| Re: Finding my Father's records of service
Posted by Ron Carlson on November 13, 2007, 1:13 pm, in reply to "Finding my Father's records of service"
134.67.6.11
Jeff,
Your best bet to find information on the records of a merchant seaman is to contact the U.S. Coast Guard's National Maritime Center, at the address noted in Melinda's message. Merchant seamen, being civilians, were not discharged in the sense that members of the military were discharged. Merchant seamen were discharged from each ship on which they sailed when the voyage was completed. Discharge information included the ship on which the seaman served, the position(s) in which he served, and the relevant dates, among other things. The seaman would have kept this information in his possession as it documented his employment record and was used in applying for subsequent employment. Of course your father may have long since lost or misplaced this information. In any case, however, so far as I understand it, seamen did not receive a final discharge at the end of their service as seamen, in the manner that military personnel received a discharge from military service.
While not relevant to your inquiry, it is interesting to note that the SS John Goode was one of the relatively few Liberty ship tankers. There were just 62 Liberty tankers out of the more than 2,700 Liberty ships that were built. These ships were built to look like standard cargo-carrying Liberty ships, with the necessary piping, pumps and other equipment concealed or disguised so as not to identify the ships as tankers and thus prevent them from being specifically targeted by the enemy. Tankers are actually difficult to sink, so long as there is no fire, explosion or structural failure, since, after all, they are already filled with a liquid. Heavier oils are difficult to set afire so tankers carrying such cargo were rather safe ships to sail on. Tankers carrying gasoline or other highly volatile fuels, however, were another matter entirely. See http://ww2ships.com/acrobat/us-os-001-f-r00.pdf, pages 12-14 and page 161.
The SS John Goode was built by the California Shipbuilding Corporation in Los Angeles. Her keel was laid 4 July 1943, she was launched 10 August 1943, and was completed 4 September 1943, 62 days after keel-laying. After the war she was sold to private shipping firms until being scrapped in 1967. See http://www.coltoncompany.com/shipbldg/ussbldrs/wwii/merchantshipbuilders/california.htm
Also see http://www.mariners-l.co.uk/LibShipsJo.html (scroll down) for an outline of her career.
Incidentally, a photograph of the SS John Goode, in her postwar configuration, is available at
http://www.armed-guard.com/lsip09.html; scroll down almost to the bottom.
The John Goode (1829-1909) after whom she was named was a Confederate soldier and later a Congressman from Virginia, 1875-1881.
Good luck.
Ron Carlson, Webmaster
Armed Guard
|
Post a Response
|
