D/S Ole Bull - Norwegian Merchant Fleet 1939-1945

D/S Ole Bull
Updated Febr. 9-2009

To Ole Bull on the "Ships starting with O" page.

Source: Lillesand Sjømannsforening.

Manager: Nortraship
Tonnage: 7176 gt

Built by North Carolina Shipbuilding Co., Wilmington, NC (153), launched as Sallie S. Cotton on May 7-1943 (International Freighting Corp. Inc., New York), delivered May 14. One of 10 (11?) ships added to Nortraship's Fleet in 1943, on bareboat charter from the United States War Shipping Administration. See Gains 1943 on my page "Ship Statistics and Misc." for a list of the others. Ole Bull was taken over in Wilmington on the day of delivery, May 14-1943.

Captain: S. Bernt(?).

Her voyages are listed on these original images from the Norwegian National Archives:
Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3

Some Convoy Voyages:

In my "Warsailor Stories" section there's an entry from Fred Turner, who joined this ship at the end of Jan.-1944 (he also served on Solør, Britannia and Stirlingville). He says "We had a cargo of various supplies. The most guarded was 24 thousand cases of beer for American troops and the balance was clothing and military supplies. Again our convoy formed off the coast of Norfolk, Virginia (see link to Convoy UGS 32 at the end of this page). After sailing through the Mediterranean Sea, we docked at Alexandria, Egypt, in March 1944". In fact, she's listed as bound for Alexandria in Convoy KMS 42, departing Gibraltar on Febr. 25-1944. According to Page 1 above, Ole Bull arrived Alexandria on March 5. This convoy will be added to an individual page in my Convoys section; in the meantime, the ships sailing in it are named on this page. Fred continues: "We continued our voyage through the Suez Canal bound for a small port in Iran. We arrived there in June*. After unloading our cargo, we returned to Norfolk, on August 9th, 1944". This fits in with the fact that Ole Bull is listed in Convoy GUS 46, which left Port Said on July 14-1944 and arrived Hampton Roads on Aug. 8. She was on a voyage from Khorram Shahr, and arrived Cape Henry on Aug. 8. Follow the link for further convoy details.

* According to Page 1 of the archive documents, Ole Bull had made a voyage from Alexandria and back to the U.S. in between, having left Alexandria on March 16, arriving New York on Apr. 14, later heading from Hampton Roads to Port Said and Khorram Shahr in May (see links below to convoys GUS 34 and UGS 41). She arrived Bandar Abbas, via Suez and Aden, on June 14.

Note that the last external website that I've linked to below also has her in other GUS convoys, as well as returning UGS convoys, among a few others; follow the instructions provided at the link to find them, and compare the results to the voyages listed on the various archive documents.

As will be seen when going to Page 2, she got to go home to Norway already in July-1945 - see also Page 3, which shows some of her 1946 voyages.

POST WAR:

Sold in Oct.-1946 to the Norwegian government for Smedvik Tankrederi A/S (Peder Smedvig), Stavanger. Came under the Panamanian flag as South River in 1959 for Cia. Atlantica Pacifica S.A. (Panama R.P. & Baltimore, U.S.A. - also, Tidewater Commercial Co. Inc., Baltimore from 1965), then under Liberian flag as Kronos in 1965, Kronos Shipping Co. Ltd. (Dynamic Shipping Inc., New York). Sold to Japanese shipbreakers and broken up in 1967, having arrived Tsuneishi on March 24.

Related external links:
Liberty Ships - Alphabetical list. Sallie S. Cotton can be found on the S list (I've also seen it spelt Cotten).

Misc. convoys - By clicking on "Ship Search", using "Ole Bull" as keywords, some convoys that are not mentioned in the above narrative will come up. Here are UGS 32, GUS 34 and UGS 41, all mentioned above.