SS JEREMIAH O’BRIEN
SS Jeremiah O’Brien is a class EC2-SCI ship that was completed in just 56 days by the New England Shipbuilding Corporation in South Portland, Maine and was launched on 19 June 1943.
At the end of the war and with such a vast fleet of Liberty and Victory ships available most were removed from service by 1946 and sold for commercial use or for scrapping. Several were retained as a ready reserve by the US Maritime Commission for potential reuse should another war or crisis require their reactivation. Jeremiah O’Brien was one of these vessels and would spend the next 33 years laid up in mothballs at the National Defense Reserve Fleet in Suisan Bay.
Following many thousands of hours of restoration work by the dedicated group of volunteers Jeremiah O’Brien went on public display at Fort Mason close to Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco.
There is one other Liberty ship from the wartime that are also in operational condition in the United States:
Jeremiah O’Brien
Pier 45, San Francisco, CA 94133, United States
https://www.ssjeremiahobrien.org/
email liberty@ssjeremiahobrien.org
SS John W. Brown
Pier 13, 4601 Newgate Avenue, Baltimore, Maryland 21224
Email: john.w.brown@usa.net
SS American Victory
https://www.americanvictory.org/
705 Channelside Drive, Tampa, FL 33602, United States
SS RED OAK VICTORY
Built as an ammunition cargo ship by the Kaiser Permanente shipyard, SS Red Oak Victory was launched on 9 November 1944. She'd serve in the Pacific during 1945. At war’s end she decommissioned and apart from a few short term commercial leases remained mostly inactive until recalled to military service between 1950-52 for the Korean War. Her last military service was carrying supplies to US forces in Vietnam between 1966-68. The following year she was deactivated for the last time and stored in the Suisun Bay Ready Reserve.
Red Oak Victory was kept in good condition and when it came to identifying suitable Victory ships for preservation she was one of the best candidates. She passed into the ownership of the Richmond Museum Association who fully restored the ship to fully operational status.
Address: 1337 Canal Blvd., Berth 5 Richmond, CA 94804
Other craft
USS ARIES
The hydrofoil USS was the fifth member of the Pegasus-class designed to was built by Boeing Integrated Defense Systems at its Renton, Seattle shipyard and was commissioned on 18 September 1982. After initial sea trials the hydrofoil transited through the Panama Canal to arrive at her homeport of Key West in Florida. Throughout her career, she was mostly assigned the role of trying to stem the flow of illegal drugs into the United States. She decommissioned in July 1993. Her sisters were all scrapped but was saved by a hydrofoil enthusiast Eliot James who established the USS PHM-5 Hydrofoil Memorial.
