SS JOHN LAURANCE was built by Todd Houston Shipbuilding Corporation, Houston, Texas, in 1942. Her keel was laid 13 July 1942, she was launched 18 September 1942, and she was completed on 8 October 1942, 87 days after keel-laying. She was scrapped in 1963 in Panama City, Florida. This suggests she had a rather uneventful wartime career, and was probably placed in the reserve fleet ("mothballed") soon after the war. See http://shipbuildinghistory.com/history/shipyards/4emergency/wwtwo/toddhouston.htm and scroll to hull number 14, and http://www.mariners-l.co.uk/LibShipsJo.html#JohnH and scroll to the name of the ship.
You may be able to obtain photographs of the ship from one of these sources: see http://www.usmm.org/photosource.html.
I made a search for the name of the ship and members of its crew at www.ancestry.com, a subscription website that is more commonly used for genealogical research. Ancestry.com also has databases of the names of crew members of ships that arrived at various U.S. ports of entry, from as early as the 1820s in some cases to as late as 1957. Records of arrivals at New York City are particularly well represented. I found records of arrival of the ship in New York in May 1943, January 1944, April 1944 and January 1946. However there was no record of a crew member with the last name of Carson for any of these arrivals.
The ConvoyWeb website (http://www.convoyweb.org.uk/) lists movements of thousands of ships during World War II. Do a “Ship Search” for JOHN LAURANCE at http://www.convoyweb.org.uk/hague/index.html which, if the ship is included on this website, will show where the ship sailed by date, whether in convoy or operating independently. There is no information on the crew available on this website.
Finally, see this page at the Armed Guard website: http://armed-guard.com/searchmil.html. In particular see section A.1. Records of Individuals - U.S. Military for information on obtaining copies of your father's military service record (if he was in the U.S. Navy Armed Guard), or section A.2. Records of Individuals - Merchant Marine, if he was in the merchant marine. Also see section IV. Researching Ship Records, for information on obtaining information on the ship, its movements and its crew via the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration in College Park, Maryland. You will be most interested in Armed Guard Logbooks and Reports, Deck Logs, Movement Report Cards and Records of Individual Convoys. You will need to provide the dates during which your father served aboard JOHN LAURANCE.
Good luck.
Ron Carlson, Webmaster
Armed Guard / Merchant Marine website
www.armed-guard.com
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