The SS Helga was a refrigerated cargo ship
built in 1933 for J. Lauritzen A/S Shipowners by the Helsingor Shipbuilding
Works at Elsinore, near Copenhagen, Denmark. She worked in the fruit trade
between Denmark and Central America and in 1938 was renamed SS Caravelle. The ship was re-named once
again in 1940 and called SS Marie.
After Denmark fell to the advancing German army in the spring of 1940, Marie became a ship without a country.
She was docked in the United States and literally had nowhere to go. Her
captain and crew also were not about to go back to Denmark just to hand over
the ship to the Germans. So on 11 August 1941, Marie was acquired by the US Navy from the United States Maritime
Commission and was placed in the Robbins Drydock Company yard at Brooklyn, New
York, for conversion into a refrigerated naval stores ship. She was given the
unfortunate name of USS Uranus
(AF-14), after the Greek God, and was commissioned on 27 October 1941. The
newly overhauled and now armed cargo ship
was approximately 269 feet long and 39 feet wide, had a top speed of 12
knots, and had a crew of 93 officers and men. Uranus carried two 3-inch guns and six 20-mm guns, and could
transport roughly 1,415 tons of cargo.
While Uranus was on her shakedown cruise, the
Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and the United States entered World War
II. Uranus left Norfolk, Virginia, on
20 December 1941 and headed for Halifax, Nova Scotia, arriving there on 24
December. Five days later, the ship departed for Iceland.
Uranus served as a floating refrigerated
storage vessel and provided stores and provisions to American forces on Iceland
until the summer of 1943. The ship divided its time among five ports along the
Icelandic coast, including Reykjavik, the capital. In these inhospitable and
stormy northern waters, Uranus ran
aground off Akureyi, Iceland, on 10 April 1943. She came to a stop on a sloping
gravel beach which was reputedly once the fairway between two holes of a
coastal golf course. After several attempts, the cargo ship was finally
refloated on 13 April with the assistance of USS Symbol (AM-123) and USS Kewaydin
(AT-24).
After
undergoing temporary repairs, Uranus
left Iceland on 21 August 1943 carrying men and equipment from a Navy
construction battalion on board. But, due to uncooperative winds and currents,
the ship did not arrive at her destination of Davisville, Rhode Island, until 3
September. After discharging her passengers, the ship steamed to New York,
arriving there three days later. Uranus
then returned to Norfolk, where she underwent a lengthy overhaul.
During her
overhaul, Uranus was given a new
refrigeration system. Once the overhaul was completed, the ship left the east
coast on 20 December 1943 and five days later rendezvoused with a convoy bound
for the Pacific. Uranus transited the
Panama Canal on 1 January 1944 and headed for Pearl Harbor two days later.
Proceeding independently, the ship reached Oahu, Hawaii, on 23 January.
Uranus completed two round-trip Pacific
journeys between San Francisco, California, and Pearl Harbor and Midway Island.
She then sailed to Majuro in the Marshall Islands. For the rest of 1944, Uranus carried cargo between Midway and
Pearl Harbor to the west and San Pedro, California, to the east. The ship
underwent another overhaul at San Francisco in April 1945 and remained based
there until the war ended in the Pacific. Uranus
then participated in “Magic Carpet” operations and brought veterans back to the
United States from various locations throughout the Pacific.
Uranus was sent back to Norfolk and was
decommissioned on 8 May 1946. She was given to the War Shipping Administration
of the Maritime Commission and was struck from the Navy List on 21 May. The
Maritime Commission returned the ship to her original owner, J. Lauritzen, and
it was placed under the Danish flag once again and re-named SS Maria Dan. The cargo ship was registered
at Esbjerg, Denmark, and carried wood pulp from the Baltic to Great Britain
until 1959. That same year, the ship was sold to Chrisot M. Sarlis in Patras,
Greece, and re-named SS Michael. This ship that began her career in Denmark,
survived a World War as a US Navy transport, and miraculously made its way back
to its original owner in Denmark after the war, was sold for scrapping to a
firm in Yugoslavia in 1968.
