liberty ship
Sign in to savecargo ships built in the United States during World War II
Key facts
- Name
- Liberty ship
- Builders
- 18 shipyards in the United States
- Operators
- U.S. Maritime Commission & War Shipping Administration , United States Navy (attack cargo ships only)
- Succeeded by
- Victory ship
- Cost
- US$ 2 million ($46 million in 2025) per ship
- Planned
- 2,751
- Completed
- 2,710
- Active
- 2 (Traveling museum ships )
- Class type
- Cargo ship
- Tonnage
- 7,176 GRT , 10,865 DWT
- Displacement
- 14,245 long tons (14,474 t)
- Length
- 441 ft 6 in (134.57 m)
- Beam
- 56 ft 10.75 in (17.3 m)
- Draft
- 27 ft 9.25 in (8.5 m)
- Propulsion
- Two oil-fired boilers triple-expansion steam engine single screw, 2,500 hp (1,900 kW)
- Speed
- 11–11.5 knots (20.4–21.3 km/h; 12.7–13.2 mph)
- Range
- 20,000 nmi (37,000 km; 23,000 mi)
- Complement
- 38–62 USMM 21–40 USNAG
via Wikipedia infobox
~38 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Liberty ships are a class of cargo ship built in the United States during World War II under the Emergency Shipbuilding Program. Although British in concept, the design was adopted by the United States for its simple, low-cost construction. Mass-produced on an unprecedented scale, the Liberty ship came to symbolize U.S. wartime industrial output.
The class was developed to meet British orders for transports to replace ships that had been lost. Eighteen American shipyards built 2,710 Liberty ships between 1941 and 1945 (an average of three ships every two days), easily the largest number of ships ever produced to a single design.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “liberty ship” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.