July 31, 2009

Post date: Oct 27, 2009 6:00:26 PM

Hyde Street Pier at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco has five historic ships on display by the National Park Service. The ships include a ferry boat, sailing ship, tug boat, submarine, and a Navy ship. The Navy ship is particularly interesting. Its name is the SS Jeremiah O'Brien, and it is one of two surviving "Liberty" ships that ferried cargo to the Allies in World War II. This huge ship was built in 56 days in Portland, Maine, in 1943. It survived German U-boat attacks. In 1994 the volunteer crew sailed her to Normandy for the 50th anniversary of D-Day.

It was really amazing to tour the ship and to see how the men lived. The stories were incredible. Most memorable was the engine room below deck. The stairs were VERY steep, and it was hotter the further down I went. Most striking was the throbbing sound. Since the ship was going on a sail the next day, the engines were running. What really surprised me, and made perfect sense because it looked "familiar", was that the engine room was used by Hollywood to film scenes for the movie Titanic. To make the engines look bigger,midgets were used for the engine room scenes in the movie! If you view Titanic and hear the engines throbbing before the ship hits the iceburg, that sound is REAL.

The men spent extended periods of time at sea, so they needed inspiration. Below are the two mascots on either side of the top bow of the ship.

One Navy man got particularly decorative letters from his girl back home. All the men enjoyed her drawings!