Seapower - October 2012

Few Ships Remain as Legacies
Of the Cuban Missile Crisis
By DAVID F. WINKLER

In a climactic moment during the Cuban Missile Crisis, on Oct. 26, 1962, a party with participants from the destroyers USS Joseph P. Kennedy and John R. Pierce boarded what is often described as the Soviet freighter Marucla. The boarding occurred four days after President John F. Kennedy’s announcement that the U.S. Navy would implement a quarantine around the island of Cuba in response to the Soviet introduction of medium-range ballistic missiles there.

Though the Soviets did charter the ship to haul materials to Cuba, Marucla carried the flag of Lebanon, was British owned, and actually had been constructed during 1943 in Baltimore and placed into service as Ben H. Miller, one of more than 2,700 Liberty ships built to transport allied materials during the struggle against the Axis powers.

In 1947, Ben H. Miller was acquired by the Ellerman & Bucknall Steamship Co. of London and flew the British merchant marine flag as City of Shrewsbury. In 1959, another London shipping firm, Marcou and Sons, acquired the ship, renamed it Marucla, and placed it under the flag of Lebanon.

After the U.S. Navy boarding party found no missile components or suspicious materials during its search, Marucla was allowed to continue to Cuba, but U.S. forces had demonstrated that they did indeed intend to enforce the quarantine.

Fifty years later, it is possible to visit Joseph P. Kennedy, one of a few Cuban Missile Crisis veterans that are preserved in America’s naval historic ships fleet. Now designated a National Historic Landmark and member of the Historic Naval Ships Association, Kennedy is open to the public at Battleship Cove, Fall River, Mass.

Another Cuban Missile Crisis veteran vessel available for touring is the display ship Barry, which rests pierside at the Washington Navy Yard. As with Joseph P. Kennedy, it was homeported at Newport, R.I. Its duties during the crisis included operating as a screening vessel and plane guard for the aircraft carrier Essex, doing anti-submarine warfare surveillance on a Foxtrot-class submarine, and performing an inspection on the Soviet-registered Metallurg Anosov following the Soviet decision to withdraw its missiles from Cuba.

The destroyer The Sullivans, located at the Buffalo and Lake Erie County, N.Y., Naval and Military Park, also participated as one of the quarantine ships during the

Cuban Missile Crisis. It, too, had been homeported in Newport.

Another major combatant that played a role in the crisis is awaiting disposal at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard at Bremerton, Wash., is the aircraft carrier Independence. It, however, is not available for public touring.

One mothballed ship that may one day be open to the public is Charles F. Adams, which currently is located at the Navy’s Inactive Ships Maintenance Facility in Philadelphia. Adams is being sought as a floating museum by a group in Jacksonville, Fla. The Navy’s first keel-up built guided-missile destroyer, it had been involved in the recovery of astronaut Walter Schirra in Mercury 8 in early October 1962 before being reassigned to support the Cuban Missile Crisis quarantine operation.

And though Marucla was cut up in a Hong Kong scrapyard in 1969, it is possible to tour World War II-vintage Liberty ships at three locations. Overseas, Hellas Liberty is on display near Athens. It had been laid up by the Maritime Administration for decades in Virginia’s James River as SS Arthur M. Huddel and was acquired by Greece in 2008 to serve as a museum ship to tell the story of Greece’s merchant marine heritage.

In the United States, both the Baltimore-based John W. Brown and San Francisco-ported Jeremiah O’Brien enable visitors to walk the decks of sister ships of Marucla. These two historic ships are unique in that both still are operational and offer excursions to the public.

As with Marucla, John W. Brown traces its lineage to Baltimore’s Bethlehem-Fairbanks Shipyard.

One other major combatant involved in the Cuban Missile Crisis is not available to the public because it is still serving — at least for now. USS Enterprise, the other attack aircraft carrier involved in the crisis, will be returning to homeport in Norfolk, Va., following its final deployment to the Fifth Fleet in the Middle East.

Enterprise is scheduled for inactivation on Dec. 1. A final opportunity for Enterprise Sailors, family, fans and friends to visit and tour the aircraft carrier will be Nov. 27-30.