Jeremiah O'Brien (ship)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jeremiah O'Brien
The Jeremiah O'Brien in the Port of San Francisco
The Jeremiah O'Brien in the Port of San Francisco
Ship data
flag United StatesUnited States United States
Ship type Cargo ship
class Liberty freighter EC2-S-C1
Callsign KXCH
home port San Francisco
Owner Was Shipping Administration
Shipyard New England Shipbuilding Corporation
Build number 230
Keel laying May 6, 1943
Launch June 19, 1943
Commissioning July 3, 1943
Decommissioning February 7, 1946
Whereabouts Seaworthy museum ship
Ship dimensions and crew
length
134.57 m ( Lüa )
width 17 m
Draft Max. 8.46 m
displacement 12,923 t
Machine system
machine 3-cylinder compound machine
Top
speed
11.0 kn (20 km / h)
propeller 1
Armament
  • 8 × 20-millimeter (0.79 in) flak
  • 1 × 3-inch (76.2 mm) cannon
  • 1 × 5-inch (127 mm) cannon
Others
Classifications American Bureau of Shipping
Registration
numbers
IMO no. 5171749
Jeremiah O'Brien
National Register of Historic Places
National Historic Landmark


Jeremiah O'Brien (ship) (California)
Paris plan pointer b jms.svg
location San Francisco , California
Coordinates 37 ° 48 '40 "  N , 122 ° 25' 5"  W Coordinates: 37 ° 48 '40 "  N , 122 ° 25' 5"  W.
Built 1943
NRHP number 78003405
Data
The NRHP added June 7, 1978
Declared as an  NHL January 14, 1986

The Jeremiah O'Brien is a Liberty freighter that was built in the United States during World War II . The ship is named after Captain Jeremiah O'Brien (1744-1818), a captain in the American Revolutionary War . The ready-to-sail ship is usually docked at Pier 45 in the port of San Francisco (California) and can be viewed there. It is one of the few surviving ships that on D-Day on the Operation Overlord took part.

history

The SS Jeremiah O'Brien was organized by the New England Shipbuilding Corporation in South Portland ( Maine built) in just 56 days. It was completed on June 19, 1943 and took part in convoy BX 64 from Boston to Halifax on July 21 . Then she drove in the convoy HX 249 from New York across the North Atlantic to Liverpool . During the war, she crossed the Atlantic several times in convoys, but also took part in small coastal convoys such as the EN convoys . She was part of the 6,939 armada, which landed in Normandy on June 6, 1944. In her further trips in active service, she drove to various ports around the world, including Chile , Peru , New Guinea , the Philippines , India , China and Australia .

In 1946, after the end of the war, many of the Liberty freighters were decommissioned and sold to domestic and foreign companies. Some, including the Jeremiah O'Brien , were launched for possible future use. The O'Brien was in the reserve fleet in Suisun Bay for 33 years . In the 1970s, when the sale was again up for discussion, the idea arose of preserving one of the Liberty ships that had remained in their original condition. A group of volunteers worked to preserve the best preserved ship for posterity. The O'Brien could be pushed back on the sales and scrapping list again and again by skillful maneuvers of an employee of the USMS . In 1979, after hundreds of hours of volunteer work, during which the ship was “demottled” and cleaned, it drove to the shipyard in San Francisco under its own power , where it was completely overhauled. No other ship has ever left the reserve fleet under its own engine.

After a stay in dry dock and many thousands of hours of volunteer work, the Jeremiah O'Brien was able to start operating as a "living" museum. It is a memorial to the US merchant navy seamen who served on Liberty freighters in World War II, their naval gun crews, and the civilians who built this largest class of ships by number of all times. In January 1986, the Jeremiah O'Brien was classified as a National Historic Landmark .

The engine room of the Jeremiah O'Brien served as the backdrop for the engine room of the luxury liner in the film Titanic and the sound engineers visited the ship four times to record suitable background noises for the film.

It can also be seen in the film Birth of the Dragon when Wong Jack Man (played by Xia Yu ) travels on this ship.

50th anniversary of D-Day

In 1994 the Jeremiah O'Brien was scheduled to return to the Normandy coast for the 50th anniversary of D-Day . To do this, she first had to be put back into a seaworthy condition before she could sail east through the Panama Canal . She drove across the Atlantic to Great Britain, was greeted by the Queen and also visited by the US President. She was driven, along with a few cadets from the California Naval Academy, by veterans who had been on Liberty freighters during the war and some of them were now over 70 years old.

On the 50th anniversary of the largest landing operation in history, the Jeremiah O'Brien off the coast of northern France was a special attraction because, apart from a few small boats, she was the only ship that was involved in the operation itself. In total, her 8th trip (the first 7 were active time) was 6 months, during which she covered 18,000 miles.

Today the O'Brien is usually moored at Pier 45 in Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco and can be viewed there. The machine is regularly heated up for demonstration purposes and tours are carried out several times a year.

In addition to the Jeremiah O'Brien, there is a second Liberty freighter that is roadworthy, the John W. Brown in Baltimore . In contrast to the O'Brien , this one has been rebuilt several times since its original commissioning.

photos

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Jeremiah O'Brien  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b American Merchant Marine Ships at Normandy in June 1944 . US Maritime Service Veterans. Retrieved October 4, 2013.
  2. ^ A b SS Jeremiah O'Brien . In: World War II in the San Francisco Bay Area . National Park Service . Retrieved March 22, 2007. (Note: The source claims it was the only remaining D-Day ship, but at least one more exists with the tug Nash ; and there are around a dozen ships still in existence on this website who participated in Operation Overlord on D-Day.)
  3. ^ Arnold Hague: Arnold Hague Convoy Database, JEREMIAH O'BRIEN. Retrieved May 27, 2017 (English).
  4. ^ History of the O'Brien . Archived from the original on October 4, 2013. Retrieved October 4, 2013.
  5. Listing of National Historic Landmarks by State: California. National Park Service , accessed August 1, 2019.
  6. Tom Kenny: Sound for Picture: Film Sound Through the 1990s , Hal Leonard Corporation, 2000, pp. 141-142
  7. ^ LA Sawyer, WH Mitchell: The Liberty Ships , second. Edition, Lloyd's of London Press Ltd., London 1985, pp. 229-237.