“Let the sea roll high or low”

[ABOVE: Louis Claes (photographer), S. S. Meredith Victory, 1968—[CC0 1.0 universal] Museum aan de Stroom]

IN DECEMBER 1950 the SS Meredith Victory entered the mine-filled harbor of Hungnam, Korea, to assist in the evacuation of civilians from war. Meant to carry freight for the US war effort, the ship was designed to accommodate fewer than 50 total crew and passengers. The 14,000 North Korean civilians who embarked in Hungnam were packed into the cargo holds. On Christmas Day, after a transit with no food or water for the evacuees, the Meredith Victory arrived at Geoje Island, South Korea. Each of the 14,000 refugees who had embarked in Hungnam disembarked on Geoje Island—along with five babies born during the three-day voyage. For conducting the largest evacuation from land by a single ship, the Meredith Victory earned the congressional designation “Gallant Ship.”

Though this event took place during wartime, the Meredith Victory was not a United States Navy man-of-war, but a ship in the United States Merchant Marine. And the crew, including Captain Leonard LaRue, were not members of the armed forces but merchant mariners.

UNARMED BUT UNAFRAID

All noncombatant vessels in the waterborne commerce of a country, whether transporting cargo or passengers, comprise its merchant marine or fleet. Most seafarers throughout history served on these types of vessels and can be referred to as merchant mariners.

The merchant fleet of the United States is as old as the republic, and its tales are captured in works by classic American authors such as Herman Melville (1819–1891) and Richard Henry Dana (1815–1882). The United States Merchant Marine became especially popular, however, in the first half of the twentieth century, because it played such a significant role in both the US economy and passenger transportation at that time and in support of the armed forces in World Wars I and II.

Merchant sailors who serve during wartime face the double force of nature and war at sea. In the words of the American merchant mariners’ song:

Let the sea roll high or low,

We can cross any ocean, sail any river.

Give us the goods and we’ll deliver.

Damn the submarine!

We’re the men of the Merchant Marine.

Unlike combatants in wartime, however, merchant marine vessels are unarmed and depend upon armed escorts. (With no escorts for protection and Captain LaRue’s pistol as the only weapon aboard, the Meredith Victory was particularly vulnerable.)

Over 7,000 mariners lost their lives on merchant ships during the two world wars. The Mariners’ Memorial Chapel in Kings Point, New York, was constructed to memorialize their sacrifice. There a leather-bound Roll of Honor Book inscribed with their names remains open. Every day a page is turned so that all mariners listed will be remembered by those praying there.

LEGACY OF MIRACLES

With no dedicated chaplain corps, the intersection of Christianity and the US Merchant Marine is found in the lives of individual Christian mariners aboard vessels such as the Meredith Victory—the “Ship of Miracles” as it became known. After the war Captain LaRue became a Benedictine monk and took a monastic name befitting his experience on the sea: Brother Marinus. Reflecting on the Hungnam rescue, he later said:

I think often of that voyage. I think of how such a small vessel was able to hold so many persons and surmount endless perils without harm to a soul. And, as I think, the clear, unmistakable message comes to me that on that Christmastide, in the bleak and bitter waters off the shores of Korea, God’s own hand was at the helm of my ship.