"All the charts were there,from Normandy to the Pacific. The wartime instructions were posted alongside the mark XIV gyro. The captain's night order book at Normandy beach was in the desk drawer. The ship was a time capsule." -Rear Admiral Thomas Patterson on finding the Jeremiah O'Brien in 1962
Convoy '94
The Liberty ship Jeremiah O'Brien.
50 Years Later, Veterans Put Steam in the Boilers of Three Old Ships to Return to Normandy by Kevin Haydon t was the evening of 5 June 1944, and Walter Botto, a young ship's officer, found himself on course to Normandy in the dark choppy seas of the English Channel. Botto's unforgettable trip had begun eight weeks earlier when he reported aboard the Liberty ship SS Benjamin Hawkins, loading at the Brooklyn Army Base for convoy duty to Liverpool. Upon discharge of its cargo, the vessel joined an armada of ships to be held in Scotland and other safe locations in "incommunicado status. "There was no shore leave and no outgoing mail. And now, on the English Channel with the 82nd Airborne Division backup group aboard, this merchant mariner and his humble merchant ship were sailing into one of the largest military actions in history. The Benjamin Hawkins was one of hundreds of Liberty ships that made their way at the appointed hour, from ports all over Britain, in giant D-Day flotillas, to the beaches of Normandy. They served as troopships and they served as supply ships-transporting among other things tanks, trucks, food and ammunition. Not without hazard either. The night of 6 June found the Hawkins high and dry on the beach at Utah waiting for the tide and under fire from enemy shore batteries. The Libertys were the ships of the moment, a class of 2,751 built for the war effort beginning in 1942. What
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wagon trains were to the West, they were to the war effort. Navy Department photographs show the unmistakable outline ofLibertys dominating the scene off the Normandy beaches. To the several thousand merchant mariners who served on them, and to many of the tens of thousands of troops they transported, they still evoke powerful memories. This is why three WWII veteran merchant ships will make a passage to Normandy to take part in the D-Day commemorations. The LibertysJohn W. Brown and Jeremiah O'Brien and the later more advanced Victory ship Lane Victory are the last of their kind. The epic restoration of these ships over the last decade, an effort led by veterans, and their upcoming trans-Atlantic pilgrimage, wherein they will be sailed by veterans, will probably be remembered as the last great effort of an aging group to redress, relive and/or reconcile their war experience. More, perhaps, than any other emissary, they will represent all the Americans, from shipyard workers to assault troops, that helped the Allies breach Hitler's Atlantic Wall .
D-Day's Lone Returning Survivor, the Jeremiah 0' Brien Alone of the US vessels among the armada of 5,000 ships amassed for D-Day, the San Franci sco-based Jeremiah
O'Brien will be returning to the historic beaches she visited 50 years ago. She crossed the English Channel safely eleven times in support of the invasion. "She was bombed off Normandy, but the bombs never hit her," said retired Rear Admiral Thomas Patterson, the prime moverof the campaign that has brought her from the rust-bound scrap row of the reserve fleet to readiness for the 20,000 mile return trip to Normandy. The second life of the Jeremiah O'Brien began in 1962, with Admiral Patterson on assignment for the Maritime Administration surveying Liberty ships at the rate of fifteen a day to decide which would be fust to go to the scrappers. One day, Patterson recalls, his eye was caught by the 0 ' Brien: "She was completely unaltered . .. . All the charts were there, from Normandy to the Pacific. The glass was intact in the license frames on the bulkhead. The wartime instructions were posted alongside the mark XIV gyro. The station bill signed by the captain was in the right place. The captain's night order book at Normandy beach was in the desk drawer. The ship was a time capsule." So Admiral Patterson began "hiding" the ship. Her name was put on the bottom of the scrap list-the least desirable for sale. When the Navy came to the Reserve Fleet looking for spare parts for its operating Liberty ships, she was relocated. SEA HISTORY 69, SPRING 1994