An American Merchant Mariner’s Memories

Let's Finish the Job! US Merchant Marine recruitment poster, 1944.

by James Stevenson

During a visit to St. Petersburg, Florida, on a sunny day in June 1995, my wife Joanne and I strolled around the city. We came to Williams Park which was dedicated to the armed forces. Scattered throughout the park were various monuments to honor members of the Army, Navy, and Marines who were killed in battle in America’s wars. A stone monument, about four feet high, erected by the Propeller Club of the United States, Port of St. Petersburg read:

Dedicated to the memory of merchant seamen of this community who in World War II gave their lives in the service of their country.

Eleven names were inscribed on the monument. James Deidrick was at the top of the list. We had sailed on the S.S. Iberville signing on in Philadelphia, in June 1941, for a five months voyage that would take us around the world.

The S.S. Iberville was among more than fifty freighters sailing to Port Suez to deliver supplies to the British Eighth Army fighting the Germans in North Africa. On 11 August 1941 our ship was struck by a magnetic mine dropped by a German plane during an air raid at Suez. The Iberville became the third U.S. flag ship attacked by the Germans prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. She was repaired in Suez and we continued on our voyage to the ports of Bombay, Belawan Deli, Singapore, Penang, Cebu, and Honolulu.

Jim and I became good friends during the voyage. In Singapore we went ashore with Frank Medeiros, ordinary seaman and Frank Frye, able bodied seaman. We had our picture taken together by a sidewalk photographer on Beach Road near the famed Raffles Hotel as a remembrance of our visit to Singapore. I still have that picture. On 6 October 1941 we sailed from Cebu, Philippines, on a 4,800-mile voyage to Honolulu. The U.S. had not declared war against the Axis powers, but trouble was brewing, therefore as a precaution, we were ordered by the military authorities to sail blacked out at night until we reached the International Date Line. Japanese submarines were patrolling the Pacific Ocean.

The ship had several breakdowns due to boiler trouble. The water tubes in the boiler began to leak after the bombing at Suez. The boiler was repaired by the engineers and we continued on our voyage. After twenty-five days at sea, we arrived in Honolulu on 30 October. Happy to see land, Jim and I headed for Waikiki Beach. It was evening when we arrived there. We went to the Royal Hawaiian Hotel for a drink and watched the vacationers milling around. We saw the famed Diamond Head, an extinct volcano, jutting out into the sea as the evening shades were falling over the land. Too soon, it was time to go back to the ship for we were to sail early in the morning.

A newspaper reporter, Lee Van Atta, from the Honolulu Advertiser, interviewed the crew about the air attack in Suez. We made the headlines in the Honolulu Advertiser, “Freighter Here After Aerial Assault In Suez.” The following day we sailed to New York via the Panama Canal.

We arrived there on 3 December 1941, carrying the rubber, tin, chrome and manganese ore America would need to fight the coming, inevitable war with Japan and Germany.

Jim and I had been together for six months; our long voyage home was over; we had traveled around the world.

We paid off the Iberville, anxious to go home and see our families—Jim to St. Petersburg, Florida, me to Springfield, Ohio. I never saw him again but I’ll always remember him.

In 1942, at the age of twenty-three, he shipped as third assistant engineer aboard the S.S. West Chetac bound from Norfolk, Virginia, to Basra, Iraq, with a cargo of war supplies. His last voyage. On 24 September 1942, the West Chetac was torpedoed by a German U-boat about 100 miles north of Georgetown, British Guiana (Guyana). Of the eleven Naval Armed Guard, nine were lost, and of the thirty-nine merchant crew, twenty-two were lost. Among them was my friend Jim Deidrick.

He was killed during the period German U-boat commanders called the “Happy Time”—the great turkey shoot that left our coast from Canada to the Mississippi Delta, the Atlantic and Caribbean Sea a massive graveyard of defenseless freighters and tankers. Our shores were blackened with oil, bits and pieces of ships, and the remains of those who sailed them. Although this occurred a long time ago, I am glad others remembered Jim Deidrick and the merchant seamen who lost their lives in World War II. I remember him sitting on the hatch, happy playing “The Wabash Cannonball.”

American Merchant Marine

During World War II, nearly 250,000 civilian merchant mariners served as part of the U.S. military and delivered supplies and armed forces personnel by ship to foreign countries engulfed in the war. Between 1939 and 1945, 9,521 merchant mariners lost their lives — a higher proportion than those killed than in any military branch, according to the National World War II Museum. 

Americans might know little of the contributions of the U.S. Merchant Marine. They are civilian sailors who operate ships carrying commercial goods to worldwide ports. During wartime or a national emergency, the U.S. military can call the merchant mariners into service to transport personnel and supplies to wartime theaters. 

In 1988, the mariners became eligible for benefits through the Department of Veterans Affairs. 

The mariners have their own federal-service school — similar to those of the U.S. military branches — at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, New York. In his 2018 academy commencement speech, then-Defense Secretary James N. Mattis said the United States needs its merchant mariners for commerce and, when "storm clouds gather," to support the U.S. military in the fight.

In 2020, Congress passed the Merchant Mariners of World War II Congressional Gold Medal Act to recognize the merchant mariners for their courage and contributions during the war.

American Merchant Mariners' Memorial

Commissioned by the American Merchant Mariners’ Memorial, Inc., this memorial was conceived in 1976. In 1988, after an extensive competition, the artist Marisol Escobar (1930-2016), known as Marisol, was chosen to develop her design. Situated off-shore from the north end of Battery Park and just south of Pier A, the monument stands on a rebuilt stone breakwater in the harbor. The bronze figural group and boat are based on an actual historical event; during World War II, a Nazi U-boat attacked a merchant marine vessel, and while the mariners clung to their sinking vessel, the Germans photographed their victims. Marisol developed a series of studio sketches from this photograph, then fashioned a clay maquette as her winning design proposal for the monument. The work was dedicated on October 8, 1991.

Marisol was born in Paris, and spent most of her childhood in Venezuela. After studying art in Paris and Los Angeles she moved to Greenwich Village in the 1950s, where she was first influenced by abstract expressionism, and then developed a reputation for her highly stylized boxy sculptured figures. She was inspired by pre-Columbian and American folk art, as well as the growing pop-art movement, and by the 1960s, her style had evolved into satirical assemblages which commented on American society. Her diverse work defies simplistic classification, as she explored particular themes and aesthetic criteria as they related to specific commissions.

In 1967, Marisol exhibited a piece entitled Three Figures in the group outdoor exhibition in the city’s parks entitled Sculpture in Environment. That work was minimalist and geometric. Since then, Marisol exhibited in numerous public settings, often employing traditional figurative techniques, as in her designs for an unrealized monument to the Brooklyn Bridge’s engineers, the Roeblings, and in the American Merchant Mariners’ Memorial.

The American Merchant Mariners’ Memorial Inc., chaired by the president of the AFL-CIO, Lane Kirkland, sought to commemorate the thousands of merchant ships and crews pressed into military service since the Revolutionary War. In World War II alone it is estimated that 700 American merchant ships were lost, and 6,600 mariners gave their lives in this global conflict.

Marisol captured an unsettling realism, drawn from the faded photograph, but also dependent on the ebb and flow of the harbor’s tides. One figure, struggling beside the boat, is submerged each tidal cycle, a technical motif that compounds the work’s emotional dynamic. Though specific in its imagery, the monument honors the thousands of merchant mariners who have died at sea in the course of our nation’s history.

The routes of the Arctic Convoys: The Allies Link to Russia.

Shipments to U.S.S.R. Three primary routes used to send supplies from the US to Russia in World War II.

Poster for the United States Maritime Service offering training courses to members of the American Merchant Marine, 1939, by Leslie Bryan.

Merchant crew and Navy Armed Guard practice operating a 20mm gun onboard ship.

The first Liberty ship, the SS Patrick Henry launched from Baltimore on September 27, 1941.

Portrait of Captain Hugh Malzac from 1942. Malzac commanded SS Booker T. Washington and was the first Black Master Mariner.

Life-Line of Freedom – the Merchant Marine poster. Artist: Paul Sample.

Besides the dangers of Axis submarines, warships, and aircraft there were rough seas, frigid temperatures, icebergs, and ice sheets, and ice buildup on the ships. Ice buildup on ships could make the ships “top heavy” and prone to rolling over.

World War II Merchant Marine recruiting poster.

World War II Merchant Marine recruiting poster.

World War II Merchant Marine recruiting poster.

A poster created for National Maritime Day in 1944.

World War II Merchant Marine recruiting poster.

World War II Merchant Marine recruiting poster.

World War II Merchant Marine recruiting poster.

World War II Merchant Marine recruiting poster.

World War II Merchant Marine recruiting poster.

Teamwork Wins: You Build 'em - We'll sail 'em.

You deliver the ships - we'll deliver the goods.

Merchant Mariners aboard a training ship working in the boiler room.

Merchant mariners load war vehicles into the hold of a cargo ship in New York Harbor, September 1944.

Like other sailors in downtime at sea, Liberty ship crews played cards, read, and tried to distract themselves from the intensity of wartime service. The crews included members of the Armed Guard of the U.S. Navy, shown here in navy uniforms, who manned the guns aboard ship.

Model of Liberty cargo vessel (Type EC2-S-C1).

Model of Victory cargo vessel (Type VC2-S-AP).

Merchant Marine vessels with mixed-race crews were known as “checkerboards.” Here, mariners from the Liberty ship SS Booker T. Washington play with their mascot, Booker.

Merchant seaman and artist George Wright presents a painting depicting cooperation between merchant mariners and Soviet dockworkers to a Soviet officer in August 1944.

America’s Statue of Liberty (left) in New York Harbor seems to salute this new U.S. “Liberty” ship manned with young Americans, who have just completed their merchant marine training under the U.S. Maritime Service program. With full hatches and a capacity deck load of supplies and munitions, the vessel heads for the open sea to join the endless bridge of merchant ships carrying victory cargoes to United Nations war fronts throughout the world. U.S. Maritime Service training centers turned out thousands of skilled sailors in 1942 and 1943 and in the latter year produced an average of five crews of trained seaman every day to man America’s vast 24,000,000, ton Merchant Marine fleet.