In 1944 she was commissioned into the United States Navy as USS President Warfield (IX-169), a station and accommodation ship for the D-Day landing on Omaha Beach.

Having been built only for service in the relatively sheltered waters of Chesapeake Bay, President Warfield needed to be altered to cross the North Atlantic safely.

Coast Lines of Liverpool, England, provided British Merchant Navy crews for President Warfield and the other coastal packet ships to bring them from the US to Britain.

A crew commanded by Captain JR Williams took over President Warfield, and on September 21, 1942, she left St John's in Convoy RB 1 to Liverpool.

She left active Navy service on September 13, was struck from the US Naval Vessel Register on October 11 and was returned to the War Shipping Administration on November 14.

[citation needed]In 1945 the British government reaffirmed its 1939 policy limiting Jewish immigration which it adopted after a quarter of a million European Jews arrived fleeing Nazism, and Palestine's Arab population rebelled.

President Warfield was deemed well-suited for this because she was relatively fast, sturdy enough to not easily capsize, made of steel which would help her to withstand ramming, and was taller than the Royal Navy destroyers that would be trying to board her.

It was risky to put passengers on her, and it was felt[clarification needed] this would either compel the British authorities to let her pass the blockade because of the danger, or damage Britain's international reputation.

[citation needed] For months, teams of Palestinian Jews and Americans worked on Exodus 1947 in order to make it harder for British forces to her take over.

On February 25, 1947, she left Baltimore for Marseille, but she ran into bad weather in the Virginia Capes and then a heavy sea about 75 nautical miles (139 km) east of Diamond Shoals.

The coast guard cutter USCGC Cherokee arrived to tow her back to safety, but the weather eased and President Warfield was able to reach Norfolk, VA under her own power.

[32] Haganah issued them with 2,000 forged passports, with visas for Colombia, with which French immigration officers allowed them to embark on President Warfield.

The name was proposed by Israeli politician and military figure Moshe Sneh, who at the time was in charge of illegal migration for the Jewish Agency.

[34] Each day during the voyage, the Royal Navy ship shadowing her came within hailing distance of Exodus 1947 and asked whether she was carrying any migrants to Palestine.

As Exodus 1947 neared Palestinian territorial waters, her Royal Navy escort was increased to five destroyers and two minesweepers, led by the light cruiser HMS Ajax.

[44] At about 0200 hrs on July 18, about 20 nautical miles (40 km) from the Palestinian coast, two Royal Navy destroyers came alongside Exodus 1947, one either side, converged on her, and jammed her between them.

The destroyers dropped gangways onto Exodus 1947 and sent a boarding party of 50 Royal Marines, armed with clubs and tear gas, onto the packet boat.

Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin suggested this and the request was relayed to General Sir Alan Cunningham, High Commissioner for Palestine,[50] who agreed with the plan after consulting the Navy.

[50]The Royal Navy brought Exodus 1947 into Haifa, where her passengers were transferred to three larger and more seaworthy ships for deportation: Empire Rival, Ocean Vigour and Runnymede Park.

... Our opponents in France, and I dare say in other countries, have made great play with the fact that these immigrants were being kept behind barbed wire, in concentration camps and guarded by Germans.

"[56] Coulson advised that Britain apply as best they could a counter-spin to the story: "If we decide it is convenient not to keep them in camps any longer, I suggest that we should make some play that we are releasing them from all restraint of this kind in accordance with their wishes and that they were only put in such accommodation for the preliminary necessities of screening and maintenance.

A confidential report of the time noted: "It was known that the Jews on the Runnymede Park were under the leadership of a young, capable and energetic fanatic, Morenci Miry Rosman, and throughout the operation it had been realised that this ship might give trouble."

Describing the assault, the officer wrote to his superiors: "After a very short pause, with a lot of yelling and female screams, every available weapon up to a biscuit and bulks of timber was hurled at the soldiers.

One of the official observers who witnessed the violence was Dr Noah Barou, secretary of the British section of the World Jewish Congress, who described young soldiers beating Holocaust survivors as a "terrible mental picture": "They went into the operation as a football match ... and it seemed evident that they had not had it explained to them that they were dealing with people who had suffered a lot and who are resisting in accordance with their convictions.

The British denied using excessive force, yet conceded that in one case a Jew "was dragged down the gangway by the feet with his head bumping on the wooden slats".

But the Jewish allegations of cruel and insensitive treatment would not go away and on October 6, 1947, the Foreign Office sent a telegram to the British commanders in the region demanding to know whether the camps really were surrounded with barbed wire and guarded by German staff.

On September 29, 1947, Zionist Irgun and Lehi militants blew up the Palestine Police Force headquarters in Haifa in retaliation for the British deportation of Jewish migrants who arrived on Exodus 1947.

Abba Khoushy, the Mayor of Haifa, proposed in 1950 that the "Ship that Launched a Nation" should be restored and converted into a floating museum of the Aliyah Bet.

Her ship's bell is in the Mariners' Museum in Newport News, Virginia and her steam whistle is on the roof of the New York Central Iron Works in Hagerstown, Maryland.

[67] The memorial, designed by Israeli sculptor Sam Philipe, is made of bronze in the shape of an anchor, symbolically representing the role Exodus 1947 played in the birth of the modern State of Israel, mounted on a relief map of the country.