The North American Great Lakes were an area of strategic importance in the United States (US) during WWII. Iron ore needed to be transported to steel making plants along the Great Lakes. Shipyards on the shores of the Great Lakes built military vessels. Types of ships built were cargo ships, tugboats, submarines, and other vessels.
After ships were launched in the Great Lakes, they made their way down to Chicago (Illinois), transited the Chicago Drainage Canal, traveled through other waterways connecting with the Mississippi River, and sailed south to the Gulf of Mexico where they were placed in service.
The US Coast Guard was assigned duty on the Great Lakes to guard against sabotage and to keep shipping lanes open. Duties included manning lookout stations which monitored shipping lanes, patrolling harbors, and guarding bridges, docks, and ships. The most powerful “designated” icebreaker of the time, the United States Ship (USS) Mackinaw, kept ice out of shipping channels in winter months.
Kewaunee (Wisconsin) Shipbuilding and Engineering on the shore of Lake Michigan was one of the shipbuilding locations during WWII. The company, founded in 1941, received a government contract to build military ships. Eighty vessels, cargo ships and tugboats, were built between 1941 and 1946. The shipyard employed 400 workers. One of the workers was my father, Stanley “Jocko” O’Konski.
It is at Kewaunee Shipbuilding and Engineering that the tale of Freight and Passenger (FP)-344 begins. FP-344 was a cargo ship, built originally for the US Army, launched in April 1944, and survived WWII. By 1967, then a US Navy ship, it was refitted for intelligence gathering and sent to the Pacific.
The US Navy had changed the name of FP-344 to the USS Pueblo. The ship was captured by North Korea January 23, 1968, and the action is known in history as the Pueblo incident. During the capture of the ship, a sailor, Duane Hodges, was killed. The remaining 82 crew members were held in North Korea until December 23, 1968, when they were released after US and North Korean negotiations.
The USS Pueblo is still in North Korea. The US Navy has never decommissioned the ship.
Kewaunee Shipbuilding and Engineering continues today as Kewaunee Fabrications.
An area of interest, although not addressed in this post, is the history of the US Lighthouse Service. Founded in 1910, it was merged with the US Coast Guard in 1939 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as WWII became imminent.
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