This post summarizes the information I have been able to find on the Internet about the Chapel Hill Victory.
The ship was known as a "victory ship", which were manufactured in large quantities during the second world war to replace cargo ships destroyed by German U-boats during the Battle of the Atlantic. Here is a picture taken at the time of launch of the ship, 4 December 1944, published in the 1996 book Images of America: Chapel Hill by James Vickers.
An excerpt of the book, including the page from which this picture was found, can be seen by anyone on Google books.
According to a web site (viewed 24 September 2011) called "American Merchant Marine at War", in a list of Victory Ships built by the U.S. Maritime Commission during World War II, the "victory ship (officially VC2) was 455 feet long and 62 feet wide." The second web link indicates that the Victory Chapel Hill was built by Bethlehem Steel in Baltimore, Maryland. It was hull number 2429, yard 615. [What does the "yard" number mean?]
Another web site, Victory Ships - C, The Web Site of the Mariners Mailing List, indicates that the Victory Chapel Hill was sold to N.V.Van Nievelt, Goudriaan & Co, Rotterdam in 1947 and rechristened as the Alwaki. It was sold in 1964 to China Union Lines, Kaohsiung [Taiwan] and rechristened Kaohsiung Victory. It was subsequently scrapped in 1974 in Kaohsiung.
The following is a picture of the S.S. Alwaki found on Flickr.
The following two pictures were taken by my grandfather aboard the SS Chapel Hill Victory on the way back to New York and then home.
The "yard number 619" probably indicates that the Chapel Hill Victory was the 619th ship laid down in that shipyard, whereas, hull numbers are global for vessel type. My dad, William L. Shea, also came home on the Chapel Hill Victory.
ReplyDeleteTom, thanks very much for the information! Do you know the dates your father was at sea in the Chapel Hill Victory? I imagine it made several trips to ferry troops home.
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