Liberty Ships

and my grandmother

Oct 19, 1944 is a REALLY big day in my family’s history. My mother’s mother…my grandmother Elsie who for the most part did not travel far from her neighborhood in Baltimore

was given the honor of christening the last Liberty Ship built in the Bethlehem Fairfield Shipyard in Baltimore. The SS Samar.

There were movie stars, Miss America and the entire crew at the shipyard.

My mother, aunts and one uncle were there…he was too young to serve in the military…yet. Uncle George is in the upper left corner. He enlisted in ‘45.

But my father and other uncles were not present. They were all serving in the military…in all 3 branches…in all areas of conflict. How was that possible ? My mother had 6 brothers, a step brother and a couple of brothers in law. The Baltimore Sun called Elsie, “Baltimore’s War Mother”….

and that’s how she joined the long line of over 300 women who christened Fairfields other Liberty Ships. Most of the other women were married to men of means…important people or celebrities who had crashed champagne bottles into the hulls of grey ships every few days for almost 3 years. My grandmother was famous for birthing sons who went to war.

The first Liberty Ship was the Patrick Henry launched to much fanfare in 1941. It took over 200 days to build that one…as the shipyard was being built around them and staffed with thousands of new people. Many of them women who had never worked outside the home before and men of color…not used to working directly with white folks. There were no color or gender lines in the shipyards…

The only thing that mattered was building these cargo ships as quickly as possible and replacing the ones being sunk by the Nazi U-Boats.

The shipyard worked 24-7…3 shifts a day and employed more people than any other Maryland employer…ever…to this day. They ramped up their production speed from keel laying to ship in the water to about 14 days on average. All Union labor.

Fairfield set a record of 384 of these ships built that stands to this day. They built more ships of one hull design in one shipyard than any other.

These ships were involved in D-Day, the Battle of the Atlantic, the Battle for Africa and Italy…all over the Pacific. The Merchant Mariners who served on these ships had the 2nd highest casualty rate in WWII.

The 82nd Airborne, the B-17 bombers that attacked Germany had the highest.

Today the SS John W Brown is the lone surviving Liberty Ship built at Fairfield. She is docked at Pier 13 in Canton and is currently open on weekends as “Baltimore’s Ghost Ship” for Halloween.

Next spring they will do a Living History Cruise on the Chesapeake Bay. It’s one of the few ways you can get to do a WWII go to sea experience…and you can see the christening bottle Elsie used to send the Samar off to war that our family donated to the Brown’s museum. That’s my sister & 3 of my cousins.

Peace