S.S. Evergreen State
The S.S. Evergreen State was built at the Ingalls Shipbuilding Corporation in Pascagoula between early April and late August of 1943; the vessel was delivered in November of that year. Initially, she was classified as a Bayfield-class attack transport vessel and named U.S.S. Lamar (APA-47). For the remainder of the Second World War, she steamed throughout the combat zones of the South and Southwestern Pacific, carrying supplies and transporting troops as necessary. The Lamar came under fire numerous times and earned five battle stars for her service during the Pacific campaign.
After the war, Lamar was released to the U.S. Maritime Commission. She was sold to the Luckenbach Steamship Company in 1949. She sailed for the next eleven years as the J.L. Luckenbach.
Between 1960 and 1962, the vessel was owned by States Marine Lines and sailed as the S.S. Evergreen State. She was next transferred to the Global Bulk Transport Company for the last nine years of her life. In 1971, she was sold to Taiwan Shipbreakers of Kaohsiung and broken up for scrap.
Up until the 1980s, all seagoing vessels were full of asbestos insulation. This was particularly true in the enclosed spaces below decks in spaces such as the engine room and around the boilers. A significant part of this was due to federal regulations that were written in the wake of a cruise ship disaster in September 1934, when early a quarter of the passengers and crew aboard the S.S. Morro Castle perished in a fire off the coast of New Jersey.
Asbestos industry lobbyists who took advantage of this opportunity neglected to tell lawmakers was that the products they were manufacturing were responsible for serious respiratory diseases. Medical researchers had suspected the dangers of asbestos for over thirty years before medical researchers in the U.S. finally made the connection between asbestos and respiratory disease. However, the corporations that produced asbestos products – who had financed much of the research – engaged in a massive cover-up to prevent this information from becoming public over the next forty years.
Even when the federal government began to issue “advisories” to shipyard workers and management in 1943, such recommendations were not taken seriously and led to reports of mesothelioma navy cases.
By the 1960s, the truth about asbestos began to come out more and more; the first asbestos lawsuit was filed in 1966. Corporate lawyers argued that their clients could not have known about these health hazards and therefore could not be held liable.
In 1977, a plaintiff's lawyer found a box in a corporate office that contained correspondence from the late 1930s. This correspondence demonstrated that the asbestos industry in fact did have knowledge of the health effects of asbestos products.
Symptoms of asbestos disease and mesothelioma usually take years to manifest – in some cases, five to six decades after the first exposure. Those who sailed or worked aboard the S.S. Evergreen State should be monitored for asbestos disease, even if they are not showing symptoms at present. Asbestos cancer is still relatively rare; nonetheless, if you were ever exposed, regular check ups will increase the chances malignant mesothelioma will be diagnosed at an earlier stage when it is most treatable.
Sources
Bowker, Michael. Fatal Deception: The Terrifying True Story of How Asbestos is Killing America. New York: Touchstone, 2003.
States Marine Lines. “Evergreen State.”
http://www.statesmarinelines.com/ships/evergreen_state_02.htm
