Portal:United States Merchant Marine/Selected article/6

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The SS Ohio was an oil tanker built for the Texas Oil Company (now Texaco); she was the largest oil tanker in the world at the time of construction. Launched on April 20, 1940 at the Sun Shipbuilding Yard in Chester, Pennsylvania, USA, the Ohio was capable of doing over 16 knots (30 km/h) at sea. The tanker would end up bound in the struggle for the re-supply of the island fortress of Malta, during the Second World War.

Its initial years were uneventful, plying between Port Arthur and various American ports; she did, however, set a speed record from Bayonne to Port Arthur covering 1,882 miles (3,029 km) in four days, twelve hours, an average of more than seventeen knots. In early May 1942, a radio message reached Captain Petersen, diverting the ship to Galveston, Texas, and then ordered the tanker to proceed to Britain. Before leaving, the Ohio was fitted with one 5-inch (130 mm) AA-gun in its aft, and a 3-inch (76 mm) AA-gun in the bows. Then she moved to Sinclair Terminal, Houston, Texas, where the ship loaded a full cargo of 103,576 barrels of petrol, finally sailing on May 25. Ohio discharged her cargo at Bowling-on-the-Clyde, and then steamed out into the tideway and anchored, awaiting orders.

After a period of discussion between the War Shipping Administration and their British counterparts, the ship's master was told that further orders would arrive soon afterwards. Two weeks later, a launch carrying Texaco's London agent and an official of the British Ministry of War Shipping came aboard. They informed the Captain that the ship was to be confiscated and handed over to a British crew. Shocked, the American crew had no choice but to pack up and leave as English seamen started to take over the ship.

Later, the tanker played a fundamental role in Operation Pedestal, which is considered to be one of the fiercest^[1] and most heavily contested convoys in August 1942. Although Ohio reached Malta successfully, she was so badly damaged that she had to be effectively scuttled in order to offload her cargo, and she never sailed again.