SS Jeremiah O'Brien is a Liberty ship built during World War II and named for American Revolutionary War ship captain Jeremiah O'Brien (1744–1818). Now based in San Francisco, the O'Brien is the sole survivor of the 6,939-ship armada[1] that stormed Normandy on D-Day, 1944,[2] and one of only two currently operational WWII Liberty ships afloat of the 2,751 built during the war (the other being the SS John W. Brown based in Baltimore).
Built in just 57 days at the New England Shipbuilding Co. in South Portland, Maine, and launched on June 19, 1943, this class EC2-S-CI ship not only made four perilous round trip wartime crossings of the Atlantic and served on D-Day, the vessel later saw sixteen months of service in both the South Pacific and the Indian Ocean calling at ports in Chile, Peru, New Guinea, the Philippines, India, China, and Australia.
In 1994 the O'Brien, in its eighth voyage, (the previous seven were during WWII) steamed through the Golden Gate, down the west coast, through the Panama Canal, and across the Atlantic to England and France, where the O'Brien and its crew (a volunteer crew of veteran WWII-era sailors and a few cadets from the California Maritime Academy), participated in the 50th Anniversary of Operation Overlord, the allied invasion at Normandy that turned the tide of WWII in Europe . . . the only large ship from the original Normandy flotilla to return for the 50th anniversary celebration
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