United States Maritime Commission

The United States Maritime Commission was an independent executive agency of the U.S. federal government that was created by the Merchant Marine Act of 1936, which was passed by Congress on June 29, 1936, and was abolished on May 24, 1950.

By the end of the war, U.S. shipyards working under Maritime Commission contracts had built a total of 5,777 oceangoing merchant and naval ships and many smaller vessels.

The last major shipbuilding project undertaken by the Commission was to oversee the design and construction of the super passenger liner SS United States which was intended to be both a symbol of American technological might and maritime predominance but also could be quickly converted into the world's fastest naval troop transport.

The ships were also intended to serve as a reserve naval auxiliary force in the event of armed conflict which was a duty the U.S. merchant fleet had often filled throughout the years since the Revolutionary War.

The second role given to the Maritime Commission was to administer a subsidy system authorized by the Act which would offset the differential cost between both building in the U.S. and operating ships under the American flag.

The other four members of the Commission in the years before the beginning of World War II were a mix of retired naval officers and men from disciplines of law and business.

The WSA was added to the list of wartime agencies created within the Roosevelt Administration and was intended to relieve the already full plate of responsibilities of the Commission, yet they shared the same Chairman in Admiral Land and so worked very closely together.

This facilitated the rebuilding of the fleets of both allied nations such as Great Britain, Norway and Greece which had lost a majority of their prewar vessels to the Battles of the Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea.

Ships were also used in both the rebuilding programs under the Marshall Plan and the transport of food aid sent during the desperate winter of 1945-46 when famine loomed large over much of the European continent.

Many of those same ships continued to sail until the early 1980s but most had been sold for scrap in the 1960s and 1970s as more modern designs were developed and more efficient slow speed diesel engines introduced to replace the steamships which predominated those built by the Commission during the war years.

The last major shipbuilding project undertaken by the Commission was to oversee the design and construction of the super passenger liner SS United States, which was intended to be both a symbol of American technological might and maritime predominance but also could be quickly converted into the world's fastest naval troop transport.