N.C.'s Liberty Armada-- Part 14 Launching the Liberty Ships SS Vance, Dare and McKay

Several very interesting photographs accompanied the article.

**  Crews prepare the SS Zebulon B. Vance for its launch from the North Carolina Shipbuilding Company, which stood at the site of the current Port of Wilmington.

**  Building Liberty Ships was dangerous and deadly.  Some 115,000 workers were injured and 15 died during the five years the North Carolina Shipbuilding Company was in operation.  Shows the cranes and at least two Liberty Ships under construction, one of which was the SS Virginia Dare, named after the first white English child born in the New World.  She was born at what is now called the Lost Colony on Roanoke Island.

**   On July 30, 1942, the SS James I McKay was christened in Wilmington by Mary West Cromartie, a descendant of the ship's namesake, a North Carolina congressman from the 1800s.   Shows the bottle of champagne breaking on the bow.

--GreGen