SS Jeremiah O'Brien: The History of a Liberty Ship from the Battle of the Atlantic to the 21... Book

This is the history of a ship, one of 2,710 built in haste during a great war, and sent forth with the belief that if she completed even one voyage or delivered one cargo, she would already have fulfilled her mission. But fate — and history — had a different plan for the Jeremiah O'Brien.

Named for the hero who won the first naval battle of the Revolutionary War, and manned by steadfast merchant marine and Armed Guard crews, she would be part of the greatest armada ever assembled, in the greatest invasion that ever was, and do her part to bring victory to the Allies.

Then, relegated to the "dead fleet" heavy with bird droppings and streaked with rust, she would sail out of the back-waters of Suisun Bay and into history as the only ship from the D-Day armada to return for the 50th Anniversary of the invasion as the "guest of honor" in England and the "centerpiece" in France in ceremonies televised around the world.

Through personal interviews and the diaries of the World War II crew, and personal accounts of the Return to Normandy voyage crew, the reader is "abroad" to share it all: sailing in convoy through ice storms, hurricanes and giant seas; dodging enemy wolf packs and torpedoes in the Battle of the Atlantic to deliver her cargoes of food, tanks, trucks, ammunition, oil and other supplies vitally needed on the war front; the awesome preparations for the great invasion; D-Day; the troop landings on the beaches of Normandy; an "ammo ship" in the Pacific; a thirty-year lay-up. Then come back aboard to share her second life as a national landmark, a time capsule and living history museum, and join her crew on "the trip of a lifetime," her celebrated voyage back to Normandy fifty years after D-Day, the last survivor of the great armada.