By Tom Debley
Director of Heritage Resources
Sixty-five years ago this 4th of July weekend, World War II was drawing to close and one of the last of the Kaiser-built ships for the war, the SS Multnomah, was launched in Portland, Oregon.
Henry J. Kaiser, who had witnessed his boyhood hero Teddy Roosevelt as the trust-busting President fighting monopolistic business practices, had lived through the Great Depression and he had a vision of a better post-war America.
“If we re-build a world of monopoly and special privilege, we will taste a defeat as bitter as a victory for the Axis powers,” he once said during World War II. “Our task and our hope is to release our energies for creative effort. …It is now our portion to be better-fed, better-housed, better-clothed, better-skilled in all the arts of production than at any time in the history of mankind. It is now our lot to enjoy better health…”
It was for visions like this that Kaiser, whose desire for better health for all Americans became Kaiser Permanente, led a heroic civilian production army of Kaiser employees who set records in shipbuilding never matched before or since.
So we thought it would be a good Fourth of July moment to let you relive those times by bringing you, from our Heritage Archive, a recording of the launch of the SS Multnomah, a tanker named for the county where the main city is Portland, on July 3, 1945 – 65 years ago Saturday.
The Multnomah was among the last of the Kaiser ships launched from his Oregon shipyards.
Launch of the SS Multnomah
Click on left side triangle to listen.
This photo is of the SS Multnomah under her second name, the Esso Worcester, sailing as a privately owned oil tanker.
Click on the bar to hear the launch of the SS Multnomah from the Swan Island Shipyard by Mrs. Martin Pratt, who was the wife of the Multnomah County sheriff. You will hear the crack of the champagne bottle and a shipyard workers quartet, the Singing Sentinels, singing Anchor’s Away as the Multnomah slides into the Willamette River.
Typical launch of a Kaiser ship in Oregon during World War II is show, this being the Liberty Ship William Clark. The steel plate aloft is the keel plate for the next ship to be built, the plates being lowered into place as the just launched ship hit the water.
The SS Multnomah went into private shipping after the war as an oil tanker. It was renamed the Esso Worcester in 1947, the Hess Refiner in 1961 and the Pieces in 1976. The ship was scrapped in Taiwan in 1984 after 39 years service.
