• Significance: The American Racer is a cargo ship designed to carry general, refrigerated, and liquid freight in express ocean service. Propelled by steam turbines geared to a single screw, the ship features one of the earliest engine-automation systems installed aboard an American vessel. This system permits direct control of engine speed from the wheel house and centralized control and monitoring of the propulsion plant and other mechanical systems. It was designed to reduce the number of men needed to run the ship as well as to improve operational safety and efficiency.

The career of the American Racer demonstrates how rapidly the technology of international shipping changed in the mid 1960s as companies worldwide adopted intermodal, containerized freight handling. Although state-of-the-art when new in 1964, the ship was essentially a traditional break-bulk freighter, although its hatch and hold dimensions were calculated to accommodate shipping containers if needed. In February 1966 -just fifteen months after the ship entered service - United States Lines, its owners, modified it to carry more than 200 containers but retained some of its break-bulk capacity. Twenty-eight months later, this mixed arrangement had proven uneconomical, so the company converted the ship back to full break-bulk stowage and chartered it to the U.S. government for use in the sealift of materiel to Vietnam. The movement of world shipping toward containers had rendered the American Racer obsolete for commercial liner service in less than four years.

United States Lines traded the ship in to the government in 1983, after more than a decade on charter, and the American Racer has remained ever since in the reserve fleet at Suisun Bay, California.

• Survey number: HAER CA-346
• Building/structure dates: 1963 Initial Construction
• Building/structure dates: 1964 Subsequent Work
• Building/structure dates: 1966 Subsequent Work
• Building/structure dates: 1968 Subsequent Work

Related names:

Freide and Goldman, Inc., Naval Architects and Marine Engineers; United States Lines Company; Maritime Adminstration; Sun Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company; Roosevelt, Suzanne; Maryland Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company; U.S. Shipping Board; P. W. Chapman and Company; American Merchant Lines; International Mercantile Marine Company; McLean Securities, Inc.; Moore-McCormack Lines; Bachko, Nicholas; Patterson, Richard; Military Sea Transportation Service; Cargocaire Engineering Corporation; Welin Davit and Boat; General Electric; Babcock and Wilcox Company; Bailey Motor Company; Lidgerwood Manufacturing Company; U.S. Maritime Administration, sponsor; Croteau, Todd, program coordinator; Voulgaris, Barbara, sponsor; Christianson, Justine, transmitter; Dubard, Bryana, field team; Walker, Ashley T, field team