Women Workers at the Federal Shipyard, Newark, 1943. Courtesy, Newark Public Library. Thousands of New Jersey women entered defense work during World War II doing a wide variety of jobs. The women pictured here were lashing life nets to steel cables on the deck of a newly launched destroyer escort at U. S. Steel's Federal Shipyard in Newark. They sewed nets to the cables with heavy waxed thread, using a large needle pushed with the help of a sailor's "palm," or seaman's thimble. The lifesaving nets kept sailors from being lost overboard.

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