SS William J. Bryan
liberty ship of WWII

SS William J. Bryan was a Liberty ship built in the United States during World War II. She was named after William J. Bryan, a member of the US House of Representatives from Nebraska, a three time Democratic Party presidential nominee, and United States Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson.
Construction
William J. Bryan was laid down on 21 September 1942, under a United States Maritime Commission (MARCOM) contract, MC hull 1522, by J.A. Jones Construction, Panama City, Florida; she was launched on 22 April 1943.
History
She was allocated to the Standard Fruit & Steamship Company, on 20 May 1943. On 10 June 1946, she was laid up in the National Defense Reserve Fleet, in the Hudson River Group. On 26 March 1948, she was laid up in the National Defense Reserve Fleet, in Wilmington, North Carolina. On 20 July 1965, she was sold for $45,278.78, to Union Minerals and Alloys Corporation, for scrapping. She was removed from the fleet on 20 August 1965.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “SS William J. Bryan” is liberty ship of WWII. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through William, Bryan and liberty, not as a finished interpretation.
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This entry incorporates text from “SS William J. Bryan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.