Permission to come aboard? Granted

With the North Beach Festival unfolding in all its crass and vulgar commercial glory down the street, we avert our eyes from the spectacle and contemplate things of value rather than cost.

We’ll celebrate something valuable this coming Tuesday, when the World War II Liberty ship Jeremiah O’Brien is feted two days shy of the 65th anniversary of its launching from the New England Shipbuilding Corp. yard in Portland, Maine.

Of the 2,751 Liberty ships constructed as part of the most desperate shipbuilding program of all time, only the O’Brien and the John W. Brown, ported in Baltimore, survive.

The O’Brien, tied up near the World War II submarine USS Pampanito at Pier 45, made four wartime crossings of the Atlantic and was part of the vast Allied armada off the Normandy invasion beaches before moving to the South Pacific.

The centerpiece of Tuesday’s program, which kicks off a week-long anniversary celebration, is an advance on-board screening of “Hero Ships: SS Jeremiah O’Brien,” part of a 13-episode series coming from The History Channel.

Tickets for this evening, which begins with a reception at 5:30, are $25 in advance, $30 at the gangplank. If you’re interested in attending, order tickets by calling 544-0100 or going to the O'Brien's website.  

Accompanying me to the O’Brien will be Jean Dierkes-Carlisle from the neighborhood, whose father served aboard the Stephen Hopkins, another Liberty ship that made history during World War II, becoming the only U.S. vessel to be involved in the sinking of a German surface warship.

Dierkes-Carlisle’s father, Charles Fitzgerald, was first assistant engineer aboard the Hopkins when it encountered the German raider Stier in the south Atlantic on the morning of Sept. 27, 1942. Ordered by the raider to stop, the Hopkins instead turned hard to port and readied her after gun.

In a battle lasting just under an hour, the outgunned Hopkins was sunk, but not before inflicting so much damage to the Stier that her captain ordered the raider abandoned and scuttled. 

Most of the men aboard the Hopkins, including her commander and Fitzgerald, went down with the ship. Those who survived endured 31 days in an open boat before reaching safety in Brazil.

In 1984, a crewman from the Stier wrote to Dierkes-Carlisle, assuring her that the German blockade runner Tannenfels – which had been accompanying the Stier and picked up her crew – searched in vain for survivors from the Hopkins before leaving the area.

The entire story is told in a very engaging book, “Action in the South Atlantic,” by Gerald Reminick, which happens to be available in the O’Brien’s gift shop.