The Ship
The Dorchester was a 5,649 ton civilian cruise ship, 368 feet long with a 52-foot beam and a single funnel, originally built in 1926 by Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company, for the Merchants and Miners Line, operating ships from Baltimore to Florida, carrying both freight and passengers. It was the third of four liners being built for the Line.
The ship was converted for military service in World War II as a troop transport, and renamed United States Army Transport (USAT) Dorchester. The conversion was done in New York by the Atlantic, Gulf, and West Indies (AGWI) SS Company, and included additional lifeboats and liferafts; guns (a 3 inch 50 caliber gun forward, and a 4 inch 50 caliber gun aft, in addition to four 20mm guns); and changes to the large windows in the pilot house so that they would be reduced to slits to afford more protection. A liner designed for 314 passengers and 90 crew would now be able to carry slightly more than 900 passengers and crew.
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Famous quotes containing the word ship:
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—Elizabeth I (1533–1603)
“Every ship is a romantic object, except that we sail in. Embark, and the romance quits our vessel, and hangs on every other sail in the horizon.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)