Posted by John Riise on December 11, 2014, 10:17 pm
I recently came across a souvenier that brought back memories. It was a main steam gauge I had savaged from a wreck whose profile made me think it was a Liberty ship.
Heres the story. In July, 1975, i was helping deliver a racing sailboat back up the Baja coast from Cabo San Lucas. Off Cabo San Lazaro, we spotted a ship on the beach. We anchored in a small cove behind the cape and hiked overland to the beach, and the ship. The tide was out and you could literally walk up to th wreck without getting your feet wet.
The ship was named Jupiter. I vaguely remember the hailing port might have been Monrovia, but that might not be right.
anyway, we spent most of day poking around. The ship had been pretty well picked over, but there were still charts on the bridge and tools on a workbench in the engine room. I remember the boiler was a Babcock and Wilcox unit.
We all grabbed souveniers. At the time there seemed no harm in it - the ship wasnever going anywhere again. I got the steam gauge and a brass plaque off a rotted lifeboat. My buddy got an outside light and that brass ID plate off the boiler. I mounted both my "treasures" on nice wood and gave them as gifts to my father and brother. Dad passed away a few months ago (at 98) and i found the steam gauge in the attic.
it got me to wondering, as i have off and on, about the Jupiter. If it was a Liberty ship, it was probably renamed. Ive done quite a bit ofsearching online but cant seem to find anything on this ship. Wonder if you might have any insights or recommendations?
You have a genuine Liberty ship steam gauge. And you are correct, the ship was renamed, several times in fact by the time you happened upon her. (Also, in fact, there were at least three other Liberty ships renamed JUPITER, all of which were scrapped about the same time "your" JUPITER was wrecked.)
She survived the war (during which she must have played only a very minor role, as the war ended only months after she was built) and apparently remained the property of the federal government, through the U.S. War Shipping Administration, for several years. As of 1951 she had been sold to a private shipping company and sailed under the U.S. flag as SEAFIGHTER. In 1953 she was sold again and renamed MELIDA, operating under the Panamanian flag. In 1959 she was sold yet again to a company that operated the ship under the Liberian flag (and therefore would have had Monrovia painted on her stern as her hailing port). In 1967 she was sold to Jupiter Maritime Corp., still under the Liberian flag.
On March 29, 1968, she came to grief, going aground at Cabo San Lazaro, Mexico, where you found her seven years later. See http://www.mariners-l.co.uk/LibshipsB.html and scroll to BERNARD L. RODMAN, about 2/3 of the way down the page. See also http://www.wrecksite.eu/wreck.aspx?110737 for very sketchy information about the wreck; the map at the bottom of the page confirms its approximate location.
The Bernard L. Rodman (1896-1942) after whom the ship was named was a merchant seaman lost on SS ARCATA when it was shelled by a Japanese submarine in 1942 in the Gulf of Alaska.
I hope this is useful.
Ron Carlson, Webmaster Armed Guard / Merchant Marine website www.armed-guard.com
Wow! Unbelievable! Thank you so much for the informative response. It adds so much to the gauge to know about the ship herself.
And 7 years. I had no idea she had been on the beach that long. Still mostly intact, too. I remember the ship was littered with hatch covers, which at the time were bringing several hundred dollars refinished as tables. We knew a multi-engine pilot at the time and launched a half-baked plan to fly down, land on the beach, load up and come back to make our fortune. Of course it never happened.
A bit more about the gauge, which still shows a stamp of being recalibrated in Greece in 1961. As mentioned, I shined up the brass bezel and mounted it on a nice piece of wood and gave it to my father for Christmas one year. It even had a small engraved plaque reading 'Salvaged from the wreck of the Jupiter, November 1975, and the lat/lon.
Dad, being a more pragmatic sort, had a '65 Mustang at the time that had been converted to run on propane. But the fuel gauge no longer worked. So a month or so goes by and when I saw him and the car next - the steam gauge was mounted in the passenger well as his 'fuel' gauge! He'd rummaged through the parts bins and had found adaptors, then built a bracket for it and it was reading just fine. Kind of weird in that you had to sort of straddle it as a passenger. But it stayed in the car for years. He removed it when he sold the car. I found the gauge a few months ago while cleaning out his house after he passed. Only last week, I was going through boxes and came upon this nice wood plaque that looked familiar. I grabbed the gauge, held it up and the screw holes matched! Now the gauge is back on my wall - with a whole new story to tell.