Politics & Government

'An Overdue Honor': Stamps Commemorate Misunderstood Merchant Marine

All-volunteer maritime industry is recognized as the backbone of America's growth and strength, and unsung heroes of World War II.

Aboard the John W. Brown docked at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor—one of only two Liberty ships remaining out of a fleet of more than 2,700 built during World War II—people line up to buy an everyday household item, but one that holds special symbolism.

For Friday and Saturday, the venerable ship has been designated a special post office by the U.S. Postal Service. On Thursday, USPS issued a set of “forever” first-class stamps to commemorate the U.S. Merchant Marine, and they were going fast.

Since America’s founding, the maritime industry was integral to the nation’s growth and security, said Postal Service Vice President Jim Cochrane at a July 28 ceremony at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, NY.

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The stamps “pay homage not only to the ships, but to also to the valor of the thousands of dedicated members of the U.S. Merchant Marine who served their country and served it honorably,” Cochrane said in a USPS statement.

The stamps depict four iconic cargo vessels: the Clipper ship, the auxiliary steamship, the Liberty ship and the modern cargo vessel.

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Seven decades ago, when Europe descended into war, vast convoys of Liberty ships carried troops and millions of pounds of cargo to support the United States and its allies. The Liberty ship also represents the manufacturing stimulus that lifted the country out of the Great Depression.

The Liberty ship was the peak of American industrial ability, said Joseph T. Colgan, of Ocean City, MD, vice chairman of Project Liberty Ship.

“It’s a history lesson,” Colgan said of the John W. Brown. “It shows what we could do, when we had to do it. This ship was built in 43 days. That’s unheard of. You can’t get a canoe built in 43 days anymore.”

In about three years, 2,710 Liberty ships were constructed at 18 shipyards around the United States. Baltimore’s shipyard built more than any other, including the John W. Brown, which launched across the harbor at the Fairfield shipyard on Sept. 7, 1942.

The Liberty ship was designed in prefabricated components that could be rapidly assembled. At the peak of production, the average time to build a Liberty ship was 30 days. The fastest, from keel laying to launch, was a little more than four days, according to Coleman.

“Our ability to build these ships is something that had never been accomplished before, or after,” says Carlos Ralon of Lusby, MD, who quit high school at 17 to join the Merchant Marine in 1944. “They did a real job at shipyards like this in Baltimore.”

Merchant marine shipping had come under attack long before the United States was formally drawn into World War II by the bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

“We were particularly vulnerable,” said Charles “Blackie” Blocksey, of Catonsville, who joined the Merchant Marine in 1934.  “Submarines were rampant along the East Coast.”

During World War II, Blocksey's ship was sunk twice and he was held in Germany as a prisoner of war for three years.

In all, about 200 Liberty ships were lost to enemy action during the war, according to Project Liberty Ship.

Almost 7,000 Merchant seamen and 1,810 Naval gunners assigned to cargo vessels died in the line of duty–a higher proportion than any branch of the armed services.

“The Merchant Marine was 100 percent volunteer, and they had the highest casualty rate of anybody,” Blocksey said. “That was the Merchant Marine. We were civilian employees operating ships in all the theaters of war.”

The chair of Project Liberty Ship, Michael Schneider, said the USPS commemorative stamp is an overdue honor to recognize the service of the Merchant Marine, and the line of stamp collectors that formed outside would likely agree.

The Merchant Marine “isn’t appreciated by the American public at all,” Schneider said. “If you asked the man on the street for his understanding of what the Merchant Marine is, you’d get a lot of answers and they’d be mostly wrong.”


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