World War II Reefers in U.S. Navy Service
The USS Mizar (AF-12) was a Mizar-class refrigerator ship and passenger liner (Cruise ship) taken over by the U.S. Maritime Commission in the summer of 1941 under the authority of Public Law 101, 77th Congress and Executive Order 8771, 6 June 1941. She was taken over by the U.S. Navy on a bare-boat charter basis on 2 June 1941 from the United Fruit Company (their fleet of about 85 ships was one of the largest civilian fleets in the world in 1941) for use during World War II. The USS Mizar normally carried up to 95 cruise ship passengers and a crew to ports in Central America and then would return to the United States with passengers and a cargo of refrigerated bananas and miscellaneous cargo. The USS Mizar was part of United Fruit Company's Great White Fleet and originally named SS Quiriqua.
The USS Mizar was built in 1932 for United Fruit Co. at Bethlehem Steel, Quincy, Massachusetts and originally named SS Quiriqua. The Mizar class ships were built during the Great Depression with a subsidy provided by the U.S. Mail and were often called "mail" boats. The SS Quiriqua was converted to the USS Mizar for Naval service by the addition of one single 5"/38 caliber gun, four 3"/50 caliber guns for anti-aircraft (AA) and anti submarine use and up to eight Oerlikon 20 mm cannon AA guns at Brewer's Drydock Co., Staten Island, N.Y. The USS Mizar was commissioned as a naval ship 14 June 1941 with CDR. E. D. Walbridge in command. The USS Mizar was manned by a crew of Merchant mariners and a number of United States Navy Armed Guard sailors assigned to man the guns on the ship. The Guards were assisted by the "civilian" Merchant mariners working the ship and all took equal risk of being sunk by submarine or aircraft; but only the Armed Guard were judged eligible for G.I. Bill benefits.
With some modification to the ship, she was able to carry a number of troops in addition to her refrigerated stores. She served in the Atlantic War and the Pacific War and came back home with four battle stars to her credit. Decommissioned from the Navy, 1 April 1946, at Baltimore, Maryland she was returned to United Fruit Company who renamed her the SS Quiriqua. Her last operation after decommissioning was her old job of delivering bananas and cruise ship passengers for the United Fruit Company. She was scrapped in 1964 as SS SAMALA.
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Famous quotes containing the words world, war, navy and/or service:
“Fifty million Frenchmen can’t be wrong.”
—Anonymous. Popular saying.
Dating from World War I—when it was used by U.S. soldiers—or before, the saying was associated with nightclub hostess Texas Quinan in the 1920s. It was the title of a song recorded by Sophie Tucker in 1927, and of a Cole Porter musical in 1929.
“From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
—Charles Darwin (1809–1882)
“Give me the eye to see a navy in an acorn. What is there of the divine in a load of bricks? What of the divine in a barber’s shop or a privy? Much, all.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The true courage of civilized nations is readiness for sacrifice in the service of the state, so that the individual counts as only one amongst many. The important thing here is not personal mettle but aligning oneself with the universal.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)