From Ugly Duckling to Museum Ship by Gretchen Grover
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Built in 1943 in South Portland , the Jeremiah O'Brien was one of the work horses of World War II , and saw duty in the North Atlantic, Caribbean, Pacific and Indian oceans. The highlight was probably the eleven round-trips made in shuttle service between the United Kingdom and the Normandy beachheads in support of the D-Day invasion forces. At the end of the war, she was in the Pacific , so she came home to San Francisco. With nothing left to do, she was mothballed in the National Defense Reserve Fleet, Suisun Bay, northeast of San Francisco , on 7 February 1946 . It was there , in 1962, that Thomas J. Patterson found her and began the fifteen-year effort to save her as a living museum-an effort he describes in the
a preceding account. ~
After exterior work on the O'Brien ~ had been completed at the Bethlehem z yard in San Francisco in 1980, she took up residence at Pier 3, Fort Mason on S: San Francisco Bay. Restoration of the ship's vast interior got under way slowly. Small groups of volunteers worked diligently on the vast task using donated materials and whatever they could beg or borrow from the waterfront. From time to time they showed off their work on special open ship days. As work progressed, so did public access to the ship-from the occasional open houses, to regularly scheduled monthly open ship weekends, to being open daily year-round. Now, in place of z the open ship weekends, the feature is Q "steaming" weekends when the engineers ~ light off the boiler and run the engine, the ...J stewards fire up the galley's coal stove 8 and the ship lives again. 0 ~ On these weekends visitors can feel, ~ hear and sense the spirit of a Liberty : ship. Children of all ages can experience ·· the thrill of blowing the steam whistle, of aiming the 5-inch 38-caliber stem gun S: at passing targets, or of hearing sea stories from the crew. The ship hums . At top, the Jeremiah O'Brien slides down the ways at the New England Shipbuilding yards Of course the most often asked quesat South Portland, Maine. It is 19 June 1943, only forty-five days since her keel was laid on 6 May, and just eleven days till her trials-fifty-six days from start to finish! Above, the SS tion is '' Where do you go on your steamJames M. Wayne in May 1943, deep laden with war cargo and carrying ten gun emplacements, ing weekend?" Although perhaps disaplooks much as the brand new O'Brien would have appeared. Below, the O'Brien cruises San pointed to find that the ship steams pierFrancisco Bay. Aboard are the people who made her new life possible . side each month, visitors are delighted to find that the O'Brien does make public cruises each year. Since the first Sea"' men's Memorial Cruise in 1980, the ~ Jeremiah O'Brien has sailed San Fran,:;) cisco Bay on the third weekend in May each year in recognition of National 5 ..: Maritime Day, 22 May) and to honor the American maritime industry by paying tribute to the men and women who built, worked on and sailed the Libertys. S: The O'Brien has also sailed in cere-
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SEA HISTORY, WINTER 1987-88