By Donna Beth Weilenman
Staff Reporter

The American Racer is still in Suisun Bay.

The first container ship to cross the North Atlantic that later was involved in the final evacuation of Vietnamese refugees in 1975 was expected to leave the Reserve Fleet at Suisun Bay Friday morning.

But there’s no room at any of the San Francisco dry docks to prepare the vessel for its final voyage, to Texas-based recyclers by way of the Panama Canal, a Maritime Administration spokesman said.

Photo courtesy navysite.de
The S.S. American Racer

“We’re in negotiations,” said Cheron Victoria Wicker, director of the office of Congressional and Public Affairs for MARAD. “It’s not going anywhere soon.”

However, she said the delay isn’t expected to impact the administration’s schedule to have 57 obsolete ships pulled from their moorings in Suisun Bay by Sept. 30, 2017.

Eleven ships have been towed to Texas for dismantling since MARAD announced last October it would begin removing those non-retention ships, she said. The American Racer is next in the queue, after which the American Reliance, the Hess, the Bay and the Dawn will be towed away.

The S.S. American Racer was built at Sun Shipbuilding and Drydock in Chester, Pa., in 1964, making it among the younger ships of those that will be recycled. It became part of a fleet involved trans-Atlantic container service started by United States Lines. The first to carry containers to Rotterdam, it and three sister ships operated a weekly service between the United States east coast and the Dutch port. It was used in the commercial trades its entire career, although briefly it served at the end of the Vietnam War.

In 1975, it joined nine other ships that helped evacuate thousands of Vietnamese refugees who left their country at the end of the Vietnam War. Because of the Paris Agreement’s prohibition of military forces, noncombat ships were chosen for the mission. At one point, the ship was under fire, but took no damage.

The ship entered the Reserve Fleet in 1983 and was downgraded to inactive reserve in 2001.

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