ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Saturday, April 27, 1996               TAG: 9604290009
SECTION: BUSINESS                 PAGE: A-6  EDITION: METRO 
DATELINE: NEWPORT NEWS
SOURCE: CHRISTOPHER DINSMORE LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE 

TANKER PUTS YARD ON AN EVEN KEEL

THE COMMERCIAL SHIP is the first being built at the Newport News facility in nearly 20 years.

The big sky-blue crane at Newport News Shipbuilding lowered a 280-metric-ton piece of steel into the shipyard's biggest dry dock.

For the first time in nearly 20 years, the shipyard was laying the keel of a commercial ship.

The double-hulled petroleum-product tanker, to be called the Despotico, is the first of four being built for a Greek shipping line.

Named for an uninhabited Greek isle, the Despotico is the first large commercial ship to be built in a U.S. shipyard for a foreign buyer since 1957.

In addition to the four for Eletson Corp., Newport News Shipbuilding is building five of the tankers for a joint venture of Fort Lauderdale-based Hvide Marine Inc. and the U.S. arm of the Dutch shipping giant Van Ommeren N.V.

The big shipyard - for generations the state's largest private employer - is getting back into commercial shipbuilding. The Navy, the shipyard's principal customer of the past two decades, is buying fewer new warships since the end of the Cold War, so the yard needs the commercial work to sustain its nearly 18,000 employees, down from more than 30,000 in years of peak post-World War II defense spending.

The shipyard cut the first steel for the Despotico in September. Since then, pieces of the hull were assembled in the shipyard's huge outfitting and assembly sheds. Now those pieces will start to come together on the floor of the vast Dry Dock No.12 on the yard's north end.

William P. Fricks, the shipyard's president and chief executive, said the pieces should start to resemble a ship in about a month.

The Despotico is being assembled behind the aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman in the dry dock, the largest in the Western hemisphere. The Truman will be christened Sept. 14 and floated out of the dry dock.

The Despotico will follow two days later and should be ready for delivery by December.

LENGTH: Short :   50 lines
ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO:  Landmark News Service. Newport News Shipbuilding lays 
          the keel Monday for its first Double Eagle Tanker, the Despotico, at
          the shipyard.