Steamboats & Ferries

Following its long service in World War II, the luxury steamship President Warfield was sold for scrap in July 1947, then purchased within days for $40,000 by Haganah to carry Holocaust survivors from refugee camps in Europe to Palestine. Built by Pusey & Jones in Wilmington and launched on February 6, 1928, for the Baltimore Steam Packet Company, the 330-foot vessel had originally been an elegant "Queen of the Bay" with 170 staterooms before being requisitioned during World War II for British aid and later as a U.S. Navy ship in the Normandy invasion at Omaha Beach. Refit with wooden bunks for about 4,500 passengers and renamed Exodus 1947, it sailed from Sète, France, under the Mogen David flag, pursued by British warships. In a battle 20 miles off Palestine, two British destroyers rammed the ship, and the refugees were forced onto three British vessels and returned to France. After a month in wretched, unsanitary conditions and scorching heat, they began a hunger strike to draw world attention to their plight. They were eventually sent to displaced persons camps in Germany and were allowed to leave only after the State of Israel was established by United Nations mandate a year later.

Wilmington, Delaware · United States