During WWII the United States was producing many ships. Each ship took an average of one week to complete and there were many shipyards working in unison on the war time project. But, what happened to these ships after the war? The Navy did not need that many ships, so quite a few were sold to the private industry. This is the story of one of those ships.
In 1944 the Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corp. built a US Navy standard ship type C3 named the USS Queens. Then in 1948 she was purchased by American Export Lines for use as a Mediterranean cruise ship with the new name SS Excambion (II). In 1958 she was returned to the Maritime Administration under a trade-in program. She went to the National Defense Reserve Fleet, Hudson River Group. There she sat until 1965 when she was loaned to the Texas Maritime Academy for use as a merchant marine officer training ship under the new name of USTS Texas Clipper. She remained in that service until she was intentionally sunk on November 17th 2007 to be an artificial reef.
-Professor Walter
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