From September 19, 1942 to June 29, 1945 Chief Steward Ernest George Silvera served on the Liberty Ships S.S. John W. Brown (maiden voyage) and S.S. Augustus W. Merrimon (4 times consecutively), and then three times on the S.S. Lone Star. During that period, he was home a combined 6 months on leave and sailed in 40 wartime convoys.

The Liberty Ships were wartime freighters, tankers and troop carriers, quickly built and lightly armed; organized under the U.S. War Shipping Administration as an integral part of the movement of tanks, planes, vehicles, munitions, supplies and troops globally. The missions were sometimes escorted by warships and as often as possible, included U.S. Naval Armed Guard gunners on board.

The convoys were a naval strategy clustering from dozens up to 100 or more supply ships sometimes escorted by heavily armed warships and always seeking strength in numbers. They traveled established routes between defining ports at either end, such as the GN series (from Guantanamo, Cuba to New York City) or its reverse route, coded NG. As a vessel sailed its voyage, from costal waterways to ocean crossings and sometimes other continents, it might move with one convoy or strategically pass through several convoys along its route; sometimes sailing one or more stretches alone, as did the Liberty Ship S.S. John W. Brown in the other story posted here.

Six of the 40 1942-1945 convoys my grandfather sailed in were part of his 4 month long first (also maiden) voyage on the Augustus W. Merrimon, begun September, 1943. Two of those same 6 convoys lost ships to German U-Boats' torpedo fire in the Medditerranean that October and November; and a third to attacks by German bombers that December. In a 1945 North Sea convoy aboard the SS Lone Star 2 other ships were heavily damaged by mines in the Scheldt River.

The WWII era mariners of the U.S. Merchant Fleet saw similarly hazardous duty during the late 1930s prelude to war and in its late 1940s aftermath. Although my grandfather's first trip on the Merrimon may have been his most violently challenged; the first post WWII vessel he shipped out on was among his most ill-fated journeys. That was on the deadly, final Murmansk run of the S.S. William H. Webb.

Ernest Silvera