The Steamship Named ALA

An incident in the history of the American Library Association's World War I activities that involved the naming of a cargo ship in honor of ALA has been cited in three sources in library literature over the years. Although the references offer certain complementary details concerning the ship and/or aspects of its naming, collectively they fall short of telling the complete story. A review of this information augmented by material from other sources is presented here in an attempt to offer a fuller account of the seemingly curious historic occurrence as well as to supply additional information about the ship's career and fate.

As chronicled by Arthur P. Young in Books for Sammies: The American Library Association and World War I, ALA was significantly involved in the U.S. war effort in the first great international armed conflict of the twentieth century and its aftermath. By the time ALA's services came to a halt, it had, among other achievements, "raised over $5,000,000 from public donations, secured Carnegie Corporation funds for the erection of thirty-six camp library buildings, distributed approximately 10,000,000 books and magazines, and provided library collections to nearly 5,000 locations. Just over 1,100 library workers served in libraries sponsored by the Association. Although the War Service Committee [appointed in June 1917 to oversee the undertaking] was discharged in the summer of 1920, a number of war-related activities continued well into the postwar decade."¹

At the same time ALA was endeavoring to provide books to the military, a newly formed government agency, the United States Shipping Board (USSB), was striving to supply the need for merchant ships in the conduct of the war. The USSB had been created in 1916 for the promotion of the American merchant marine and the regulation of domestic and foreign shipping. With the entrance of the United States into the war, the USSB assumed emergency powers in this capacity through its Emergency Fleet Corporation and by 1922 was responsible for the construction of 1,693 steel vessels of several types and designs, most of which were completed after the war was over.²

Figure 1.

The steamship ALA. Courtesy of the Steamship Historical Society of America Collections, Langsdale Library, Baltimore.

In 1920 one of the USSB ships was named ALA, and it was launched on 18 December at the Merchant Shipbuilding Corporation's Harriman yards in Bristol, Pennsylvania. The events of the christening ceremony were recorded by Shirley Putnam, the ship's sponsor, in a published letter to ALA president Alice S. Tyler, who had been unable to represent ALA at the event. Aside from noting that she was assured that every ship built there recently "had been equipped with a fine library, even before leaving the yards," and that for this ship there was talk of "an ALA emblem of some sort for the saloon," most of Putnam's report was devoted to an almost minute-by-minute account of the launching. With her words, "I christen thee ALA!" she struck a bottle of vintage champagne with all her might against the ship's bow. Then there was, she wrote, "no hitch, no sound, only the great hull is drawn magically down the ways towards the water. She takes it buoyantly, the pennants catch the breeze, and the sun flashes on the silver side. So our 9,000 ton cargo ship ALA, very high in the water, makes her first step in the world. . . . She may sail for the Far East, or South America or the Pacific Coast, they tell me, like any of her thirty-eight twin predecessors."³

This evocative prediction about what the future might hold in store for the ALA was inevitably fulfilled, and the ship did indeed venture into distant waters. But while doing so it appears to have sailed out of the collective memory and interest of ALA, as confirmed by the membership's apparent inability to retrieve accurate information about its namesake fifty-six years after the launching.