Remembering the USS Benevolence 62 Years Later

The USS Benevolence was built by Sun Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Co., in Chester, Pa. in 1944; originally assembled as a C-4 cargo freighter and with the name SS Marine Lion, built under a Maritime Administration contract. Before she could be fitted out the Navy ordered she be converted into a hospital ship.

Casualties in the Pacific were increasing and he Navy needed more hospital ships.  The 15,400-ton hospital ship was commission on May 12, 1945 as the USS Benevolence and went to sea.

As a hospital ship with 802 beds and complement capacity for 95 officers and 606 men, the USS Benevolence departed for the Pacific in July, 1945 to provide hospital services, medicine and casualty evacuation to troops in the 3rd Fleet during campaigns against Japan under the command of Capt. C.C. Laws.

Following the U.S. victory over Japan, the Benevolence remained with the Allied Fleet in Tokyo Harbor during the Surrender of Japan, anchored off Yokosuka, Japan where she processed and screened 1,502 liberated Allied prisoners of war. She returned the wounded back to the U.S., arriving in San Francisco on December 12, 1945.

In early 1946, she served as a casualty transport between Pearl Harbor and San Francisco and in April of the same year underwent an overhaul. She later participated in Operation “Crossroads,” treating casualties from nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll in June 1946 and later served as a station hospital ship at Tsingtao, China. In September on 1947 the floating hospital was decommissioned and placed into the San Francisco Reserve Group.

At the start of the Korean War, the Benevolence was reactivated and on August 25, 1950, while returning from sea trials, the USS Benevolence collided with the SS Mary Luckenbach freighter (pictured below, following the collision) in heavy fog off the San Francisco coast. The freighter rammed the hospital ship twice, sinking the Benevolence in just 15 minutes, taking 18 of the 526 crew members with her to a watery grave.

In the haste of getting the Benevolence ready to deploy to Korea, Navy headquarters ashore were not made aware of her roster, and several of the engineers working to ready her for service remained onboard during the trials to get the work finished, leaving inaccurate records of those onboard. Commercial vessels in the bay came to the rescue, pulling crew from the waters.

The USS Benevolence received a battle star for her service in WWII.