United States Merchant Marine

• 1. Introduction

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  The United States Merchant Marine lost 8,651 people during World War II, out of 215,000 who served. Mariners died at a rate of 1 in 26 - the highest casualty rate of any American service branch in that war. And yet, for more than four decades after the war ended, those who survived were denied the veterans recognition given to their counterparts in the Army, Navy, and Marines. The civilian men and women who crewed the ships that fed, fueled, and armed the Allied effort were, in the eyes of the law, simply workers. What is the United States Merchant Marine? How does a force of civilian sailors become the logistical backbone of American military power? And who, exactly, gets to call themselves a veteran? The answers stretch from the harbor at Machias, Maine in 1775, across two world wars, through the cold arithmetic of a shrinking fleet, and into the lives of a remarkably varied cast of Americans who, at one point or another, went to sea.

• 2. Born in Revolution

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  On the 12th of June, 1775, residents of Machias, Maine, seized the British supply sloop HMS Margaretta. News of the Battles of Lexington and Concord had just reached the town, and the decision to act was swift. Word of the capture traveled to Boston, where the Continental Congress and the individual colonies responded by issuing letters of marque - legal licenses for privately owned ships to attack enemy vessels. These American privateers went to work disrupting British supply chains along the eastern seaboard and across the Atlantic. What makes this moment remarkable is its timing. The privateers were operating before either the United States Coast Guard or the United States Navy existed. The Coast Guard would not be formed until 1790, the Navy until 1797. The colonial shipping trade that gave birth to this improvised naval force had its roots even further back. As early as the 16th century, Europeans were shipping horses, cattle, and hogs to the Americas. Spanish colonies formed in places like St. Augustine, Florida as early as 1565, with English settlements like Jamestown following in 1607. For nearly two centuries, shipping was the only connection between the American colonies and Europe.

• 3. The Price of Two World Wars

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  Three point one million tons of merchant ships went to the bottom in World War II. The 733 American cargo ships lost represent only part of the accounting. Nearly 250,000 civilian merchant mariners served in that war, transporting supplies and personnel across waters controlled by enemy submarines and aircraft. Between 1939 and 1945, 9,521 merchant mariners died, a per capita casualty rate higher than those of every branch of the U.S. Armed Forces. Ships carrying deck guns had United States Navy Armed Guard crews to man those weapons. By war's end, 144,857 men had served in the Navy Armed Guard across 6,200 ships. The merchant mariner's own training in gunnery was, as the source notes, ignored for years, with specific instructions eventually coming from the War Shipping Administration, which operated all U.S. merchant ships either directly or through agents. The Merchant Marine's role extended beyond the Atlantic. During the Korean War, the number of chartered ships under the Military Sea Transportation Service grew from 6 to 255. When U.S. Marines went ashore at Incheon in September 1950-13 Navy cargo ships, 26 chartered American vessels, and 34 Japanese-manned merchant ships of the MSTS participated. During the Vietnam War, at least 172 National Defense Reserve Fleet ships were activated, and together with other U.S.-flagged vessels, they carried 95% of the supplies used by American armed forces. Many sailed into active combat zones under fire.

• 4. The Long Fight for Recognition

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  Nearly 250,000 merchant mariners served in World War II, yet their path to official veterans status took more than four decades after the war ended. The GI Bill Improvement Act of 1977, known as P.L. 95-202, granted veteran status to Women Airforce Service Pilots and to any person in similarly situated groups, with authority delegated to the Secretary of the Air Force. Merchant mariners who served in World War II were specifically excluded from this recognition. It was not until 1987 that a federal court ordered their recognition, finding that the Secretary of the Air Force had wrongfully denied active military service recognition to American merchant mariners who participated in World War II. Sadie O. Horton, who spent the war working aboard a coastwise U.S. Merchant Marine barge, received her official veteran's status posthumously in 2017. She is the first recorded female Merchant Marine veteran of World War II to have been recognized. The delay is especially striking given the casualty rate. No other American service branch lost a higher share of its people during that war.

• 5. The Shrinking Fleet

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  In the post-war year of 1950, U.S. carriers represented about 43 percent of the world's shipping trade. By 1995, that share had fallen to 4 percent, according to a 1997 report by the U.S. Congressional Budget Office. The same report found that the number of U.S.-flag vessels had dropped from more than 2,000 in the 1940s, to about 850 in 1970, to approximately 320 in 1996. By December 2016, the U.S. merchant fleet had 175 privately owned, oceangoing, self-propelled vessels of 1,000 gross register tons and above. Of those, 114 were dry cargo ships and 61 were tankers. Nearly 800 American-owned ships are flagged in other nations. The workforce shrank with the fleet. In 2004, the U.S. Maritime Administration described the gap between sealift crewing needs and available unlicensed personnel as reaching critical proportions, with serious long-term concerns about sufficient staffing. The global liquefied natural gas market tells part of the story of what was lost. Worldwide demand for natural gas drove the global LNG tanker fleet to 370 vessels by 2007. Longer-term projections at that time signaled an eightfold increase in U.S. imported LNG by 2025. The worldwide LNG fleet did not include a single U.S.-flagged vessel.

• 6. Laws That Shaped the Sea

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  The Seamen's Act of 1915 was the brainchild of International Seamen's Union president Andrew Furuseth, sponsored in the Senate by Robert M. La Follette, and supported by Secretary of Labor William B. Wilson. Among other things, it abolished imprisonment for seamen who deserted their ship, reduced penalties for disobedience, regulated working hours at sea and in port, established minimum food quality standards, and required a minimum of 75 percent of the seamen aboard a vessel to understand the language spoken by the officers. The Act's passage was shaped by labor union lobbying, rising tensions before World War I, and the elevated public awareness of maritime safety following the sinking of the RMS Titanic three years earlier. The Merchant Marine Act of 1920, known as the Jones Act, requires U.S.-flagged vessels to be built in the United States, owned by U.S. citizens, flagged under U.S. laws, and crewed with all officers and at least 75 percent U.S. citizens. Only Jones Act-compliant vessels may practice cabotage, meaning the transport of passengers or cargo between two U.S. ports. The Jones Act also gave injured sailors the right to obtain compensation from employers for the negligence of the owner, captain, or fellow crew members. The Merchant Marine Act of 1936 went further, establishing the United States Maritime Commission and creating federal subsidies for ship construction and operation. Two years after that Act passed, the U.S. Merchant Marine Cadet Corps was established, which would eventually become the United States Merchant Marine Academy.

• 7. Kings Point and Beyond

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  The U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, known as Kings Point, is one of only five United States service academies, alongside the Military Academy, the Naval Academy, the Coast Guard Academy, and the Air Force Academy. It operates on an $85 million annual budget funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation. Joseph Banks Williams entered the academy in 1942 and became the first African-American to graduate in 1944. In 1974, the USMMA became the first Federal service academy to enroll female students, two years before the other Federal service academies did the same. Women had been barred from all U.S. maritime academies until that year, with the State University of New York Maritime College and the California Maritime Academy also admitting women cadets in 1974. A typical midshipman at Kings Point travels to 18 countries during the sea-year portion of training, accumulating a minimum of 300 days aboard ship. After graduation, USMMA graduates must maintain their merchant mariner licensing for six years and serve at least five years as a merchant marine officer or in a maritime-related profession, or complete five years of active duty as a commissioned officer. In Fall 2021, news broke that several midshipmen had reported sexual assaults at the academy or during Sea Year. The reports led to a suspension of Sea Year, multiple investigations and lawsuits, and a renewed commitment by the U.S. Government to protect women under its jurisdiction.

• 8. Sailors Who Left Their Mark

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  John Paul Jones sailed as third mate and then chief mate before becoming what history calls the Father of the American Navy. Douglass North went from seaman to navigator and later won the 1993 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics. Rear Admiral Albert B. Randall, nicknamed Rescue Randall, led convoys across the Atlantic during World War I and was the first merchant marine officer ever to reach the rank of rear admiral; he received the Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. Writers who served as merchant mariners include Richard Henry Dana Jr., Herman Melville, Ralph Ellison, Jack Kerouac, and Thomas Pynchon. Kerouac's novel The Sea Is My Brother draws on that experience, while David Mamet's play Lakeboat was directly shaped by his time at sea. Songwriter Jack Lawrence wrote the official United States Merchant Marine song, Heave Ho! My Lads, Heave Ho!, while stationed at Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, in 1943. Filmmaker Haskell Wexler won two Academy Awards, the latter for a biography of his shipmate Woody Guthrie. Oliver Stone, who also worked as a merchant mariner, won multiple Academy Awards as a filmmaker. In the world of sports, Jim Thorpe and Cornelius Johnson both won Olympic medals after serving; Thorpe's Olympic recognition did not come until 30 years after his death. The Merchant Marine Distinguished Service Medal, the highest award for valor in the Merchant Marine, was awarded posthumously to Captain Paul Buck and to USMMA midshipman Edwin Joseph O'Hara, among others, for extraordinary heroism in World War II.