She was born the SS Ridgefield.
Is it true that a World War II ship bore the name of the town of Ridgefield?
Early in the war, the U.S. Maritime Commission decided that hundreds of fuel tankers, or “oilers” as they were called, were needed to support the troops and that they should be named after historic battles, monuments, national parks, forts, and settlements. Since our town was the site of the Battle of Ridgefield in the Revolution, one ship was dubbed the SS Ridgefield.
Of course, petroleum was a critical need throughout the theaters of war to fuel ships and planes as well as trucks, tanks, jeeps, and all sorts of other military vehicles. The Maritime Commission ordered 481 “T2-style” tankers built from 1942 to 1945. Like all T2’s, the SS Ridgefield was 523 feet long, weighed 10,500 gross tons, had a speed of up to 16 knots, could carry some 6 million gallons, and had a cruising range of more than 12,000 miles.
These vessels were turned out with amazing speed. The keel for the Ridgefield was laid on March 23, 1944, and the ship was launched 15 weeks later, on July 7, and put into service on July 22.
T2s plied the seas around the world. Some were torpedoed in the North Atlantic or Caribbean, some were shipwrecked, some fell apart, but most survived the war.
Because they were made in such a hurry, they were not of the highest quality. A number of them broke apart during and after the war. In the early 1950s, two T2s, Pendleton and Fort Mercer, split in two off Cape Cod within hours of each other, prompting a U.S. Coast Guard investigation. At first poor welding techniques were blamed, but later studies found that the wartime steel had too high a sulfur content, which made the metal turn brittle at lower temperatures. Many of the ships were then reinforced with steel straps.
Ridgefield’s fame as a ship name did not last long. While the tanker survived the war, the name didn’t. The vessel was sold in 1947 to Esso, which renamed it Esso Purfleet — Purfleet is a town in England with a large fuel depot. The vessel remained in use until 1963, when it was scrapped at Willebroek, Belgium.
Many other T2s were scrapped, but a few continued to be used into this century; a couple may still be working. One, the SS Saugatuck, had been mothballed as a military vessel in Virginia until 2006.
On April 27, 2000, the 223rd anniversary of the Battle of Ridgefield, special postal “covers” were hand-canceled at the Ridgefield post office to commemorate the SS Ridgefield. They incorrectly said the ship was built in 1945.—J.S.
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