SS Carroll Victory

Typical Victory Ship.
History
Vereinigte Staaten
Name	SS Carroll Victory
Owner	War Shipping Administration
Operator	Lykes Brothers SS Company
Builder	California Shipbuilding Company, Los Angeles
Laid down	March 28, 1944
Launched	June 13, 1944
Completed	August 31, 1944
Fate	Transferred to United States Coast Guard 1949
History
Vereinigte Staaten
Name	SS Carroll Victory
Operator	United States Coast Guard
Fate	Scrapped 1994
General characteristics
Class and type	VC2-S-AP3 Victory ship
Tonnage	7612 GRT, 4,553 NRT
Displacement	15,200 tons
Length	455 ft (139 m)
Beam	62 ft (19 m)
Draft	28 ft (8.5 m)
Installed power	8,500 shp (6,300 kW)
Propulsion	HP & LP turbines geared to a single 20.5-foot (6.2 m) propeller
Speed	16.5 knots
Boats & landing craft carried	4 Lifeboats
Complement	62 Merchant Marine and 28 US Naval Armed Guards
Armament	1 × 5 inch (127 mm)/38 caliber gun 1 × 3 inch (76 mm)/50 caliber gun 8 × 20 mm Oerlikon
Notes

The SS Carroll Victory was the twenty-seventh Victory ship built during the World War II. She was launched by the California Shipbuilding Company on June 13, 1944 and completed on August 31, 1944. The ship’s United States Maritime Commission designation was VC2- S- AP3, hull number 27. She was operated by the Lykes Brothers SS Company. SS Carroll Victory served in the Atlantic Ocean during WW2. SS Carroll Victory was the twenty-seventh of the new 10,500-ton class ship known as Victory ships. Victory ships were designed to replace the earlier Liberty Ships. Liberty ships were designed to be used just for WW2. Victory ships were designed to last longer and serve the US Navy after the war. The Victory ship differed from a Liberty ship in that they were: faster, longer and wider, taller, had a thinner stack set farther toward the superstructure and had a long raised forecastle.

From 1945 to 1947 the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration and the Brethren Service Committee of the Church of the Brethren sent livestock to war-torn countries. These “seagoing cowboys” made about 360 trips on 73 different ships. Church of the Brethren started in 1942 the Heifers for Relief project, in 1953 this became Heifer International. The SS Carroll Victory was one of these ships, known as a cowboy ship, as she moved livestock across the Atlantic Ocean. In the summer of 1946 she took horses and hay bales to Poland. In November of 1946, she delivered a number of horses to Kavalla, Greece. From Greece she streamed to Africa and picked up a new load of horses, then streamed on to Haifa in Palestine. Carroll Victory moved horses, heifers, and mules as well as a few chicks, rabbits, and goats.

After the war, in 1949 she was moved to Mobile, Alabama and served as a US Coast Guard ship before later being moved to the James River in Virginia. In 1994 she was scrapped at Alang, India.

Sources

• Sawyer, L.A. and W.H. Mitchell. Victory ships and tankers: The history of the ‘Victory’ type cargo ships and of the tankers built in the United States of America during World War II, Cornell Maritime Press, 1974, 0-87033-182-5.
• United States Maritime Commission: [1]
• Victory Cargo Ships [2]