Tampa Bay Shipbuilding & Repair used to be known as Tampa Shipyards, Inc., when it was a part of the American Ship Building Company. The Tampa Shipyards owner, George Steinbrenner, went bankrupt, and in 1977 Tampa Bay Shipbuilding & Repair was established.

A Very Active Shipyard

Tampa Bay Shipbuilding is one of the highest-producing shipyards in the southeast region of the U.S. Their facilities repair and convert many types of vessels. Tampa is a year-round warm-weather location that has access to the various ports in the Gulf of Mexico, and the shipyard is also close to the Tampa Bay National Airport and the CSX railway system.

Shipyard Workers at Risk

Many ships that were worked on at Tampa Bay over the years had components that contained asbestos. After a tragic shipboard fire in the 1930s, asbestos became a commonly used fireproofing material on both military and merchant vessels, and the shipyard workers who installed, replaced or removed such asbestos materials were at risk of inhaling the asbestos fibers that are released into the air when asbestos is manipulated or disturbed.

Some shipyard workers received frequent, even daily, exposure to toxic levels of asbestos, often for years at a time. The shipyard owners and the makers of the asbestos products did not tell shipyard workers of the danger — that asbestos fibers become lodged in the lungs and other internal organs, causing deadly diseases such as lung cancer and mesothelioma, an incurable cancer of the tissue that lines the lungs and chest cavity.

Find Out More about the Dangers of Asbestos

If you were an employee of the Tampa Shipyards or Tampa Bay Shipbuilding & Repair and you suspect that you were subjected to dangerous asbestos levels, learn more about the options available to you. Contact us today.