BATH — When war came, America’s women stepped up, filling its shipyards and factories to send supplies to soldiers and sailors abroad.  

One of those women, 94-year-old Jean Croteau, visited Bath Iron Works for the first time in more than seven decades on last week.  

Croteau was among the original “Rosie Riveters” — women who joined the workforce during World War II to produce weapons and equipment for the war effort. Croteau worked at the Bath Iron Works from 1943 to 1944, at the height of its shipbuilding efforts, when the shipyard was churning out a new destroyer every 17 days. Last week, Croteau, who now lives in California, visited the shipyard with her daughters and granddaughter.

“It was a little bit bigger,” Croteau said of the shipyard today as compared to when she worked there.

While Bath Iron Works no longer produces destroyers at the breakneck speed of World War II, it has grown in size and sophistication since then. Since Croteau worked at the shipyard well over 70 years ago, the company has added the Land-Level Transfer Facility where ships are floated Into the Kennebec River, the massive Ultra Hall where ships are assembled, and the iconic orange and white crane that towers over the shipyard.

Despite the substantial changes the shipyard has undergone over the last several decades, Croteau said she enjoyed visiting the place she worked so long ago.

“It was very good,” said Croteau of her brief visit to the shipyard. “Very interesting, and it was excellent.”

“It’s really exciting to meet one of the original ‘Rosie the Riveters.’ Jean and women like her meant so much to our shipyard and to our country and they paved the way for many of our current shipbuilders,” said Bath Iron Works spokesperson David Hench of the visit.

According to Ralph Linwood Snow’s “Bath Iron Works, The First Hundred Years,” many women started employment at Bath Iron Works during World War II to replace the men who had left to join the military. While some women had worked at the shipyard before then, that number shot up drastically during the war, and ultimately women would make up 16% of the workforce at Bath Iron Works at the time.

Croteau joined the shipyard as a welder. According to Snow, female welders made 60 cents an hour, the same as their male counterparts, during training and were guaranteed equal pay once they gained full employment.

“When I first started, I was afraid. But then it got better and better and I got trained and I got to know the people and I loved it,” said Croteau.

“It was tough, because, you know, you didn’t have women back then,” said her daughter Carol Croteau.

As more and more women joined the workforce, the shipyard hired an assistant director of personnel for women and launched a nursery to help mothers working at the company, according to Snow.

“I was treated well,” said Croteau, though she admitted it was a bit rough at first.

“They liked me, and I loved them,” she said of her coworkers.

nstrout@timesrecord.com