Smith Shipbuilding Company, of Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, received an order for eight. American Shipbuilding later received an order for another six (four at Cleveland and two at Lorain), bringing the total orders for the US Navy to 79 ships, while the Walsh-Kaiser Company, of Providence, Rhode Island, received an order for 21 additional ships, all of which were to be transferred to the Royal Navy, where they were known as the Colony class, bringing the total planned construction to 100 units. Four ships scheduled for construction at Lorain, by American Shipbuilding, , , , and (ex-Vallejo), were cancelled in December 1943 and February 1944, dropping the ultimate total of Tacoma-class ships built to 96. From the beginning, the construction program was plagued by difficulties which caused it to fall far behind schedule. Unfamiliar with the capabilities of the Great Lakes yards, Kaiser Cargo used prefabrication techniques unsuited to the Great Lakes yards smaller cranes and had to rework them. Ice prevented patrol frigates built on the Great Lakes from transiting the Soo Locks on the St. Marys River between Lake Superior and Lake Michigan, in the winter and spring, requiring them to be floated down the Mississippi River on pontoons to New Orleans or Houston for fitting out, often doubling their construction time. Delays became so lengthy that shipyards began to deliver the ships in such an incomplete state that shakedown and post-shakedown periods of repair and alteration took months for some of them. Bilge keels that cracked in rough seas or cold weather, failures in the welds holding the deckhouse to the deck, engine trouble, and ventilation problems plagued all of the ships. As a result, no Tacoma-class ship was commissioned until late in 1943, none were ready for service until 1944, and the last one, , was not commissioned until March 1945. The ships Consolidated Steel built proved the most reliable, while Kaiser Cargo-built units were the most trouble-prone; among the latter, Tacoma took ten months of shakedown and repairs to be ready after her commissioning, and proved equally difficult to make ready for service. Service By the time the first Tacoma-class ships were ready for front-line service in 1944, the US Navys requirement for them had passed, thanks to a decline in the threat from Axis submarines, and the availability of ample numbers of destroyers and destroyer escorts, which the Navy regarded as much superior to the