San Francisco's famed Liberty ship honored in History Channel documentary
By Bruce Bellingham

It’s been 65 years since the Jeremiah O’Brien, the last surviving fully operative Liberty ship of World War II, took part in the invasion of Normandy. The milestone was marked last month with an advanced screening of a portion of the new History International Channel’s 13-part series, called Hero Ships. On June 17, a party to celebrate the documentary was held aboard the ship, which is permanently berthed at Pier 45 near San Francisco’s other World War II nautical treasure, the submarine USS Pampanito.

The film includes some hair-raising and heroic stories from the lips of the Jeremiah’s crew.

Like all other Liberty ships after the war, the Jeremiah was destined for the scrap heap. But she was saved and restored by an all-volunteer crew, many former crewmembers who served on the Jeremiah during its perilous wartime assignment. The vessel was shipshape enough to make the trip to Normandy in 1994, the 50th anniversary of the D-Day invasion. The Jeremiah returned to a hero’s welcome later that year as hundreds of people lined the Golden Gate Bridge, cheering, tossing carnations and roses onto the deck below.

During World War II, 2,751 Liberty ships, constructed at 18 U.S. shipyards, were meant to be built quicker than German U-boats could sink them. They were to form a bridge of ships across the Atlantic. Winston Churchill wrote, “Without the supply column of Liberty Ships that endlessly plowed the seas between America and England, the war would have been lost.”

Of the 13 naval vessels featured in the Hero Ships series, the Jeremiah is the world’s oldest, and most historically accurate, World War II vessel still in Coast Guard-approved operation.