HISTORY
The SS James Longstreet was a Liberty Ship, one of the fleet that came to fruition at a time when the nation was in the midst of great change. During World War II the battleships and cruisers weren’t the only ships at work; the mass-produced Liberty Ships were used to transport cargo all over the world. According to John Gorley Bunker in his book “Liberty Ships: The Ugly Ducklings of WWII,” a Liberty Ship was classified as an EC2 ship, or Emergency Cargo number 2, which stood for the size of the vessel. Its design was based on the English tramp ship, and it wasn’t a very pretty boat. In fact, President Roosevelt nicknamed the fleets the “ugly ducklings.” The name “Liberty Ship” only came about to give the fleet better PR. Plans went into effect to build a fleet of these ships to be used in the war efforts, and it was a large endeavor, employing shipyards all over the nation. The SS Patrick Henry was the first liberty ship to set sail, on September 27, 1941, and would be followed by an estimated 2,708 more ships over the course of just four years. These vessels were massed-produced, all with the same design, in assembly line fashion. A ship could be built in no time; according to “The Target Ship in Cape Cod Bay,” and “The Target Ship Goes To War!” by Noel W. Beyle, the world’s foremost authority on the Target Ship, the first Liberty Ship was built in 150 days, the SS James Longstreet built in 69 days, and the record for the fastest ship built was the SS Robert E. Peary, which was built in only 4 days and 15 ½ hours. The innovation of welding revolutionized production in this aspect; instead of riveting plates on top of one another, the plates of the Liberty Ship hulls were welded side by side. It made for faster production, but also lead to many instances of ships literally falling apart at sea!
BIRTH
The SS James Longstreet was launched on October 31, 1942, at 11:30 in the morning. It was the 25th ship built by the Houston Shipbuilding Corporation, located at Irish Bend Island, Texas, built in Slip 1 at a cost of $1,800,000, according to Beyle. It was christened with a short speech and sent on its way without fanfare. Most likely, before it even touched water, the keel of the next ship had already been laid down. After 20 days of further outfitting the Longstreet was ready for wartime duties.
STATS
According to L.A. Sawyer & W.H. Mitchell in “The Liberty Ships” the standard Liberty Ship had a length of 441 feet 6 inches, a beam or breadth of 56 feet 10 ¾ inches, and a depth of 27 feet 9 ¼ inches when fully loaded, which could be between 9,000 and 10,000 tons of dry cargo and fuel. Beyle further describes the Longstreet as a single steam screw freighter, meaning she had a single triple expansion reciprocating steam engine that turned a single screw, or propeller. The Longstreet could cruise at 10 ½ knots, and go full speed at 12 ½ knots, which was comparatively slow for a ship. The Longstreet also had five holds, three forward and two aft, with the engine compartment in the middle, two full decks, three masts, and four lifeboats. The standard crew of 45 and gun crew of 36 was lead by Captain Thomas J. Nelson, Chief Mate Miles H. Tucket, and Chief Engineer Eric Hugo Johnson, according to Beyle. The Longstreet was ready to go.
TOURS OF DUTY
The SS James Longstreet only served for 361 days, being put out of service just 4 days shy of her first birthday. During her time at sea she had a successful, though somewhat unadventurous career. She went on three tours altogether. Her first, lasting from Nov. 27, 1942 to May 24, 1943, brought her from Texas to Australia, India, and Ceylon, or Sri Lanka. Her second voyage, lasting from June 8 to August 11, 1943, brought her to the waters of New York and Savannah, Georgia, and then to Liverpool, England, before returning to Boston. According to Beyle, it was during this tour that the Longstreet incurred some damages from two fires in the cargo holds, and she had to have her propeller replaced after hitting an underwater mass in the Atlantic. The Longstreet was given a clean bill of health in her berth in Boston, and sent on her way. At the beginning of her third voyage, lasting from September 5 through 24, she collided with a ship just off the coast of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and incurred damages that needed minimal repair. She then continued on to Wales and Southampton. It was on her return voyage back to the United States where her fate would be met on a beach in New Jersey.
BEACHED
The storm that raged on the morning of October 27, 1943 was one of the worst to hit the east coast that year. The winds, which exceeded 70 mph, drove four ships, the Exilona, the Fort Douglas, the F.J.Luckenbach, and the James Longstreet, into the sand bars and beaches of Sandy Hook, New Jersey, just south of New York City. Of the ships the James Longstreet incurred the most damaged, called a “total loss,” with her “back broken” or keel cracked, by both the New York Herald Tribune and the Washington Evening Star. According to Sawyer she was splitting at Hatch 3. She was lodged in seven feet of sand and her crew had to be evacuated by rope and pulley, but no one was hurt during the ordeal. Repairs were done on the beach one month later the Longstreet was refloated and towed to New York Harbor, where she was assigned to quarantine for the rest of the war, or inactive duty. On December 8, 1943 she was towed to join the reserve fleet at Prall’s Island near Staten Island, and from there it would only be a step to destruction. At the end of the year she was deemed a “constructive total loss.” It looked like that was the end for the SS James Longstreet.
TO CAPE COD
It was in the beginning of 1945 when Boston came calling. The Navy, in conjunction with Boston’s Polaroid Corporation, was conducting trials on a new missile and needed a ship for Project Dove that would be in close proximity to Monomoy Island in Chatham, and the Army base in Wellfleet. On February 22, 1945, the SS James Longstreet was ordered to Cape Cod Bay. She returned to Boston to be outfitted, stripped of all non-essential equipment, and on the morning of April 25, 1945, at 9:46, she was set to rest on New Found Shoal in Cape Cod Bay, just north of the town of Orleans and west of Eastham. According to Sawyer she was the target for the Dove bomb, which was a heat-seeking homing missile that later lead to the modern day “Sidewinder” missile, but by the following year Project Dove no longer needed the Longstreet. For the next twenty-five years the James Longstreet acted as the target for various bombs, bullets, and rockets from the Army, Navy, and Air Force, damaging her hull and breaking her down. In 1950 its official number had been “surrendered” by the US Maritime Commission, signaling not only the retirement of the ship, but the ship being official withdrawn from being a vessel of the United States. In 1971, or thereabouts, after she had been used in missile development in the Korean War and Vietnam, all actions were halted. Beyle states that, according to a statement issued by the Navy in 1978, the bombings were stopped due to the close proximity of civilians to the Target Ship, and the shutting down of the one of the major air bases on Cape Cod. After that, the Target Ship was left on her own for the waters of the bay to do with her what they wished.
FUTURE
Today all that remains of the Target Ship are a few shards of metal visible at the water line during low tide. The ship is still there below the water, and relatively intact, as determined by a sonar scan taken in September 2003 by the Massachusetts Board of Underwater Archeological Resources. According to The Cape Cod Times on March 29, 2001, there are many options for making the site safe for boaters and divers, placing buoys at the site being one of them. Other suggestions have included placing another ship there, or a lighthouse. Another suggestion jokingly came from the Longstreet Society itself; to rebuild the Target Ship out of cement, and paint it to like it was before. But as removing the wreckage may be too expensive, and as the ship has been quite a flourishing reef for sea life, it may be left right where it is. As of today the Navy has made no plans for the Longstreet.
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