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Malcolm Prosser, a laborer at Bath Iron Works, has decorated his hard hat the way an office worker decorates a cubicle. Since BIW’s founding 123 years ago, it has built all sizes and types of commercial and Navy ships.

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TO READ MORE THE PORTLAND PUBLIC LIBRARY suggests the following reading material related to Bath Iron Works shipyard: "The Ship That Would Not Die," by F. Julian Becton with Joseph Morschauser III "Cradle of Ships," by Garnett Laidlaw Eskew "The Yard: Building a Destroyer at the Bath Iron Works," by Michael S. Sanders "Bath Iron Works: The First Hundred Years," by Ralph L. Snow "Bath Iron Works," by Andrew C. Toppan

These workers seem infused with a new passion for building U.S. Navy ships. BIW is moving toward completion of the Arleigh Burke class of Aegis destroyers. A new generation of Navy destroyers is on the horizon, and the company is exploring potential contracts with other customers, including the U.S. Coast Guard.

"I think what is remarkable about Bath Iron Works is how long it has been here, how it has evolved and how resilient it has been," said Andrew C. Toppan, a senior mechanical engineer who has written a history of BIW.

The shipyard, which sits on about 70 acres of land between Washington Street and the Kennebec River, remains one of the state's largest employers, with about 5,800 workers.

How shipyard President Dugan Shipway and staff decide to proceed from here will determine whether BIW's shipbuilding legacy -- a cornerstone in the state's 400-year-long shipbuilding tradition -- will continue for another century.

In 1884, Gen. Thomas Worcester Hyde founded the company, then called Bath Iron Foundry, in downtown Bath. Four years later, he renamed the company Bath Iron Works and acquired the defunct Goss Marine Iron Works on Washington Street.

A shipyard was born.

Since then, BIW has built all sizes and types of ships for the commercial and government sectors.

Early vessels included the armored Katahdin, which was launched in 1893 -- it was designed to ram enemy ships with its sharp, beak-like bow -- and the 1897 gunboat Newport, which resembled a yacht more than a warship.

BIW also built trawlers and yachts, such as the Ranger, which was the second America's Cup defender and one of the most famous ships built in Bath.

During World War II, employment reached 12,000, an all-time high, Toppan said. BIW delivered 82 Navy destroyers during the war -- more destroyers than the entire Japanese navy constructed.

Fabrication of the last guided missile destroyer in the Arleigh Burke class will begin later this summer, with delivery scheduled for 2011. Construction of the DDG 1000 Zumwalt destroyer class is expected to start in a year, said James E. DeMartini, a company spokesman.

"We are trying to carry on a heritage" said Shipway, a former Navy admiral who took the BIW post in April 2003. "I am the eighth president since the shipyard came out of bankruptcy in the 1920s. And all of those presidents have left something a little better in the yard. We need to improve on that legacy because of them."

Mike Keenan remembers the mood in the yard during the 2000 strike, when he was a shop steward.

"(The strike) was the low point," said Keenan, who now serves as president of BIW's largest union, Local S6, which represents more than 3,400 welders, shipfitters, machinists, electricians, tinsmiths and others. "It is my goal to never, ever go back to that again."

Communication between management and the unions has improved, and both sides seem to be focused on one goal -- producing quality ships, Keenan said.

"Everyone is optimistic and ready to start building more ships," said Keenan. "Attitudes have changed."

A tour of the shipyard in Bath reveals the complexity of the shipbuilding process.

Communication between departments, workers and far-flung facilities -- metal fabrication takes place at the Hardings plant in East Brunswick -- has to be good because the last thing workers at the end of the production line want is to have to fix a problem that could have been taken care of in the early stages of a ship's production.

Materials are delivered to the yard, where parts are blasted, painted...