Elation greets shipyard survival Panel’s 7-1 vote favors Portsmouth

KITTERY – It has been the summer mantra: “Save Our Shipyard” was all over yellow T-shirts, bumper stickers and banners.

On Wednesday, people donned the T-shirts once again, scribbling a “We” in front of the phrase and a “D” after “Save.”

Shipyard workers, politicians, chamber of commerce officials and residents let out a big sigh of relief when they heard a national base closure commission voted to keep the shipyard open. It had been on the chopping block several times in the past. Since May, the community has been lobbying aggressively to keep the nation’s oldest public shipyard open.

The commission’s vote directly preserved at least 4,300 jobs. Chairman Anthony Principi said closing the yard would be a tragedy. He said Portsmouth is the nation’s pre-eminent public shipyard, the “gold standard by which the country should measure shipyards.”

People honked their horns and cheered.

“Yee-ha! That’s what we’ve been waiting for,” shouted Steve Walsh of Berwick, a shipyard worker who was driving away for lunch. Workers had gathered at the shipyard’s auditorium to watch the voting.

“This is a sweet victory,” said Sen. Judd Gregg, R.-N.H. “We love it.”

The Pentagon proposed closing the shipyard, arguing that there was too much capacity. Critics said there was not enough capacity to absorb the work at other facilities.

Commissioner Philip Coyle summed up his thoughts about excess capacity this way: “I don’t use my garage 24 hours a day, but I’m not about to tear it down.” The commission voted 7-1, with one abstention, in favor of keeping the base open.

In the afternoon, shipyard workers poured through the gates for a victory rally, bearing a yellow banner reading, “Thank You BRAC Commissioners.”

“We were hoping for six, we were really hoping for five, and seven, seven, that tells [the Department of Defense] and Navy a big story – they were wrong,” said union president Paul O’Connor of the commissioners’ votes.

Since 1800, the nearly 300-acre shipyard has sat along the New England coastline on an island in the Piscataqua River that separates the small town of Kittery from the tourist enclave of Portsmouth, N.H.

It has a civilian payroll of $318.3 million. About 60 percent of the shipyard’s workers come from Maine, and 40 percent come from New Hampshire.

The Pentagon said closing Portsmouth would have cost about 9,000 jobs, including thousands at businesses outside the shipyard gates. But Maine and New Hampshire said that estimate omitted the impact on New Hampshire. They argued 17,000 jobs could be lost across both states.

The Portsmouth Naval Shipyard escaped closure during the commission process in 1993 and 1995. Both times, the base was not on the original list from the Pentagon but was added later by the Base Realignment and Closure commission. Both times, the commission ultimately decided in favor of the base.

There have been other unsuccessful attempts to close the shipyard over the years.

The shipyard’s storied maritime and military milestones fuel pride on both sides of the river. In 1917, it was the site of the first submarine built in a U.S. naval shipyard. During its prime in World War II, the shipyard’s work force – mostly civilians – rose to more than 20,000 as submarines were built by the dozens.