Charles Keszkowski, 83, was a shipfitter, back when Philadelphia built ships. He'll show you the weathered card identifying him as a member of the Industrial Union of Marine and Shipyard Workers of America, CIO, during World War II. He'll produce a stub of his $40 weekly paycheck. He'll take you on a tour of the now-derelict shipyard where he worked -- Cramp's, in Port Richmond.

He lived nearby in Fishtown -- he still does -- and could walk to the main gate where more than 10,000 shipyard employees were admitted every day.

On the present site of the ICS Corp., offset printers at 2225 Richmond St., Keszkowski toiled in Cramp's "wet basin," helping to install gun turrets and other gear on the shipbuilder's 10,000-ton cruisers. Outfitting the cruisers was hard work, he recalled. "It was cold in the winter and so hot in the summer you couldn't put your finger on the deck," he said, "but it wasn't bad. I was young and able. Now I'm old and disabled."

The turrets were made across the street in Cramp's giant fabrication shop. That 100,000-square-foot building at 2050 Richmond still stands. It's a few feet from a ramp to Interstate 95, and it's used as a warehouse by Dollar Land Inc., a 24-store retail chain.

Submarines were outfitted on a site now occupied by a photo laboratory, Berry & Homer Inc., at 2035 Richmond. Just to the south is a huge field overgrown with weeds. Here was Cramp's mighty drydock, from which were launched fighting ships for all of America's wars from the 1860s through the 1940s. Cramp's also built warships for Imperial Russia, Turkey and Japan, and its construction of pleasure craft included J.P. Morgan's 175-foot, oceangoing steam yacht Corsair.

A sign near a fence identifies the erstwhile drydock as the "Port of Philadelphia Enterprise Zone" and warns that anyone dumping on the site faces a $10,000 fine and five years in jail. Passersby could never guess how important that place had once been in the nation's defense and the city's economy. For Cramp was a fixture here for much of the 19th century and into the first half of the 20th. It reigned as "king" of the shipyards when the Delaware River rivaled the Scottish river Clyde in shipbuilding prowess.

Alas, Cramp's closed in 1946. And although the Delaware was once dotted with shipyards, not for two decades has a ship of decent size been built here. Mark Isaksen, curator of the Independence Seaport Museum, puts the date as Feb. 15, 1977. That's when the Sun Shipbuilding & Drydock Co. in Chester launched its last cargo ship, Westward Venture.

"A lot of small yards have built barges," Isaksen said, "but Westward Venture was the last of the big ships." Once a standout among governmental facilities fabricating, outfitting and repairing ships, the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard constructed its last ship from the keel up in 1970. From then until its closing in 1995, it was limited to conversions, alterations and repairs. But if all goes according to plan, the yard will be back in business before long under the auspices of Kvaerner ASA, the Norwegian conglomerate that is Europe's largest shipbuilder. With the city, state and federal government pledging nearly $400 million to modernize the yard and train workers, Kvaerner is committed to hiring at least 700 shipyard workers and building at least three ships -- possibly as many as nine -- in the next five years.

Think of it: shipbuilding in Philadelphia again. It's a tradition almost as old as the city itself.

Initially, Boston led the colonies in shipbuilding, but by 1750 Philadelphia had gained primacy. At that time, boats were made of wood and powered by sail, and this region benefited from a vast supply of ash and cedar in "Penn's Woods." Because of lower material outlays, ships built here cost less than those in England. Many were, in fact, built for British owners.

A 1754 view of the city showed 12 shipyards along a one-mile stretch of the Delaware. When the American colonies rebelled against the mother country in 1776, they needed a navy. And the navy's birthplace was here. One ship-of-the-line and four frigates were built in Philadelphia shipyards by authority of the Continental Congress.

The principal architect was Joshua Humphreys, whose South Philadelphia shipyard was at the foot of Federal Street. The frigate Randolph, launched on the Delaware in 1778, is generally considered the first vessel built for the new nation, according to John M. Bacon, former collections manager of the Independence Seaport Museum. But earlier, on Dec. 23, 1775, First Lt. John Paul Jones, of the frigate Alfred, hoisted the first American colors of what Bacon termed the "proto-Navy" on the Delaware.

In 1786 or 1787 (accounts differ), an inventive fellow named John Fitch tested a new technology, steam-powered shipping, on the Delaware. After trial runs, he established steamboat service between Philadelphia and Bordentown in 1790. Fitch ran out of money and his business failed. But his ideas lived on. Steamships gained popularity in the 1840s. One yard, Theodore Birely & Son, in Kensington, was said to have built 107 steamers in 10 years.

Philadelphia was the national capital in March 1794 when Congress authorized construction of "a naval armament for the United States." Shipping was then being harassed by pirates from Algiers, and war with France was threatened. Humphreys designed and built the 44-gun frigate United States, which was launched in May 1797.

In 1799, the 36-gun Philadelphia was launched from Humphreys' yard. Citizens of the town subscribed the funds to construct the frigate, and Commodore John Barry took it to sea. However, the Philadelphia later came to a sad end. It was burned in the harbor at Tripoli, in North Africa, by naval hero Stephen Decatur to keep it out of the hands of pirates.

Also in 1799, Congress appropriated funds for the creation of the U.S. Navy's own shipyards on the eastern seaboard. In the next two years, the Humphreys yard and adjoining parcels in Southwark were acquired for the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. The 11 acres and improvements cost $38,636.

About 35 warships were built there before the Navy moved its yard to the foot of Broad Street in 1876. The best known vessel was the USS Pennsylvania, a 120-gun ship-of-the-line designed by Humphreys' son, Samuel. It was said to be the world's largest and most heavily armed man of war, and a crowd estimated at 100,000 witnessed its launching in July 1837. Its career, however, lacked luster. It spent many years tied up in the Norfolk, Va., Navy Yard and was scuttled in 1861 to avoid Confederate capture during the Civil War.

It was the Civil War that convinced Congress of the need for a larger shipyard in Philadelphia. In 1867, it passed legislation to relocate the Navy Yard to the very tip of South Philadelphia, at the juncture of the Delaware River and the Schuylkill. The city purchased the so-called League Island site for $320,000 and donated it to the federal government, which, in turn, sold its old yard to the Pennsylvania Railroad for $1 million. Not a bad deal for Uncle Sam.

The area south of Moyamensing Avenue was largely swampland. It took many years and nearly 22 million cubic yards of earth to fill it all in. The Navy began operating there in 1875, and the final move was completed on Jan. 7, 1876.

William Cramp, born in Philadelphia of German immigrant parents, was only 23 years old when he started his yard in Port Richmond in 1830. There were said to be 14 shipyards on the Delaware then, but Cramp outdid them all with speedy wooden clipper ships.

And when the Civil War accelerated the switch from wood to iron warships, Cramp's yard handled the transition smoothly and remained the leading Philadelphia shipyard. It built the hull for the ironclad steam frigate New Ironsides, the North's prize warship.

His son, Charles, wrote that the yard began building "iron vessels in a comparatively small way" during the war. Cramp's "became a sort of kindergarten," he said, "as most of the workers had to be trained to the work and working appliances had to be designed."

However, the "kindergarten" was soon performing advanced work, and by 1895 its yard covered 32 acres and employed 6,000. Cramp operated from 1830 to 1927 and, under different ownership, from 1940 to 1946. That's when Charles Keszkowski worked there.

All along the Delaware, shipyards sprang up in the 19th century. John Roach began building ships in Chester City in 1871. By 1885, his yard, then owned by a conglomerate, was said to have constructed more iron vessels than all of the other major Delaware River shipyards combined. The nation's first true oil tanker was built there for Standard Oil in 1888.

Wartime meant brisk business for the shipyards, and peacetime often meant decline. Such was the demand for ships in World War I that the nation's largest shipyard was built from scratch in 10 months on Philadelphia's Hog Island. It laid its first keel on Feb. 12, 1918. The yard employed 35,000 men and women whose fast-food luncheon sandwiches took their name from the island. Hoagies, as they were called, are still around, but the yard isn't. It closed in January 1921 after delivering 122 ships. Its site is now occupied by Philadelphia International Airport runways.

The Sun Shipbuilding & Drydock Co. launched its first vessel in Chester in 1917 just as the United States entered the war. Between then and the 1960s, it delivered 543 ships. In World War II, Sun Ship built 281 oil carriers, nearly 40 percent of all the tankers built in this country in that period. But after the war, the deterioration of its business led to final collapse.

Among the noted warships constructed by New York Shipbuilding Co. in Camden was the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk. New York Ship, founded in 1899, closed in 1967. And the Kitty Hawk's drydock is now used by freighters to unload fruit.

The Philadelphia Naval Shipyard outfitted ships but built none at its League Island location until an 11,250-ton transport was launched in 1917. Then piers were added, a huge drydock was built, and employment soared from 2,500 in 1916 to 12,000 in 1919. After a slump in the 1920s and '30s, more than $100 million was invested in the yard during World War II, and employment peaked at 47,000.

Then came the steady decline and the eventual closing.

Whether the Norwegians can resurrect the yard is a question that may not be answered until the start of the next millennium.