30th Dec 1941

The first "Liberty Ship", the SS Patrick Henry is launched. Liberty Ships will prove to be major parts of the Allied supply system.

Eighteen American shipyards built 2,751 Liberties between 1941 and 1945, easily the largest number of ships produced to a single design.

Early on, each ship took about 230 days to build (Patrick Henry took 244 days), but the average eventually dropped to 42 days. The record was set by Robert E. Peary, which was launched 4 days and 15 1/2 hours after the keel was laid, although this publicity stunt was not repeated—and in fact much fitting-out and other work remained to be done after the Peary was launched.

One of the more famous Liberty Ships is the SS Richard Montgomery. The wreck of the ship still lies off the coast of Kent with 1,500 tons of explosives still on board, enough to match a small nuclear weapon should they ever go off.

Only two operational Liberty ships survive: the SS John W. Brown (following a long career as a school ship and many internal modifications) and the Jeremiah O'Brien, largely in original condition. Both museum ships, they still put out to sea regularly. In 1994, the O'Brien steamed from San Francisco to England and France, the only large ship that participated in the World War II D-Day invasion to return for the 50th anniversary.

You're not joking Mike.I've been out to her (2001) and it was something of an excellent if scary experience. My snaps show the distant masts protruding through the surface and the boom around her. I'll see if I can find them - they are not dramatic - more like sticks in a pond.The ship lies off the Isle of Grain in the Thames Estuary and is opposite Southend on Sea where I live. The explosion, when it happens - (not many ifs on that score) will be catastrophic and the tidal wave alone will do huge damage to Southend, Sheppey and right up the Medway. We live on high ground, but I still don't fancy it when the day comes.

They took a lot of explosives off the wreck year ago, but much remains.The remaining explosives, three and half thousand tons of it - is mainly made up from high explosive bombs which some websites say are safe. The big problem is a couple of hundred tons of highly unstable cluster bombs on the deck, which is rotting away. If these fall through and detonate......call your insurance company.

There are rumblings that the powers that be are going to make a concerted effort to remove the explosives. With the new container port opening in a few years shipping traffic of very large vessels will multiply in a big way. So, the wreck must surely go. They have been trashing other wrecks to clear a channel for the port already.

Fun times ahead.

It a wonder the Hulk hold together in any form. Although now completely in two...

Especially concidering some of the problems associated with the Liberty Ship's structure, and the problems encountered.

"Early Liberty ships suffered hull and deck cracks, and a few were lost to such structural defects. During World War II, there were nearly 1,500 instances of significant brittle fractures. Twelve ships, including three of the 2,710 Liberties built, broke in half without warning, including the SS John P. Gaines, which sank on 24 November 1943 with the loss of 10 lives. Suspicion fell on the shipyards who had often used inexperienced workers and new welding techniques to produce large numbers of ships in great haste. Constance Tipper of Cambridge University demonstrated that the fractures were not initiated by welding, but instead by the grade of steel used which suffered from embrittlement. She discovered that the ships in the North Atlantic were exposed to temperatures that could fall below a critical point when the mechanism of failure changed from ductile to brittle, and thus the hull could fracture relatively easily. The predominantly welded (as opposed to riveted) hull construction then allowed cracks to run for large distances unimpeded. One common type of crack nucleated at the square corner of a hatch which coincided with a welded seam, both the corner and the weld acting as stress concentrators. Furthermore, the ships were frequently grossly overloaded and some of the problems occurred during or after severe storms at sea that would have placed any ship at risk. Various reinforcements were applied to the Liberty ships to arrest the crack problems, and the successor design, the Victory ship, was stronger and less stiff to better deal with fatigue." Wiki...

For more on the SS Richard Montgomery and the possible consequences of an explosion see:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Richard_Montgomery

or

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A22716759

 

There are rumblings that the powers that be are going to make a concerted effort to remove the explosives. With the new container port opening in a few years shipping traffic of very large vessels will multiply in a big way. So, the wreck must surely go. They have been trashing other wrecks to clear a channel for the port already.

 

Fun times ahead.

But a similar attempt was made with another wreck. That all went horribly wrong.

Attempts in 1967 to remove cargo from another sunken ship, the Polish-built SS Kielce, resulted in an explosion causing a tremor that hit 4.5 on the Richter scale off the coast of Folkestone. After this, the policy of non-interference with hazardous wrecks has been reinforced. The only saving grace was that ship was some distance from the Coast, not near thousands of houses, in an estuary!

I seem to remember reading somewhere that although American built the Liberty ships were quite an old British design.

I seem to remember reading somewhere that although American built the Liberty ships were quite an old British design.

In 1936, the American Merchant Marine Act was passed to subsidize the annual construction of 50 commercial merchant vessels to be used in wartime by the United States Navy as naval auxiliaries. The number was doubled in 1939 and again in 1940 to 200 ships a year. Ship types included a tanker and three types of merchant vessel, all to be powered by steam turbines. Limited industrial capacity, especially for turbine construction, meant that relatively few of these ships were built.

In 1940, the British government ordered 60 tramp steamships from American yards to replace war losses and boost the merchant fleet. These Ocean class ships were simple but fairly large (for the time) with a single coal-fired, 2,500 horsepower (1,864 kW) reciprocating engine of obsolete but reliable design. Britain specified coal plants because it had plenty of coal mines but no indigenous oil fields. The predecessor designs, including the Northeast Coast, Open Shelter Deck Steamer, were based on a simple ship originally produced in Sunderland by J.L. Thompson & Sons (see Silver Line) from 1879, and widely manufactured up to the SS Dorrington Court, which was built in 1938. The order specified an 18-inch (457 mm) increase in draught to boost displacement by 800 tons to 10,100 tons.

After the death of my father in Colombia in 1967, the family returned to the UK by sea in order to be able to carry some of his twenty-years'worth of possessions.

The converted Liberty ship (name long since forgotten) sailed a continuous cycle between (IIRC) Cartagena, Colombia; (somewhere in Venezuela that served as seaport for Caracas - if not Caracas itself); Teneriffe, Canary Islands; Vigo, Spain (the ship's home port: extended layover) and Southampton.

It was a bucket. Being a cargo ship, it only carried a handful of passengers, but there is an old saying about polishing a turd ...