SS Jeremiah O'Brien

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Career

Launched:	19 June 1943
Built By:	New England Shipbuilding Corp
Class/Type:	EC2-S-C1 / Liberty Ship
Fate:	museum
General Characteristics
Displacement:	14,245 tons
Length:	441 ft 6 in (135 m)
Beam:	57 ft (17.4 m)
Draft:	27 ft 9 in (8.5 m)
Speed:	11 knots (20 km/h)
Engine:	3-cylinder, reciprocating triple expansion steam
Armament:	8 x 20mm anti-aircraft gun, 1 x 3in (76mm) gun, 1 x 5in (127mm) gun

SS Jeremiah O'Brien is a Liberty ship built during World War II and named for American Revolutionary War ship captain Jeremiah O'Brien (1744–1818). Now based in San Francisco, the O'Brien is the sole survivor of the 6,939-ship armada^[1] that stormed Normandy on D-Day, 1944,^[2] and one of only two currently operational WWII Liberty ships afloat of the 2,751 built during the war (the other being the SS John W. Brown based in Baltimore).

1 History
2 Trivia
3 References
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] History

Built in just 40 days at the New England Shipbuilding Co. in South Portland, Maine, and launched on June 19, 1943, this class EC2-S-CI ship not only made four perilous roundtrip wartime crossings of the Atlantic and served on D-Day, the vessel later saw sixteen months of service in both the South Pacific and the Indian Ocean calling at ports in Chile, Peru, New Guinea, the Philippines, India, China, and Australia.

SS Jeremiah O'Brien underway as seen from the aft steering station.

After being decomissioned in 1946, the O'Brien spent 33 years in the Reserve Fleet in Suisun Bay before being broken out in 1979 to be restored by the National Liberty Ship Memorial. In addition to serving as a floating museum, the ship also makes three or four daylight cruises each year in the San Francisco Bay Area.

In 1994 the O'Brien, in its eighth voyage, steamed through the Golden Gate, down the west coast, through the Panama Canal, and across the Atlantic to England and France, where the O'Brien and its crew (a volunteer crew of veteran WWII-era sailors and a few cadets from the California Maritime Academy), participated in the 50th Anniversary of Operation Overlord.

The SS Jeremiah O'Brien was designated a National Historic Landmark, and is docked at Pier 45 at Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco, California.