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SS William MacLay

liberty ship of WWII

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionDec 16, 2025
Entity authorityQ86755020
Source-derived summary

SS William MacLay was a Liberty ship built in the United States during World War II. She was named after William MacLay, a politician from Pennsylvania during the eighteenth century. Maclay, along with Robert Morris, was a member of Pennsylvania's first two-member delegation to the United States Senate. Following his tenure in the Senate, he served in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives on two separate occasions, as a county judge, and as a presidential elector.

Construction

William MacLay was laid down on 24 April 1942, under a Maritime Commission (MARCOM) contract, MCE hull 47, by the Bethlehem-Fairfield Shipyard, Baltimore, Maryland; sponsored by Mrs. John W. Whiling, the wife local ABS surveyor at Bethlehem-Fairfield Shipyard, and was launched on 22 June 1942.

History

She was allocated to A.H. Bull & Co., Inc., on 7 July 1942. On 10 December 1947, she was laid up in the National Defense Reserve Fleet, Mobile, Alabama. She was sold for scrapping on 26 April 1967, to Union Minerals & Alloys Corp., for $45,501. She was withdrawn from the fleet on 18 May 1967.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “SS William MacLay” as liberty ship of WWII. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around William, MacLay and liberty.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1942, 1947, 1967—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with William, MacLay and liberty providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “SS William MacLay”, the useful work is to connect “liberty ship of WWII” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 16, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q86755020. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1942, 1947 and 1967.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  • Locating named sources
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

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  2. Expand the search: follow SS William MacLay primary sources, SS William MacLay archive and William research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from SS William MacLay” 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.