Thalassophilia, Nautical History, Culture, and Art
Baltimore, U.S.A.: 1943
“Baltimore, Maryland. Building the SS Frederick Douglass. More
than 6,000 Negro shipyard workers are employed at the
Bethlehem-Fairfield shipyards, where this Liberty ship is being rushed
to completion. Douglass, the noted orator and abolitionist leader,
worked as a ship caulker in the vicinity of this yard before he escaped
from slavery. Smiling from porthole of the dockhouse is rivet heater
Willie Smith.” 4x5 inch nitrate negative by Roger Smith for the Office
of War Information. View full size.
Dorothy Dandridge and Broderick Crawford in a still from the 1958 film, The Decks Ran Red.
The Decks Ran Red (also called Infamy) is a 1958 M-G-M seagoing suspense drama based on the book Infamy at Sea, and directed by Andrew L. Stone. The feature starred James Mason, Dorothy Dandridge, Broderick Crawford, and Stuart Whitman.
Filming took place in southern California aboard the Chios, Greece-registered SS Igor (originally the Philip C. Shera), a World War II Liberty Ship. more
(via mudwerks)
SS Harriet Tubman (MC contract 3032) was a Liberty ship built in the United States during World War II.
The ship was laid down by the South Portland Shipbuilding Corporation, South Portland, Maine, on 19 April 1944, then launched on 3 June 1944. The ship survived the war only to suffer the same fate as nearly all other Liberty ships; she was scrapped in 1972.
The launching party for the SS Harriet Tubman. June 3, 1944
(Source: archives.gov, via greatestgeneration)
Captain Hugh Mulzac and officers of the SS Booker T. Washington.
(Mulzac, center, hands in pockets). photo from National Archives
Liberty ship sunk at Tacloban, Phillipines - Photo from the W2639 Harold John Watts Collection
SHORPY - Building liberty ships in an abandoned freight car factory near the Atlantic coast, 1941.
Howard Liberman
SS John W. Brown, also known as B-4611, is a Liberty ship, one of two still operational today (the other being the SS Jeremiah O'Brien in San Francisco). The ship is today a museum ship located at Clinton Street Pier 1 in Baltimore Harbor. The ship was named after labor union leader John W. Brown.
The John W. Brown made 13 wartime voyages to the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean, including duty during the Anzio landings. She was also part of the liberation force of Southern France during Operation Dragoon in August, 1944. After the war, the John W. Brown carried government cargoes to help rebuild war-torn Europe and returned American troops to the United States.
After 1946, she was loaned by the government to the City of New York, where she became a floating nautical high school, the only one in the United States. The ship served in that capacity from 1946 to 1982, graduating thousands of students prepared to begin careers in the Merchant Marine, the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Coast Guard.
In 1988 Project Liberty Ship Baltimore was able to rescue her and restore her, and found her a home in Baltimore, Maryland near where she was built. In September 1988, the John W. Brown was rededicated as a memorial museum at ceremonies at Dundalk Marine Terminal.
more on Wiki
image from www.shipsnostalgia.com
Pre-Fabricated and Pre-Assembled
To build ships as quickly as possible, workers pieced them together assembly-line fashion from pre-made sections built at the shipyard. About 120 large units, made up of some 250,000 items, went into building each ship.
They built 18 brand new shipyards just for Libertys. And put 650,000 Americans—women, men, young people, old people—building these ships. They became the largest fleet of ships ever built in the history of the world in such a short period of time.
—Rear Adm. Thomas Patterson, United States Merchant Service, Ret.
In wartime shipyards, like this one in Baltimore, workers labored around the clock. Two months before Pearl Harbor, the first Liberty ship, named for the Revolutionary War patriot Patrick Henry, was launched in Chesapeake Bay.
The United States entered World War I in April 1917. Within days, the federal government created the Emergency Fleet Corporation (EFC) to construct a fleet of merchant ships. The EFC hired the American International Shipbuilding Corporation to build and operate the largest shipyard in the world: Hog Island, near Philadelphia.
Hog Island’s 50 shipways stretched a mile and a quarter along the Delaware River near Philadelphia. It abutted 846 acres with 250 buildings and 28 outfitting docks, on what is now the site of the Philadelphia International Airport. At its peak, the yard employed around 30,000 workers. Most were men, but some 650 women worked in the yard. Many of the workers had no factory experience, so they were trained on the job.
At its peak, Hog Island launched a vessel every 5½ days, and its workers built 122 cargo and troop transport ships in four years. Although none saw service before the end of the war, the United States learned how to build large ships quickly on a grand scale from prefabricated parts. This valuable experience would expedite the Liberty and Victory ship building programs of World War II.
William Flury describes the sinking of the Liberty ship SS Jean Nicolet by a Japanese sub in the Indian Ocean on July 2, 1944. Thirty merchant mariners, 19 members of the Navy Armed Guard, and 26 passengers were killed in this attack. Transcript