The SS San Pedro shredded in a...
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The SS San Pedro shredded in a Taiwanese scrap factory?
Richard Connelly couldn’t stand the thought.
He couldn’t save the whole ship--it was, after all, 595 feet long and it weighed 23,000 tons when loaded--but Connelly, who captained the container ship on many a journey across the Pacific from 1970 to 1973, did what he could.
The retired captain telephoned his former employer, the Sealand Corp., which commissioned Todd Shipyards to build the San Pedro in 1969. He told the company that he was interested in the ship’s name boards--the identifying signs that hang from the ship’s bridge.
The New Jersey-based company complied, rescuing the name boards from the shredder. Wednesday night, in a ceremony at the Los Angeles Maritime Museum, Connelly presented the 12-foot-long name boards, which have been refinished in a mahogany color with gold lettering, to two San Pedro institutions: one to the museum and the other to the Seaman’s Church Institute.
“It’s only fitting,” said Connelly, “that the name was returned home to where it came from.”
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