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Tuesday, June 21, 2011

NAMING THE LIBERTY SHIPS

THE 'NAME GAME'

Every launching required a woman sponsor who christened the ship, champagne for the ship, and flowers for the sponsor.  The "Louisa M. Alcott," launched by the Bethlehem Fairfield Shipyard at Baltimore on 28 May 1943, was christened by WAVE Ensign Regina Flanigan.  The attendants included WAVES, Marines and SPARS.


In all history there could never have been a more unlikely group of people than Big Foot Wallace, Button Gwinnett, Betsy Ross, Abner Doubleday, Pocahontas, Sun Yat-Sen, Mosses Brown, Billy Sunday, Bernardo O’Higgins, Johnny Appleseed, and Hawkins Fudske. The mind boggles at the thought of them all seated at dinner together. Neither Sherlock Holmes nor Nero Wolfe at their finest could ever have deduced a logical connection between 13 such characters. Yet in World War II it should have been elementary enough for even Dr. Watson - they were all Liberty Ships. 

When the Liberty ship program began, the job of naming 300 ships seemed simple enough. The ships were to be named for outstanding Americans, heroes and leaders in American history. There were certainly enough of these, even without counting and founding fathers and revolutionary patriots, to make up a list of 300. But when the Liberty fleet continued to grow to 500, to 1,000 - and even twice that - the naming process became much more than a matter of skimming through a grade school history book.

So....if you'd like a tad of insight into how this "Name Game" actually got underway....and what a really big deal it was....you be enlighten in just how this all took place.

Here's the link....and it is pretty darn interesting....

THE 'NAME GAME'

Hope you enjoy!!

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