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The mid-ship structure was built around the shipyard manufacturing process that Erie Marine had designed. Erie Marine was considered a production-line manufacturing facility and production methods were selected to accomplish repetitive operations in the most economical manner. Machine production capabilities and intermediate storage areas were all balanced against the rate at which the final assembly could be accomplished to achieve the maximum utilization of equipment.

The shipyard at Erie was not designed to construct the complex shapes of a bow and stern section. It was designed to build 48-foot modules quickly.

Presque Isle had her bow constructed at Defoe Shipyard and towed to Erie Marine by Ohio in 1972.

Question: When the bow-stern section, i.e. "Stubby" sailed from Pascagoula to Erie in 1971, how was she registered? Was she registered to Bethlehem Steel or Litton Industries?

Answer: "Special arrangements had to be made to allow the bow / stern to sail under carpenter's certificate with a hull number for a name so that initial registration could occur after completion of the vessel. This allowed initial ownership registration in the name of the ultimate owner without the problem of the finished vessel becoming a second-owner vessel."

the botton line...cost

An educated guess: most likely cost. Around the time the Cort was built lots of manufacturing headed south. The south was largely nonunion and offered substantially lower labor costs. But when the new low-cost ship is completed, it has to be delivered. Uh oh.

So by doing what they did, they were able to access that lower- cost labor to build the hard parts, with all it's equipment, pipes, and wires- and let the higher priced labor build only the easier, faster part. Not that any of it is easy... And the hard part could be delivered to the easy part without a lot of problems.

Why did they build the fore and aft of the Cort in Mississippi and build the mid section in Erie? Why didn’t they just build the whole ship in Erie?