NATIONAL REGISTER ELIGIBILITY ASSESSMENT VESSEL: TS State of Maine, Ex-USNS Upshur (T-AP-198)
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NATIONAL REGISTER ELIGIBILITY ASSESSMENT VESSEL: TS State of Maine, ex-USNS Upshur (T-AP-198) TS State of Maine, underway in May 1994. The ship served as a training vessel for the Maine Maritime Academy from 1973 -1995. Maritime Administration photograph. Vessel History The training ship State of Maine enjoyed three careers over a span of nearly 60 years. It was originally designed in 1947 as a passenger-cargo ship for the postwar replacement program of American President Lines (APL); a service and career that it was not fated to enter. Instead, at the outbreak of the Korean War, the U.S. Navy requisitioned the ship while it was still incomplete and converted it into a troop and dependant transport. As the USNS Upshur, the vessel served the Military Sea Transportation Service1 (MSTS) from 1952 to 1973. In 1973 the Upshur was decommissioned and immediately transferred to the Maritime Administration (MARAD) (then in the Department of Commerce), who furnished it to the Maine Maritime Academy for use as a merchant marine training ship2. The Upshur was renamed State of Maine, the name it carries today. From 1973 to 1995 the State of Maine was in the service of the academy with periodic temporary assignments to the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. The State of Maine’s third and final career began in 1995 when it was transferred to the U.S. Coast Guard and relocated to Mobile, AL to be used as a platform for fire-fighting testing. 1 MSTS was a post-World War II combination of four predecessor government agencies that handled similar sealift functions. These included the Navy’s Naval Transportation Service and Fleet Support Service, the Army Transport Service, and the War Shipping Administration of the United States Maritime Commission. In 1970, MSTS was renamed the Military Sealift Command. 2 The Maritime Administration furnished federally-owned and maintained training ships to six state maritime academies, located in ME, MA, NY, TX, CA and MI. The academies are allowed the use of the assigned ship and its facilities and typically operate the ship on one or more annual training voyages. This arrangement dates to the 1874 Nautical School Ship Act, and is presently authorized under the Maritime Education and Training Act of 1980. 2 Original Design and Conversion to Transport APL operated a successful “round-the-world” service that originated in the post-WWI era by the Dollar Steamship Line. The service was subsidized and initially operated with U.S. Shipping Board passenger-cargo vessels of the “502/522” class3 that were constructed during that war. In the mid-1930s, Dollar Lines defaulted and APL took over the service and ships, which was then a government-owned corporation. In the immediate pre-WWII period, APL took delivery of seven “C3” class passenger-cargo ships from the U.S. Maritime Commission4, as replacements for the aging 502s. Several of these C3s were lost during WWII, and after the war’s end APL immediately set out to design and construct a new class of ships for its round- the-world service. APL engaged the New York naval architectural firm of George G. Sharp, Inc. to design the new class of three ships to be known as the President Jackson class. These subsidized vessels were classified as P2-S1-DN1 by the Maritime Commission5. The construction contracts for the President Jackson, President Adams and President Hayes were awarded to the New York Shipbuilding Corporation of Camden, New Jersey, in 1948. The ships were launched on about three-month intervals, beginning with the President Jackson in June 1950. The Jackson was scheduled to enter service in December 1950; however, the outbreak of the Korean War that summer and a shortage of modern troop transports led the U.S. Navy to requisition six passenger vessels that were then under construction for completion as troop transports. Although three of the vessels were later released for commercial completion, the President Jackson class was retained and completed for the Navy as its last class of troop transports. The three ships were renamed in honor of deceased U.S. Marine Corps generals. The Jackson became the USNS6 Barrett (T-AP 196), the Adams became the USNS Geiger (T-AP 197), and the Hayes (the future State of Maine), became the USNS Upshur (T-AP 198). The ships followed parallel careers, with each eventually becoming training ships assigned to state maritime academies. The Barrett was assigned to the State University of New York Maritime College in 1973 as the Empire State V, and the Geiger to the Massachusetts Maritime Academy as the Bay State (IV) in 1980. The Bay State became a constructive total loss after a devastating engine room fire in December 1981 and was scrapped soon thereafter. The Empire State V served until 1989 and after a number of years in reserve was scrapped in 2007. 3 Seventy percent of the entire fleet of passenger liners under construction for the US Shipping Board (the agency that later became the Federal Maritime Commission and in 1950 the Maritime Administration) were ordered from New York Shipbuilding Corporation, which completed all seven of the 522-foot class. The nomenclature for this class is ambiguous, since some sources call them the 522 class after their Length Overall [LOA] of 522 feet, while others call them the 502 class after their Length between Perpendiculars [LBP] of 502 feet. 4 The United States Maritime Commission was the immediate predecessor agency to the present-day Maritime Administration. 5 The President Jackson class ships and the superliner S.S. United States were the last four ships constructed by the Maritime Commission in a building program that exceeded 5,000 total ships beginning in 1938. 6 The prefix USNS stands for United States Naval Ship, and signifies a non-combatant vessel. The designation AP is the Navy classification for a transport vessel; the prefix “T” indicates that a vessel is crewed by civilian mariners. 3 Transport Duties The Upshur was completed in late December 1952 and turned over to MSTS for operation by a crew of 203 civilians and 27 Navy personnel. The Navy contingent acted as a troop liaison and operated the hospital facilities. By 1953 the Korean War ended in a stalemate and an armistice was signed in July of that year. MSTS sent the Barrett and Geiger to the Pacific but retained the Upshur in the Atlantic. Upshur spent the majority of the next 15 years rotating American service personnel and their dependents from New York’s Brooklyn Army Terminal, to Southampton, England, and Bremerhaven, Germany. It also made voyages to the following ports: the naval base at Guantanamo Bay Cuba; the Panama Canal Zone; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and to ports in Italy, Greece, and Turkey. On the eastbound crossing, additional port calls were made at Quonset Point, Rhode Island and Argentia, Newfoundland, transporting a contingent of U.S. Navy Seabees. In 1959 the Upshur assisted the British cable ship Ocean Layer after the ship became engulfed in flames. All but two crew members had been rescued by a German cargo ship. The Upshur lowered its lifeboat into the choppy seas to search for the missing men; both were eventually recovered alive. Lebanon, Berlin, and Cuba In 1958, responding to internal strife in Lebanon and to the increasing threat posed by the United Arab Republic7 Upshur transported thousands of Marines between northern Europe and Beirut, Lebanon. Upshur was also one of six troopships that carried more than 29,000 servicemen from the U.S. to Cherbourg, France, and Bremerhaven, Germany during the 1961 Berlin crisis. 7 The United Arab Republic (UAR) was created by the union of Egypt and Syria in 1958. Syria ceded from the union in 1961, but Egypt retained the name until 1971 after the death of its long-time President Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1970. 4 USNS Upshur returning from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba with 1,725 evacuees in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis. http://www.459thsignal.org/photogall ery/USNS%20Upshur%20- %20Aerial%20Shot.jpg On October 19, 1962 the vessel arrived in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba on what had been up to then a routine Caribbean voyage. However, instead of its normal stay of approximately six hours Upshur remained in Cuba for several days due to “mechanical problems.” In reality it was standing by to evacuate civilian employees and their dependents from the base due to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Three days later it embarked 1,725 evacuees, primarily women and children, transporting them to Norfolk, Virginia. Vietnam War In 1965 the Upshur transported personnel from the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division to the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam). Over the next few years the Upshur made regular calls at the South Vietnamese ports of Da Nang, Quinhon, and Nha Trang, usually anchoring and then disembarking troops into landing craft. In 1969 it made 34 voyages transporting a total of 85,375 Korean troops between South Korea and South Vietnam. In June of 1971 it assisted in operations to repatriate 570 North Vietnamese prisoners of war. Just 13 former prisoners elected to go ashore in Hanoi while the remaining men were returned to South Vietnam. The Upshur made its final trans-Pacific voyage in early 1973 transporting American troops to Sasebo, Japan. It sailed on its return crossing from Yokohama on March 1. On April 2 1973, the Military Sealift Command (MSC), the successor to the MSTS, transferred the ship to MARAD. 5 USNS Upshur becomes the training ship State of Maine MARAD acquired the Upshur from MSC to serve as a replacement for its training ship, also named State of Maine (ex-Ancon of the Panama Railroad Steamship Line) at the Maine Maritime Academy.