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The U.S. Maritime Commission constructed the first LIBERTY ships for the British merchant fleet during World War II. Since LIBERTY ships needed to be built quickly, they were designed so that they could be mass-produced. Shortly after the United States assumed responsibility for providing merchant ships during the war, it quickly became the major supplier-producing 85% of all Allied merchant shipping by 1943.
U.S. shipyards were turning out LIBERTY ships at an amazing rate. While the Maritime Commission produced 1 ship every 13 days in 1939, it was producing 1 ship every 3 days in 1941, and 5 ships every day in 1943. Production of LIBERTY ships occurred mainly on the West Coast, but also took place in shipyards of the Chesapeake Bay and the Gulf Coast.



Today, the John W. Brown is in very good condition, but the 14,000 rivets in her hull need to be replaced and the ship needs a new berth in Baltimore Harbor.
Visit www.liberty-ship.com to learn more.


Click here for a Glossary of termsClick Here for links to other resourcesClick Here to Purchase the VideoClick here for Teaching Materials and other Resources USS Olympia, the nation's oldest surviving steel-hulled warshipThe skipjacks that once harvested one of the world's richest fisheries a century agoLiberty Ship John W. Brown, one of only two operational Liberty vessels remaining from World War IIC.A. Thayer, a three-masted sailing schooner built in the 1890s that hauled lumber from Washington to CaliforniaCoronet, the last of the great Victorian schooner yachts, built in 1885