Marshall Smith: Time on the S.S. Mayari

The S. S. Mayari

Marshall at the wheel of the S.S. Mayari

Because Marshall was an alien in the United States he was required to register each time he returned from being out of the country.  His trips in the Merchant Marine were all from Boston to Cuba and Central America and each time he returned he was listed as one of the aliens employed on the vessel as a member of crew.  These lists are now available on Ancestry.com.

His first voyage returned to Boston on 2 July 1939.  The ship was the S.S. Mayari, a ship on which he worked for all of his 18 trips.  He was classed as an “ordinary seaman” .  This is defined by Wikipedia as an unlicensed member of the deck department of a merchant ship.  The position is an apprenticeship to become an able seaman and has been so for centuries. 

Marshall was listed as an ordinary seaman for his first eight trips.  Upon returning from his ninth trip he was listed as an Able Seaman.   He was always recorded as 5 feet 10 inches and 150 pounds. 

The list of crew always began with the Master at the top and proceeded down through the ranks.   These were the chief mate, first mate, second mate, bosun, able bodied seaman, ordinary seaman, radio operator, chief engineer, oiler, fireman, wiper, steward, down to the chief cook and the second cook.  Marshall was 13^th on the list on his first trip and 7^th on his last. 

The dates of his trips and the port from which he returned are as follows:

2 July 1939                   Preston, Cuba

5 Sept 1939                   Banes, Cuba

26 Sept 1939                 Banes, Cuba

16 Nov 1939                 Cristobal, Canal Zone

22 Dec 1939                 Preston, Cuba

8 Feb 1940                    Banes, Cuba

10 April 1940               Cristobal, Canal Zone

10 May 1940                 Banes, Cuba

29 May 1940                 Banes, Cuba

16 June 1940                 Banes, Cuba

4 Sept 1940                    Preston, Cuba

23 Sept 1940                 Banes, Cuba

6 Nov 1940                    Cristobal, Canal Zone

1 Jan 1941                     Havana, Cuba

28 Jan 1941                   Banes, Cuba

13 Feb 1941                   Preston, Cuba

5 April 1941                   Banes, Cuba

Banes is a port city of the northeastern coast of Cuba.  From 1898 until the late 1950’s Banes was a “company town” almost wholly owned and operated by the United Fruit Company.   Preston, Cuba was a sugar cane processing center owned and operated by the United Fruit Company and named in honor of one of the company's founders, Andrew Preston. Following the Cuban Revolution of 1958, United Fruit was forced to withdraw and the Cuban government renamed the town Guatemala to symbolize solidarity with that Caribbean nation.

Able bodied seaman were in high demand for the Merchant Marine after World War II broke out in Europe.  It is interesting to note that Marshall left the sea just as things were hotting up war wise.  I remember his telling me that when he left the ship for the last time he went to a bar.  There he met a man who said he had just left a low level job at the Observatory on Mt. Washington.  He thought that if Marshall got himself up there he could take the job.  So he hitchhiked up  and was there for the next five or six years.