Marine Techniques Publishing | Author of the Mariner's Employment Guide

Writer, Producer, Director: Maria Brooks – Executive Producer: Danny L. McGuire – Original Music: Bob Navarra – Narrator: Ed Markmann – a Waterfront Soundings Productions, Oakland, California – Price: $30.00 (includes shipping within U.S.A.)

DVD Description: The Remarkable Story of the Civilian Seamen who volunteered to Sail Cargo Ships to the Front Lines of WWII.

Filmed aboard the Jeremiah O’Brien, the last unaltered Liberty Ship still afloat, The Men Who Sailed the Liberty Ships tell the untold story of “the forgotten men” of World War II.

Soon after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, which triggered U.S. involvement in World War II, a quarter of a million American civilians volunteered to sail cargo ships to global battle zones. Ordinary citizens, these men came from America’s farms and factory towns. Many had never seen an ocean. Yet after only a few weeks of training, these volunteers joined seasoned sailors to crew the tankers and freighters bringing food, fuel and materiel to America’s allies on the fighting front. Mostly unarmed vessels, the Liberties were frequent targets, and the men who sailed them numbered among the highest casualty rates of the war. Thousands lost their lives in the North Atlantic while delivering supplies to Murmansk on the Russian front. Many more met death in the Pacific.

Despite their patriotic service and sacrifice, American merchant mariners returned home to a chilling reception. Slurred in the media and denied their Seamen’s Bill of Rights (G.I. Bill), these sailors would remain haunted by the war for years to come.

DVD Reviews: “High marks for untold story of WWII” The Men Who Sailed the Liberty Ships. A Maria Brooks film by KTEH-TV (PBS) and Waterfront Soundings Productions.

Reviewed by Eugene Dennis Vrana ILWU Archivist and Research Librarian as it appeared in The Dispatcher Newspaper.

In her latest documentary, The Men Who Sailed The Liberty Ships, producer-writer-director Maria Brooks has raised the art of documenting workers in wartime to a new level. Using a powerful combination of interviews, archival film footage, and still photographs (many from the ILWU-archives), the film dramatically tells the tale of merchant seamen in World War II – weaving together the heroism, loyalty, sacrifices, and tragedy that were commonplace among those who volunteered to sail the cargo ships that supplied America’s military machine and its European allies between 1941 and 1945.

Also told, with great emotional impact, is the largely untold story of how these seamen successfully fought to maintain their union conditions against employers who sought government (and military) intervention to override collective bargaining agreements and place the civilian sailors under military authority – at times sinking to red-baiting to garner public support. But the men stayed under the banner of the maritime unions; as a result, the workforce was racially integrated, and working conditions were usually protected – a terrible irony in light of the fact that the merchant seamen suffered a casualty rate triple that of any branch of the military during the war.

Abandoned By Uncle Sam
The film’s tension mounts as several survivors, interviewed on board the Jeremiah O’Brien, the last unaltered Liberty Ship, describe not only their wartime experience, but also the bitterness and anger at being abandoned at the war’s end. Denied health and social benefits under the GI Bill, by 1950 many also had their seamen’s papers revoked as political screening swept the ships of alleged communists and other security risks – a persecution resisted also by the ILWU. Those interviewed include ILWU pensioner Bill Bailey.

Throughout the film, on which Local 34 retiree Don Watson was associate producer, we are reminded by rare images (and a refreshingly simple narrative carried forward by composer Bob Navarra’s remarkable original score) of the strong bond between seamen and longshore workers – of the common strength forged in 1934, the shared burdens of handling hazardous cargo, and standing together to maintain union contracts while fully supporting the war effort.

There is also attention to details of life aboard ship, as well as the horrors of war – and the lasting traumas of watching shipwrecked shipmates suffer agonizing deaths caused by freezing seas, feeding sharks, and enemy submarines that besieged the supply convoys in the North Atlantic, including the famous Murmansk Run to the Soviet Union.

Noble Wartime Workers
Underlying it all is the nobility of the working men and women who built America’s merchant fleet (over 650,000 shipyard workers built nearly 2,751 Liberty Ships in just four years – nearly half of the wartime total of 6,000 merchant vessels), and of the men who sailed them under impossible conditions (“suicide missions” they were called by Navy personnel assigned in 1942 to staff the inadequate shipboard gun emplacements).

If you are after more information about how WWII was fought, or about the merchant fleet, or seamen and their unions; or if you just enjoy fine documentary films, this is a superb and moving film you won’t want to miss.