Liberty Ships and Victory Ships: America's Lifeline in World War II

"The officers and men of the Merchant Marine, by their devotion to duty in the face of enemy action, as well as natural dangers of the sea, have brought us the tools to finish the job. Their contribution to final victory will be long remembered."
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— General Dwight D. Eisenhower, National Maritime Day, 1945

In the two decades after World War I, America's merchant fleet of cargo and passenger ships had grown old and shrunk. World War II changed that: a shipbuilding program eventually produced 5,500 vessels, most famously the mass-produced Liberty ships and, later, the faster Victory ships. This page draws on the National Park Service's Teaching with Historic Places lesson on the ships.

A Liberty ship. Image from the National Park Service's page.

Why the ships were needed

The Merchant Marine Act of 1936 created the U.S. Maritime Commission to give the country a merchant fleet able to carry its trade in peacetime and serve as a naval and military auxiliary in war. Most merchant ships then were more than 20 years old, and the plan was to build 50 a year for 10 years.

War overtook the plan. Germany invaded Poland in 1939, and German submarines — U-boats — began sinking merchant ships bound for Britain to enforce a naval blockade. After Germany's air attack on Britain in 1940, Britain could no longer build ships in large numbers and needed food and supplies. Under Lend-Lease, which let the president transfer arms and equipment to nations vital to U.S. defense, American yards began building cargo ships for Britain on an old but reliable British design. The United States then modified that design for its own emergency cargo ships.

Yet only 82 vessels were built in 1939–1940. In 1941 Congress gave the Maritime Commission power to set shipbuilding priorities, and because existing yards were busy with Navy work, the commission set up 18 new shipyards on the West, East and Gulf coasts to build identical ships assembly-line fashion, with parts made in every state. After Pearl Harbor, U-boats sank ships almost as fast as they were launched, and the commission called for 2,000 ships by the end of 1943. The effort worked: the country finally had enough ships to keep pace with the losses.

A North Atlantic convoy in 1941, photographed from a patrol plane; some of the ships are Liberty ships. U.S. Naval Historical Center.

During the war the Merchant Marine was nationalized. The government decided cargoes and destinations, contracted private companies to run the ships, and put guns and Navy Armed Guard crews aboard; the U.S. Maritime Service trained civilians to sail the ships and help man the guns.

The Liberty ships

The Liberty ship was designed to be built cheaply and fast — a simple, standardized cargo steamer that could be adapted to any military need. Its official designation was EC2: E for emergency, C for cargo, 2 for a medium ship of 400 to 450 feet at the waterline.

• The name. The first, launched on September 27, 1941, was the SS Patrick Henry, after the Revolutionary patriot who declared, "Give me liberty, or give me death." The whole type became known as Liberty ships. With no naming plan, they honored people from every walk of life — patriots, politicians from Abraham Lincoln to Simón Bolívar, scientists from George Washington Carver to Alexander Graham Bell, artists, explorers — and even the SS Stage Door Canteen and the SS U.S.O.
  

The SS Patrick Henry, the first Liberty ship, shortly after its launch in September 1941. Library of Congress.

• The nickname. Reviewing the blueprints at the White House, President Franklin D. Roosevelt told Maritime Commission head Admiral Emory S. Land: "I think this ship will do us very well. She'll carry a good load. She isn't much to look at, though, is she? A real ugly duckling." The ships became the "ugly ducklings."
• The ship. Just over 441 feet long and 57 feet wide, with a 2,500-horsepower steam engine, a Liberty made 11 knots and had a range of 17,000 miles. Five cargo holds carried 10,800 deadweight tons. Crews numbered 38 to 62 civilian mariners plus 21 to 40 Navy personnel for the guns and communications.
• The innovations. Liberty building advanced all-welded construction, prefabrication of whole deckhouses, bottoms, sterns and bows, and a cold-rolling process that saved steel. By 1944 the average ship took 42 days to build — the largest class of ships ever built worldwide.

The Liberty was meant as a "five-year ship," expendable if need be — but many sailed for nearly 20 years after the war, supporting the Korean War from the reserve fleet or forming the backbone of postwar merchant fleets. By the mid-1960s most had become too costly to run and were scrapped; the Patrick Henry went to the breakers in October 1958. About 200 were lost during the war to enemy action, weather and accidents.

The merchant mariners paid a heavy price. Of nearly a quarter million volunteers who served in the war, more than 9,000 died — a higher share (3.9%) than in any branch of the armed forces.

The Victory ships

The Liberties were slow and small, and their rigid hulls sometimes cracked, even breaking in two. In 1943 the Maritime Commission launched a new program for faster ships that could also serve after the war. On April 28, 1943, they were named Victory ships, type VC2.

• Bigger and faster. Just over 455 feet long and 62 feet wide, with five holds carrying 10,850 deadweight tons, Victories swapped the Liberty's steam engine for a steam turbine of 5,500 to 8,500 horsepower, cruising at 15 to 17 knots. Crews were typically 62 civilians and 28 Navy personnel.
• A stronger hull. Liberty hull frames were 30 inches apart, making the hull rigid and prone to fracture; Victory frames were 36 inches apart, letting the hull flex.
• Names. The first, the SS United Victory, was launched on January 12, 1944, at Oregon Shipbuilding in Portland. The next 33 were named for United Nations members (such as the Brazil Victory and Haiti Victory); later ones for American cities and towns and for colleges and universities. The 117 Victory attack transports were named for counties instead.
• Numbers. The commission built 414 Victory cargo ships and 117 attack transports — 531 in all. Ninety-seven served as troop carriers; the rest hauled food, fuel, ammunition and supplies in both the Atlantic and Pacific.

"Your Merchant Marine Has Grown": a War Shipping Administration press photo, May 20, 1945. U.S. Maritime Administration.

Victory ships lined up at a West Coast shipyard for final outfitting, from a U.S. Maritime Commission photo release for Maritime Day, May 1945. U.S. Maritime Administration.

After the war, 170 were sold, 20 lent to the Army and the rest "mothballed" in the reserve fleet — emptied, sealed, protected from corrosion and dehumidified. Some returned for the Korean War, the 1956 Suez Canal closure and the Vietnam War. In 1959 eight were refitted to support NASA's space program, and on August 11, 1960, the former Haiti Victory recovered the nose cone of the satellite Discoverer XIII — the first human-made object recovered from space.

Both types were adapted for every service: cargo ships, troop carriers, fuel tankers, hospital ships and prisoner-of-war transports.

The survivors

Of the thousands built, only a handful remain, saved by preservation and veterans' groups as floating museums:

• SS Jeremiah O'Brien (Liberty) — named for a Revolutionary hero from Machias, Maine, who in 1775 led the capture of the armed British schooner HMS Margaretta, the Revolution's first naval action. Launched at South Portland, Maine, on June 19, 1943, she made 11 supply runs between Britain and Normandy for the D-Day invasion in June 1944. She is one of only two Liberty ships still operating, and is berthed at San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf.
• SS John W. Brown (Liberty) — the other operating Liberty, preserved in Baltimore.
• SS American Victory — launched on June 20, 1945, in Los Angeles and named for American University in honor of its war research; a museum in Tampa, Florida, since 1999.
• SS Lane Victory — launched on May 31, 1945, in Los Angeles and named for Lane College in Jackson, Tennessee, founded in 1882 by Bishop Isaac Lane as a high school for Black youths; berthed at the Port of Los Angeles in San Pedro.
• SS Red Oak Victory — built at Richmond, California, and commissioned as a Navy ammunition ship. In 1945 she carried more than 10,000 tons of ammunition to the Pacific, resupplied the fleet from Ulithi Atoll and supported the liberation of the Philippines; later she served in the Korean and Vietnam wars. She is now part of Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park.

Sources

• National Park Service, Teaching with Historic Places: "Liberty Ships and Victory Ships, America's Lifeline in War," by Jay Michalsky, and its readings (from the archived lesson), based on National Register and National Historic Landmark files for the five ships and on works by John Gorley Bunker, Samuel Eliot Morison and L. A. Sawyer and W. H. Mitchell. The lesson gives the number of Liberty ships as 2,710 in one place and 2,751 in another, so no exact figure is given here, and its account of the Jeremiah O'Brien after 1947 appears to be mixed with another ship's, so that part is left out.