On Mon, 9 Jun 2014 20:38:59 +0100, Jabba wrote:

Adrian scribbled...


On Mon, 09 Jun 2014 18:05:04 +0100, Jabba wrote:

Navy ships take quite a while to build, although the Yanks got the
business of building merchant ships during WW2 down to production
line rates

By all accounts they weren't very good though ....

Tell that to -

"...John Fredriksen, John Theodoracopoulos, Aristotle Onassis, Stavros
Niarchos, Stavros George Livanos, the Goulandris brothers, and the
Andreadis, Tsavliris, Achille Lauro, Grimaldi and Bottiglieri families
were known to have started their fleets by buying Liberty ships..."

I'm not sure how much that says about the quality of the ships, tbh. Just
that they still _existed_ at the end of the war, when there was one hell
of a need for ships.


And 2 of them still exist.

Was thinking about one of them this past weekend with the D day 70
commemorations taking place. For the 50th anniversary event the SS
Jeramiah O'Brien made the Atlantic crossing and visited a couple of UK
Ports before going across to Normandy. It was the only large ship of
the original D Day invasion fleet to return . I had a good look around
it in Southampton. The average age of the crew was about 70 comprised
of veterans who had served on similar ships at the time with a few
younger personnel helping in the background.
Most will no longer be around now.
Another ship was supposed to come across but I cannot recall if it was
the other working Liberty ship John W Brown or the Victory ship which
was a later design which following the weaknesses discoverd by
adapting a British design for mass production which was the Liberty
modified it further to give a stronger and faster ship.
In the end neither made the journey across.

Other bits of Liberty are about ,Greece got the last one available
from the US reserve a few years back to act as a non working museum in
honour of how their merchant fleet expanded using them.
And of course there is still the Richard Montgomery lying in the
Thames Estuary full of corroding munitions to which the authorities
have applied the asbestos solution, if we don't disturb it, it will
probably be ok.

G.Harman