History
A Victory Ship, her keel was laid down on 23 February 1945, as Simmons Victory, a Maritime Commission-type (VC2-S-AP3) hull, under a Maritime Commission contract at Oregon Shipbuilding Corporation of Portland, Oregon. She was delivered to the Maritime Commission on 4 May 1945, and chartered to the Pacific Far East Line of San Francisco. She operated in commercial trade until 1958, Simmons Victory was returned to the Maritime Administration for layup in the National Defense Reserve Fleet at Olympia, Washington.
In February 1963, the Navy acquired Simmons Victory and converted her to a "Miscellaneous Auxiliary" ship at Willamette Iron and Steel of Portland. On 8 June she was renamed the Liberty and given hull classification symbol AG-168. On 1 April 1964, she was reclassified a Technical Research Ship (AGTR-5). She was commissioned at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, Washington, in December.
Read more about this topic: USS Liberty (AGTR-5)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“What you don’t understand is that it is possible to be an atheist, it is possible not to know if God exists or why He should, and yet to believe that man does not live in a state of nature but in history, and that history as we know it now began with Christ, it was founded by Him on the Gospels.”
—Boris Pasternak (1890–1960)
“We aspire to be something more than stupid and timid chattels, pretending to read history and our Bibles, but desecrating every house and every day we breathe in.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“America is the only nation in history which, miraculously, has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.”
—Attributed to Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929)