Short answers, pulled from the story.
Merchant mariners died at a rate of 1 in 26 during World War II, the highest casualty rate of any U.S. service branch. Between 1939 and 1945, 9,521 merchant mariners died out of approximately 215,000 who served, and 733 American cargo ships were lost.
World War II merchant mariners were denied veterans recognition until 1987, when a federal court ordered the Secretary of the Air Force to grant active military service recognition. Sadie O. Horton, the first recorded female Merchant Marine veteran of World War II, received her recognition posthumously in 2017.
The Jones Act, formally the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, requires U.S.-flagged vessels to be built in the United States, owned by U.S. citizens, and crewed with all officers and at least 75 percent U.S. citizens. Only Jones Act-compliant vessels may transport passengers or cargo between two U.S. ports, a practice known as cabotage.
The U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, known as Kings Point, is one of five U.S. service academies and operates on an $85 million annual budget funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation. It was the first Federal service academy to admit female students, doing so in 1974, two years before the other Federal service academies.
At its World War II-era peak, the U.S. fleet included more than 2,000 vessels and represented about 43 percent of the world's shipping trade in 1950. By 1996, the number of U.S.-flag vessels had fallen to approximately 320, and by December 2016 the privately owned oceangoing fleet stood at 175 vessels. Nearly 800 American-owned ships are now flagged in other nations.
Writers who served as merchant mariners include Herman Melville, Jack Kerouac, Ralph Ellison, Thomas Pynchon, Richard Henry Dana Jr., and Allen Ginsberg. Filmmaker Haskell Wexler won two Academy Awards, and songwriter Jack Lawrence wrote the official Merchant Marine song Heave Ho! My Lads, Heave Ho! while stationed at Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, in 1943.