CREWING

As can be imagined, with such an expansion in the supply of merchant ships, crewing was a real problem. Between Pearl harbour and 1945 the American Merchant Marine grew from 55,000 personnel to 215,000, and from 8.7 million tons to 41 million tons. This was more tonnage than all other nations put together. During the same period they lost 67,000 seamen to enemy action. In fact the pace of growth called for an additional requirement of 200 men per day. The US Government set up several officer training academies to meet the demand, but needless to say many went off to sea with minimal qualifications and little or no experience.

STRUCTURAL PROBLEMS

As the war, and the shipbuilding programme progressed, structural failure in welded ships began to rear its ugly head. By the spring of 1944, as the allies prepared to amass a huge Amada for the invasion of Europe, hundreds of recently constructed merchant ships were laid up for repairs in ports around the world. Liberty Ships were not the only ones affected but the problem was more pronounced with them purely because of the sheer numbers in service.

Cracks in steel ships have been common place since the first steel ship was built, but due to the fact that the plates were riveted together, a crack in a single plate was not necessarily catastrophic and the crack would usually run only to the next riveted plate, typically not more than 20 feet in length. Of course some riveted ships did break up in heavy weather but failures of this sort were usually attributed to “A Bad Batch of Steel” or “Severe Weather Conditions”.

But it was now clear that something was badly wrong. It was showing up in a high proportion of welded ships operating in cold waters, while it seemed that there were few such problems occurring in warmer waters. A notable exception being refrigerated cargo vessels.

Scientists on both sides of the Atlantic set out to solve the dilemma, but it took more than 15 years of research to fully understand why the cracking occurred. Without getting too technical, it was found that, with the steel used for the first half of the 20^th century, temperatures below about 48 degrees F (9C) caused the steel to crack in a brittle manner, like glass, and it cracked at the speed of sound! With welded construction, the ship’s hull was in fact one single plate so, once the crack started to run, it only stopped when it ran out of steel. It was also noted that few cracks occurred along the actual welded joints. In the meantime, after inspection of salvaged ships which had suffered cracking, successful, temporary modifications were carried out to help overcome it.

There were of course other issues such as types of steel used in various ships, quality control and standards of workmanship, but low water temperature was the nub of the problem.

DURING AND AFTER WWII

The affect of the Liberty Ship on the shipping and shipbuilding industries cannot be overstated. During WWII they served in every ocean and sea in the world, and carried no less than 75% of America’s war materials. Some were modified to act as troop carriers. Some carried general cargo, others carried munitions, tanks, jeeps, iron ore, grain, coal and petrol in drums. A Liberty Ship had space for 2,840 jeeps, 440 light tanks, 250 million rounds of rifle ammunition or 3,440,000 cans of rations.

In all, some 2,710 Liberties were built. More than 200 were lost to enemy action.

After the war, the United States called for the return of the Lend Lease Liberty ships. Subsequently 900 of these, as well as the Fort Boats and T2 Tankers, were sold to the world’s merchant fleets and kept going until well into the 1960’s, although a few survived into the 70’s and even 80’s. The remainder were either mothballed in the U.S. Reserve Fleet or used by the U.S. Navy. The Liberties sold to Greece spawned the fabulously wealthy shipping empires of Onassis, Niarchos and others. Today there are only two survivors. The “Jeremiah O’Brien” and the

“John Brown”, decked out in their grey war paint and fittings. For those of you who saw the movie “TITANIC”, the engine room shots were actually taken on the “John Brown”.

During and after the war the Liberties were involved in many bizarre, tragic and unique occurrences. There was the John Harvey, loaded with 2,000 mustard gas bombs. It was one of 17 ships sunk in Bari, Italy in December 1943 during a bombing raid. When the ship blew up, the lethal gas was distributed over the harbour and nearby township, killing and maiming hundreds of people. Then there was the tragedy of the Samtampa which was blown onto rocks at Porthcawl near Swansea during a ferocious storm in April 1947. None of the crew survived even though the wreck was only about 500 yards from the shore. In addition all the eight crew of the lifeboat which went to its assistance were drowned. In December 1947 the Greek ship, Kalloipi (ex Robert Dale) sunk after hitting a mine in the North Adriatic. As a matter of interest, I was on a ship which came almost too close to a

mine in the Adriatic in 1956, so there were still plenty of mines around well after the war.

Liberty ships also played a major part in shipping prisoners back to Japan at the end of the war. It is estimated that around 5.7 million honourable passengers made the trip, which probably means that more Japanese troops than Americans were transported around the seas by Liberty Ships. Then in June 1946, 14 Liberty ships were used to transport 35,000 prisoners from Rangoon to Japan. The British named the exercise Operation Nipoff.

GOOD SHIPS OR NOT?

Over the years much has been written and said about Liberty Ships, some of which isn’t very complimentary. However, taking into account that these ships weren’t built to last, once the hulls were reinforced to combat the problem of cracking, the ships proved to be very reliable indeed. While it is seldom productive to dwell on “what might have been”, there is no doubt that without the Liberty shipbuilding programme the movement of vital supplies would have been very seriously curtailed and perhaps the war might have followed a completely different course.

My own experience with the Liberty class was during the 1950’s on a Canadian built Fort Boat, which as we have seen is essentially the same as its American built cousin, and on a T2 Tanker. The T2 had complicated turbo-electric machinery whereas the Fort Boat was an uncomplicated vessel, although it could roll the milk out of your coffee in heavy weather. It also required very careful ballasting when it was light ship. On one trip, in very heavy weather in the North Atlantic, this ship suffered a large crack from the corner of No. 3 hold to the strengthening plating along the ship’s side, but the modification served its purpose and stopped the crack from continuing.

I had no qualms about sailing on either of these vessels from a safety point of view, and I can’t recollect any other crew member expressing reservations.

THE SITUATION TODAY

Today, pre-fabrication and welding is standard shipbuilding practice. By far the largest shipbuilding nation is Korea, but most of their steel now comes from China. We now have container ships measuring over 1,200 feet long, drawing 100 feet of water fully laden, powered by a single 110,000 HP diesel engine putting out 7,800 HP per cylinder, and capable of carrying up to 15,000 twenty foot containers. They carry a crew of only 13 people.

It is sobering to ponder that Britain is still an island and still relies on merchant ships for its survival. Yet Britain, and indeed America, has virtually no merchant fleet and the Royal Navy is but a shadow of its former self. The same applies to Australia. Perhaps there’s a grand plan for coping with a 1940’s type situation, but I don’t know what it might be.

THANK YOU

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