ONI combat narratives and the 1944 Navy Register give Harry Darlington Johnston; DANFS spells it "Johnson." Mass launch of 16 August 1942: contemporary press (Marion Star, 15 August 1942) and the Ocean-ship record; the "largest mass launch" framing is per Wikipedia's Cony article as assessed in this site's research packet. DANFS's 30 August launch date is printed above as the Navy's differing record. Bath Iron Works's founding year, founder, and Fletcher-class share of 31/175 rest on general-reference sourcing, flagged as such.