SS Alexander Macomb

Construction started on SS Alexander Macomb on 18 February 1942, with hull 0036 at the Bethlehem-Fairfield Shipyard in Baltimore, Maryland and six weeks later she put to sea. Her sea trials were completed on 2 June and she was named for an American General of the War of 1812. Her first Captain was Carl Froisland, a sailor with long experience of the Atlantic. She was steamed to New York and there loaded her cargo of Sherman Tanks, P-38 aircraft and supplies for the Allied troops and then sent to Boston to join a convoy to Halifax and Murmansk. On this maiden voyage across the Atlantic she had 41 crew and 25 U.S. Navy gunners on board. 200 miles East of Boston she was torpedoed and sunk by the German U-Boat U-215, and 10 of the crew were lost. The U-215 was heading into Boston Harbor to lay mines. HMS Le Tigre and HMS Veteran went after the U-215 and succeeded in sinking it with depth charges. The HMCS Regina a Canadian ship that was not part of the Convoy assisted in the rescue effort of the crew of the Alexander Macomb and rescued twenty five survivors while others in the convoy rescued the remainder. Both Alexander Macomb and U-215 disappeared and were not found until July 2004

When the Liberty ships were first produced, they were regarded as one-way vessels - surviving and making the return trip would be a bonus. In fact they became the workhorses of the American Merchant Marine. At one stage they could be found on all the oceans of the world. Their cargo made the allied soldiers the best equipped in the history of warfare. Sailing in enormous convoys they made their way to England, Russia, Africa, and the islands of the Pacific.

The first Liberty ship built took 244 days to completion. The Henry J. Kaiser shipyards built a third of all America's vessels used in World War II, and the time from start to finish had been reduced to 72 days by May 1942 - by August of the same year, time was down to 46 days. The Liberty ship had a length of 442 feet, had a beam of 56 feet and could carry 10,000 tons of cargo at eleven knots. Almost 3 000 of these ships were built during the war years. As they were the prime cargo carriers, they were also the ships that most of the wartime merchant seamen served on.

Losses through sinking were high in the initial phase of the war. In 1942 the rate of losses were 39% of new ship construction - by 1945 this rate had dropped to 4%, still an unacceptably high figure. About 600 ships of the American Merchant Marine were sunk during the war years, and nearly 6 000 men died while serving aboard them.

Alexander Macomb was first found in October 1964 by the salvage ship Droxford (Risdon Beazley). The position is 41 37.2N 66 36.1W, another wreck is in 41 10.3N 67 22.7, this maybe the U-215. The bulk of the metal cargo was removed in 1965 by the same ship.

References

External links

* Victories take time to achieve [http://www.theinterim.com/2004/aug/hamel.html]
* CBC News - First-ever U-boat found off Canadian coast [http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2004/07/13/Uboat_040713.html]
* Battle of the Atlantic [http://www.armed-guard.com/ag77.html]