Sun Shipbuilding & Dry Dock built ships on the Chester waterfront in Delaware County from 1916 into the 1980s. During the Second World War it ranked among the largest shipyards in the world, with a workforce in the tens of thousands turning out oil tankers for the war effort. Asbestos insulation ran through every one of those hulls, and through the working lives of the people who built and repaired them. For Delaware County families, Sun Ship is one of the most common answers to the question of where an asbestos exposure history began.
The yard that built the tankers
Sun Shipbuilding was founded by the Sun Oil interests in 1916, in part to build and service the tankers that carried the company’s oil. The yard grew with both wars, and in the Second World War it became a mass production operation, launching tanker after tanker from ways that stretched along the Delaware. After the war the yard continued building and repairing commercial vessels for decades. The Sun interests sold the yard in 1982, and shipbuilding under successor owners wound down by about 1990.
Chester itself was a shipbuilding town in those years. The yard drew workers from Chester, Marcus Hook, Eddystone, Ridley, Upland, and across Delaware County, and its payroll shaped the city for two generations.
The wartime yard hired far beyond the traditional shipbuilding trades, bringing in thousands of new workers, including women and Black workers recruited for war production. Many stayed in the industry after 1945, and others carried their trades to other yards and plants along the river, which is why Sun Ship exposure histories span whole careers and not only the war years.
Why shipbuilding meant asbestos exposure
A mid-century ship was insulated stem to stern. Asbestos lagging covered the boilers, steam lines, and machinery; asbestos-containing materials appeared in gaskets, packing, bulkhead insulation, and deck products. Building a ship meant cutting and fitting that material by hand, much of it in enclosed compartments below decks where dust hung in the air. Repair work was worse in one respect: old, dry insulation had to be ripped out before new material went in, and stripping it filled the space with dust.
No trade owned that dust alone. When insulators worked a compartment, the shipfitters, welders, pipefitters, and electricians in the same space breathed the same air.
The trades most affected
Insulators and laggers handled asbestos directly and constantly. Shipfitters, boilermakers, and pipefitters built and repaired the systems the insulation covered. Welders and burners cut through covered steel. Riggers, painters, machinists, electricians, and laborers rounded out the compartments. Many Sun Ship workers also cycled through the refineries at Marcus Hook or the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard upriver, so a single work history often touches more than one documented site.
Exposure did not stop at the gate
Yard workers carried fiber home on their clothes to houses across Chester and Delaware County, and the family members who lived there, especially the ones who did the laundry, have their own recognized exposure path. That fact pattern is described at asbestos exposure from washing clothes.
The illness arrives decades later
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 rigger who left the yard when it changed hands in the 1980s, or a wartime worker’s daughter who grew up with the laundry, can be diagnosed today and still be inside that medical timeline. This is general background, not medical advice; your care belongs with your physicians.
After the yard closed: the records that remain
The yard is gone, but the record is not. Employment records, union records, Social Security earnings statements, and decades of testimony from Sun Ship workers document who worked there and what materials filled the hulls. Sun Ship appears throughout the history of asbestos litigation, which means much of the proof a new claim needs already exists. The yard is one entry in the larger map of Pennsylvania asbestos exposure sites.
What this means for your family
If your father, grandfather, or mother worked at Sun Ship and mesothelioma has now been diagnosed in your family, the path from the yard to the illness is well worn: establish the work history, match it to the documented record, and file within Pennsylvania’s window, which generally allows two years from discovery of the illness under 42 Pa. C.S. § 5524.
Request a free case review and Michael Schafle will go through your family’s Sun Ship history and explain exactly what comes next.