HISTORY
The Ships
Liberty ships played a crucial role in the Allied victory in World War II. America’s armies overseas, as well as her allies, were reliant on a steady stream of supplies, and a large number of ships were required to deliver them.
Allied shipping suffered dramatic losses at the hands of German U-boats, so to keep the supplies flowing, there was a need to build new ships faster than the enemy could sink them. This need was answered with the 2,710 Liberty ships mass-produced between 1941 and 1945. These old-fashioned, slow "ugly duckling' cargo vessels played a vital yet unglamorous role in winning World War II.
The Men
The bulk of Liberty Ships were operated by the volunteer, civilian seamen of the United States Merchant Marine and were protected by separate US Naval Armed Guard gun crews. The men of the Merchant Marine sailed their ships into all theaters of the war and suffered tremendous losses. Approximately 8,300 merchant mariners and 1,800 Armed Guard sailors lost their lives during World War II. Ultimately, one in 26 merchant seamen lost their lives, a fatality rate higher than the armed services.
The O'Brien
The S.S. Jeremiah O’Brien is a fully operational, historically accurate WWII Liberty Ship — a living link to the past. A veteran of D-Day’s Operation Overlord at Normandy, she stands as a memorial to the civilian volunteers of the U.S. Merchant Marine and Naval Armed Guard who sailed into every theater of war to supply Allied forces across the globe.
She also honors the men and women who built the largest single class of ships in history, and she is proudly recognized by both the National Trust and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers as a National Historic Monument.
THE 1940s
WWII Service
Named after the first American to capture a British naval vessel during the Revolutionary War, in June 1943 the Liberty Ship S.S. Jeremiah O'Brien slid down the ways at the New England Shipbuilding Corporation in South Portland, Maine. She entered WWII service operated by Grace Line for the War Shipping Administration.
The O'Brien made seven voyages in service ranging from England and Northern Ireland to South America, India, Australia, China, and the Philippines. In support of Operation Overlord's D-Day invasion of Northern France, she made eleven crossings of the English Channel carrying troops and supplies from Southampton to Utah and Omaha Beaches at Normandy.
After the war, she was "mothballed" and laid up for three decades in the Reserve Fleet at Suisun Bay, north of San Francisco.
THE 1970s
Out of the Mothball Fleet
Three decades after the war, the S.S. Jeremiah O’Brien faced the scrapyard. But through the vision and determination of Rear Admiral Thomas J. Patterson, himself a Liberty Ship sailor, she was given a second chance.
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In 1979, the O'Brien did what no ship had ever done before: she steamed out of the mothball fleet under her own power. With thousands of hours of volunteer labor and countless donations, she was restored at San Francisco’s Pier 70 to her wartime glory.
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The O’Brien was restored to serve as a living memorial — honoring Merchant Mariners, the US Naval Armed Guards, and civilian workers who helped build and sustain the Liberty fleet that carried freedom across the seas.
Image credit: Jennifer Capra
THE 1990s
Return to Europe
In 1994, half a century after D-Day, the S.S. Jeremiah O’Brien set out once more, steaming through the Golden Gate on a voyage that would carry her down the West Coast, through the Panama Canal, and across the Atlantic to England and France.
Her crew, a group of "old salts" with an average age of seventy, joined by cadets from the California Maritime Academy, brought her back to Normandy for the 50th anniversary of D-Day, Operation Overlord.
Of more than 5,000 ships in the D-Day armada, the O’Brien was the only one to return. She was reviewed by the Queen of England from the royal yacht Britannia, greeted by the President of the United States, and celebrated on both sides of the English Channel.
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Afterward, she crossed the Atlantic again, visiting her birthplace in South Portland, Maine, and ports across America before returning triumphantly through the Golden Gate — 18,000 miles later, still seaworthy, still strong, and still ahead of schedule.
PRESENT DAY
Operational Museum Ship