Esso Gettysburg HAER No. CA-354 Page 4 construction aid came through a trade-in allowance on five obsolete T-2 tankers that Esso Shipping negotiated with the Maritime Administration. The amount of the allowance was originally calculated at $5,669,081.61. This figure was subject to depreciation as well as reduction for the use of the old tankers before the new ones were delivered; in the end it came to $5,458,379. 4 6. Modifications: Comparison of construction photographs with the ship’s state in the Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet reveals that the Esso Gettysburg’s original slightlybulbous forefoot was replaced at an unknown date with one of a more protuberant de-sign, presumably in an attempt to improve the ship’s performance in a seaway. No additional documentation for this significant change has been found. In addition, a baffle was added to the boiler exhaust uptakes at an unknown time, raising the uptakes above the top of the funnel. 7. Names: Beginning in the 1930s, Standard Oil of New Jersey gave its ships the names of cities, prepended by its “Esso” brand name. Following this convention, the Esso Gettysburg was named for the town in Pennsylvania. It was the se-cond company vessel given this name; the first, a T-2 tanker completed in 1942, was lost to a German torpedo 100 miles southeast of Savannah during a June 1943 coastal voyage. Fifty-seven men were killed out of a total comple-ment of seventy-two. 5 After Standard Oil became Exxon Corporation in 1972, company officials renamed the ships in its fleet. The Esso Gettysburg became Exxon Gettysburg on January 1, 1973. The ship retained this name until October 22, 1987, when the Maritime Administration removed the “Exxon” in order to remove corporate identifying information from the ship. 6 B. Historical Context: The Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, incorporated in 1882, was involved in shipping oil by sea from its very first years. By the late 1930s, the company maintained one of the nation’s largest private fleets, and its prominence made it a significant operator of tankers for the Maritime Commission during World War II. In 1950, Jersey Standard created the Esso Shipping Company to manage its tanker operations, an arrangement that lasted only until 1958, when a corporate reorganization transformed the subsidiary back into a division of the parent company. In 1959, tanker services were moved again to the subsidiary Humble Oil and Refining Company, where they remained until the formation of Exxon in 1972. 7 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4 “Transport News and Notes,” 40; Annual reports of the Federal Maritime Board and Maritime Administration, 1954, 4–5; 1955, 5; 1956, 7; 1957, 16. 5 The 1942 Esso Gettysburg was the first of 198 T2-SE-A1 tankers built by Sun Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Co. for the Maritime Commission during World War II; Ships of the Esso Fleet in World War II (Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey, 1946), 454–60. 6 ABS Eagle Record for Gettysburg, http://www.eagle.org/. 7 “Esso will shift ship operations,” New York Times, Jan. 29, 1961, S12; “Esso tanker fleet absorbed in shift,” New York Times, Apr. 24, 1958, 62. For numerous references to shipping in the early history of Standard Oil, see Ralph

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