Letters to the Editor

Originally published April 2023 · pp. 11

Letters to the

Editor

Letter to the Editor: Your coverage of the A.P. Hill reburial prompts me to send this note regarding a significant A.P. Hill artifact that is lost and I hope can be found. One of the industrial miracles of WWII was the Liberty Ship program which, using mass production techniques, built more than 2,700 cargo vessels. As part of its effort to enlist all factions of the nation behind the war effort, the U.S. named many Liberty Ships after historical Americans. Among them were 85 bearing the names of Confederate soldiers, statesmen, and public officials. On October 15, 1942, the SS A.P. Hill was launched in Houston, Texas. These vessels were not built to last, and after serving honorably during the war and continuing to provide service for years afterward, the Hill was scrapped in 1965. A group called the Liberty Ship Memorial Program, saved the ship’s bronze name plate. You can view a typical name plate (for a different

Liberty Ship) by following this link: https://www.mainememory. net/artifact/17271. On October 15, 1966, the A.P. Hill nameplate was presented in a public ceremony to Mr. Robert Y. Button on behalf of the Stonewall Jackson Memorial Inc. He, in turn, passed it to the President of the Memorial, Mr. Jay W. Johns. According to coverage in the New York Times, the name plate was given “for preservation as a monument to the ship and to Gen. A.P. Hill.” In time the Jackson Memorial operation completed its mission and disbanded. There was no further mention of the A.P. Hill’s name plate. I have identified three archive/libraries holding materials from the Jackson Memorial group. Each reported that they held papers and not any objects. The whereabouts of the Hill’s name plate remains a mystery. It’s both a part of WW II history as only a small number of name plates survive, and part of the larger A.P. Hill story. I write this in the hope that some of your readers may have seen the name plate or know something about where it might be. It really needs to be preserved and displayed. It is the only name plate for a Confederatenamed Liberty Ship that was so preserved. The editor has my e-mail address and can pass along any sightings to me. Noah Andre Trudeau