The Philadelphia Naval Shipyard at League Island built, repaired, and overhauled Navy ships for more than a century before closing in the 1990s. Asbestos insulation was standard aboard Navy vessels built or overhauled from the 1930s into the 1970s, and the yard’s shipfitters, boilermakers, pipefitters, and insulators worked in the middle of it, often in cramped, poorly ventilated spaces below decks. For thousands of Philadelphia families, the yard is where an asbestos exposure history begins.
A century of Navy work on the Delaware
Naval shipbuilding in Philadelphia dates to the earliest years of the republic, and the League Island yard in South Philadelphia carried that work through the twentieth century. During World War II, employment swelled into the tens of thousands as the yard built and repaired warships around the clock. After the war, the yard’s mission shifted toward repair, conversion, and modernization, including major overhauls of aircraft carriers that ran into the late 1980s and early 1990s. The 1991 federal base closure round ended most of the yard’s work, and the shipyard closed in the mid 1990s.
That long overhaul era matters. Exposure at the yard was not limited to wartime construction; it continued for decades afterward, every time an older ship came in and its insulation came out.
Why Navy ships were full of asbestos
Fire is the great danger at sea, and asbestos was the mid-century Navy’s answer to it. Insulation covered boilers, steam piping, turbines, and machinery throughout the engineering spaces, and asbestos-containing materials appeared in bulkheads, gaskets, packing, and deck coverings. A ship concentrated all of it into steel compartments where dust had nowhere to go except into the air the crews and yard workers breathed.
The trades that faced the heaviest exposure
Insulators, called laggers in the yards, cut and fitted asbestos insulation by hand. Shipfitters, boilermakers, and pipefitters worked on and around insulated systems constantly. Machinists, electricians, welders, riggers, and painters shared the same compartments and the same air, because below decks there was no such thing as someone else’s dust. A trade-by-trade breakdown is at jobs with asbestos exposure.
Overhauls: the dustiest work of all
New construction meant installing asbestos. Overhaul meant tearing it out. Stripping aged, dry lagging from boilers and steam lines filled engineering spaces with dust, and it was routine work at League Island for decades. Many of the yard workers diagnosed in recent years spent their careers not building ships but ripping out and replacing what earlier generations had installed.
Civilian workers and Navy veterans have different claim paths
The yard’s workforce was civilian, and civilian workers’ claims generally proceed against the companies that made and supplied the asbestos products used aboard the ships, along with asbestos bankruptcy trust claims where they apply. Navy veterans who served aboard the ships have those same civil options plus a separate path through VA benefits; that side is covered at mesothelioma claims for veterans. Many Philadelphia families have both histories in one household.
The timeline of the illness
Asbestos exposure is the primary cause of mesothelioma, and the disease typically develops 20 to 50 years after exposure, according to the National Cancer Institute (NCI asbestos fact sheet). A worker who left the yard when it closed in the 1990s, or who retired long before, fits squarely inside that window today. This is general medical background, not medical advice.
What this means for shipyard families
The Philadelphia Naval Shipyard is one of the most heavily documented workplaces in American asbestos litigation. Ship records, yard employment records, and decades of testimony identify what was installed, what was removed, and who did the work. A family usually needs to supply only the outline: the worker’s name, trade, and years at the yard. The record, part of the larger map of Pennsylvania asbestos exposure sites, fills in the rest. Spouses who washed yard work clothes for years have their own claim path as well, described at asbestos exposure from washing clothes.
Because the yard was a federal facility, its civilian workers’ employment can often be confirmed through federal civilian personnel records, in addition to union records and Social Security earnings statements. And when the worker has already passed away, wrongful death and survival actions under 42 Pa. C.S. §§ 8301-8302 generally allow two years from the date of death, so a family is not shut out simply because the diagnosis came late in life.
Pennsylvania generally allows two years from discovery of the illness to file, under 42 Pa. C.S. § 5524, and Philadelphia’s dedicated asbestos docket has handled these cases since 1986 (In re: Asbestos Litigation, No. 1986-00001). Michael Schafle is counsel in that program.
If your family’s work history runs through League Island, request a free case review and the yard’s record can be put to work on your claim.