Introduction
On 29 August 1944, Executive Order 9472 established the Merchant Marine Meritorious Service Medal (MM MSM), Gallant Ship citation plaque and ribbon, and Merchant Marine Defense ribbon. Unlike the Merchant Marine Distinguished Service Medal (MM DSM) and the Mariner’s Medal before them, none rested on a separate act of Congress. The President’s order, apparently written for expediency, completed a system of honors the war had made urgent. The three awards rounded out that system for the wartime American Merchant Marine, each authorized specifically for the duration of the Second World War.
Like the Merchant Marine Distinguished Service Medal [Pub. L. 77-524, 56 Stat. 217] and the Mariner’s Medal [Pub. L. 78-52, § 3, 57 Stat. 82], the Merchant Marine Meritorious Service Medal carried no fixed deadline for award. Each limited eligible conduct to the war, and the order confined this medal to conduct “subsequent to September 8, 1939, or during the present war” [EO 9472, sec. 2(a)]. The new medal permitted the War Shipping Administration Seamen’s Service Awards Committee to consider a potential backlog of cases that did not warrant the Merchant Marine Distinguished Service Medal, which is how the order defines the MM MSM: conduct or service of a meritorious character, but not so outstanding as to warrant the MM DSM [EO 9472, sec. 2(a)].
The medal was the second rung on a ladder of Merchant Marine decorations. Who drew the ladder?
Collins testimony, 1942
John J. Collins, an independent tanker union advisor, first sketched that ladder on 12 February 1942, two months before Congress created the Merchant Marine Distinguished Service Medal. Testifying to the House Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries on H.J. Res. 263, he called it a thought not yet worked out in any concrete form, and described three kinds of recognition:
- A decoration for exceedingly valiant or gallant action beyond the line of duty.
- An award of merit for good service and particular acts that were not especially significant.
- A certificate or emblem for every man on a torpedoed ship, with some recognition for the families of those lost.
He called the third very important, and compared it to the decorations given to men who fought at Chateau Thierry or Ypres. He said he drew on recognition for First World War veterans and on the Order of the British Empire; he also wanted ceremony attached, since an award’s value lies in what it stands for, not in the metal.
Congress acted that April with a medal for “outstanding conduct or service in the line of duty” [Pub. L. 77-524, 56 Stat. 217]. On my reading, that wording folded Collins’ first tier into a single medal and left his merit tier unfilled for two and a half years.
The Mariner’s Medal
Collins’ third tier came next. An act of 10 May 1943 authorized a medal for merchant seamen wounded, injured, or exposed to danger through an act of an enemy [Pub. L. 78-52, § 3, 57 Stat. 82]. The act does not name it; the name “Mariner’s Medal” first appears on WSA General Order 35, 23 September 1943.
The design was ahead of the law. Paul Manship, who designed the wartime Merchant Marine medals, reportedly had drawings ready, some of them sketched on napkins. A medal takes months to move from drawing to production, so the work must have begun far before the act passed. Yet, the medal appeared as a Commission of Fine Arts-approved design on August 5, 1943; CFA minutes describe a medal for “conspicuous service.”
However, this medal was not awarded immediately after announcement. The first award went to the widow of 3rd Assistant Engineer Philip C. Shera, honored for his heroic efforts on SS China Arrow. She received it at a Maritime Day ceremony on 22 May 1944, alongside Mariner’s medals awarded to the families of five merchant seamen missing at sea. The initial press called the new medal “the purple heart of the sea.”
Thus, I read it as a design conceived to recognize merit, then handed the more pressing job of honoring the dead, missing, and wounded. The phrase “conspicuous service” has a First World War echo: a citation signed by Gen. Pershing in April 1919 – the Meritorious Service Citation Certificate – awards “exceptionally meritorious and conspicuous services.” However, for the American Merchant Marine, Meritorious Service remained elusive.
The Purple Heart parallel
The military faced the same problem. Gen. George Washington’s order of 7 August 1782 created the Badge of Military Merit for any “singularly meritorious action.” When the Purple Heart was revived on 22 February 1932, holders of the Meritorious Service Citation Certificate could request it. A second certificate, the Columbia Accolade, was issued to those wounded or killed in the First World War and included a ribbon, then supplanted by uniform chevrons, and could also be exchanged for the Purple Heart.
In February 1942, when Collins testified, the Purple Heart still served for both wounds and meritorious performance of duty. The Legion of Merit followed by statute on 20 July 1942, and Executive Order 9277 of 3 December 1942 authorized the Purple Heart only for wounds, though some sources indicate that Army merit award of the Purple Heart continued until September 1943. By the time the Mariner’s Medal (the unnamed casualty medal) was authorized in May 1943 and awarded the following, the military system had separated merit from wounds. Merit once recognized by the Purple Heart went to the Legion of Merit, created in July 1942, and from February 1944 to the Bronze Star (E.O. 9419). The Merchant Marine followed the same split: a casualty medal authorized in 1943 and a merit medal created in 1944.
Merchant Marine Meritorious Service Medal Award
The Merchant Marine Meritorious Service Medal first reached the press on 29 August 1944, when an Executive Order designated the War Shipping Administrator as executor of the award. Afterward, the matter went silent until 10 October 1944 when its ribbon design was published; the medal itself was not finalized.
When the announcement was published, WSA cited that merchant seamen had received over 100 Distinguished Service Medals and 4500 Mariner’s Medals (OWI-3631, 9 October 1944). At the time, a critical shortage of merchant seamen and officers threatened to delay the delivery of supplies to the European and Pacific war theatres. As a recruitment and morale booster, the need for the Merchant Marine Meritorious Service Medal must have been keen as the Western Allies prosecuted a major land campaign in Europe, which brought greater sacrifices, not all of which merited the MM DSM.
Although the administrative and artistic processes for ushering forward a medal’s production apparently worked in parallel, as evident for the Merchant Marine’s other medals – the Merchant Marine Distinguished Service Medal and the Mariner’s Medal – Paul Manship must not have had a design in the hopper for the Merchant Marine Meritorious Service Medal when the initial Executive Order was published. Instead, it appears he recycled a design he had used for United Fruit; the medal was first awarded in January 1944, and it is conspicuously similar to the Federal medal.
The medal was first awarded to Lieutenant Commander Henry B. Leitman, USMS, on 10 October 1944 for heroic action as Chief Mate aboard the SS William Tyler Page; he received his master’s license the day before the ceremony in New York City. In fact, rather than an administrative maritime office or public setting, the medal was awarded live on air in the course of an armed services radio program produced by Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) in New York City, where Leitman spoke about commanding a lifeboat to rescue six wounded soldiers after their landing craft struck a mine off Normandy; and he was young: just twenty-three, showing the youthful face of those who were coming to man the United States’ merchant fleet. Unlike the Merchant Marine Distinguished Service Medal and the Mariner’s Medal, the initial awards of the Merchant Marine Meritorious Service Medal did not occur on a particularly auspicious day for the American Merchant Marine (e.g. National Maritime Day), and also unlike the aforementioned, the award of the MM MSM was not solely related to blue water or war shipping activities , and even the medal as a physical object itself was not initially awarded – it was to be sent to the awardees at a later date (per New York Times 17 December 1944).
The first group award occurred at an annual United Seamen’s Service art exhibit on 16 December 1944 to four tugboat captains:
Curiously, the tugboat captains who were awarded the MM MSM were also cited for the Bronze Star Medal; however, a Bronze Star did not automatically confer the Merchant Marine Meritorious Service Medal such is the case for the seagoing tugboat captains below.
After these initial awards, a steady stream of medals reached the fleet. The medal was awarded for seamanship and salvage rather than combat gallantry, reflecting the stark realities of the merchant seaman beyond war. Throughout 1945, medals were awarded largely for actions from 1943 and 1944, concentrated for actions at Normandy, Sicily, and in the Pacific. By far, firefighting and damage control are the largest group, roughly a third. Examples are the SS James Buchanan crew (Barbara, Beisser, Daniels, Hobbs) after an ammunition dump explosion in a South Pacific port, Clapp and Elliott on the SS Juan Cabrillo at a naval air base pier, Connor on the SS John C. Calhoun, Collins on the tanker SS Harper’s Ferry at Taranto, and Beyer and Jackson on the SS Clevedon in Alaska, who both moved the burning ship away from the dock.
Rescue at sea or in port comes next. This includes Adams on the SS William Tyler Page at Normandy, Allen on the SS Cedar Mills transferring a French destroyer’s crew, Bishop on the SS David W. Branch rescuing eighteen men from a grounded ship, Eades on the SS Esso Little Rock recovering a Catalina’s eight-man crew, and Chowaniec swimming to a drowning seaman in the Thames.
Saving or reboarding a damaged ship is the third group. Conners and Hughes on the bombed SS Charles Morgan at Normandy reboarded the ship at low tide to pump and salvage. Gjersvik from the SS Kittanning volunteered to reboard a torpedoed tanker, and Boyer reboarded the torpedoed SS Matt W. Ransom. Andrianan stayed aboard the grounded SS William B. Ogden in India for months to protect it from salvage.
The remainder are individual cases. Holden went below on the SS Francis C. Harrington to aid wounded soldiers. Heard stayed at his engine room station on the SS Elihu Thompson after it hit a mine. Crosby and Dietz were recognized as masters who defended ships off Sicily under air attack. Blackwood maneuvered the SS Floyd W. Spenser clear of a suicide plane’s torpedo. Fanjoy cut a static-charged barrage balloon cable on the SS Lawton B. Evans. Bohn kept a radio working to send a distress signal after the SS City of Flint was torpedoed. Coas helped keep three lifeboats together for six days after the SS Honolulan sank. Benson stood watch for about three weeks on a broken foot. De Puey, master of the tug Watch Hill, towed two damaged ships out of a combat area off Formosa.
Using data from usmm.org, awards of the MM MSM for wartime activities are thus:
| Year | Medals presented each year |
|---|---|
| 1944 | 5 |
| 1945 | 47 |
| 1946 | 192 |
| 1947 | 50 |
| 1949 | 1 |
| 1958 | 1 |
- Dated entries: about 300 of roughly 380 listed at usmm.org with dates of presentation; remaining ~80 give only a name and ship with no date.
- Peak: 1946 holds about 64% of the dated entries. This shows when medals were handed out, not when the acts happened.
- Earliest and latest: the earliest dates are in late 1944 (Leitman, 10 October 1944; the El Estero tug masters, 16 December 1944). The last in the main run is 29 December 1947 (Price).
- Outliers: Louie B. Wood, SS Charles Morgan, is dated 14 January 1949, and Harrison, SS Gulfdeer, is dated 3 July 1958. The usmm.org roll gives no reason for either date, and I have found none.
Postwar, from 1946 through 1947, the awards recognized the same kinds of conduct as in 1945, with a few differences. In 1946, about 192 citations (the peak year) were for firefighting aboard ships carrying fuel or ammunition, rescuing survivors, and saving or reboarding damaged ships. Many cover gunnery leadership under air attack at Sicily, Salerno, Anzio, Leyte, and Okinawa. A few are individual survival or endurance cases (Greenlaw’s 39-day lifeboat passage, Finley at his radio key, Wagg’s swamped lifeboat), and a few are for seamanship. The Brooklyn Panuco fire and Hoboken Tug 32 are the domestic harbor cases. Like wartime awards, many of these actions date from 1942 and 1943, so the 1946 presentations are largely late recognition. In 1947, with around 50 entries, many repeat the earlier incidents. The one distinct award group is the SS Collingsworth crew (Godfrey, Horn, Woodruff), recognized for volunteering to man a blockade runner for Bataan relief, with the citation noting the mission’s failure.
The Meritorious Service Medal & precedence
When WSA wrote the Merchant Marine Meritorious Service Medal into its chart of precedence in 1944, it ranked immediately after the Merchant Marine Distinguished Service Medal and before the Gallant Ship Citation ribbon, with the Mariner’s Medal behind both. The First World War offers a model for that arrangement, though this is an inference. The Army’s Certificate of Merit, as authorized by Congress in 1847 and made a medal by War Department order in 1905, was superseded by the Distinguished Service Medal in 1918. The Meritorious Service Citation Certificate recognized valuable service, while its gallantry counterpart, the Citation Star, became the Silver Star Medal in 1932.
The military’s own Meritorious Service Medal did not exist until Executive Order 11448 on 16 January 1969, about twenty-five years after the Merchant Marine medal. As far as I can find, the MM MSM is among the earliest US medals to carry that title.
Comparing or drawing equivalencies between a military-adjacent honors system and a military honors system is problematic. In the case of the American Merchant Marine at war, such a comparison ignores the reality of the work and concerns of those at sea, and the WSA decorations were never built on military equivalency. The military itself mainly kept the two systems apart. For instance, a 1943 Navy bulletin, reproduced in the November 1943 issue of Neptune, announced the limiting of Navy awards to merchant seamen to the Silver Star and the Navy and Marine Corps Medal, and only for direct combat with the enemy or especially meritorious service under combat conditions as part of a naval expedition, not normal overseas convoys. It directed naval commanders to forward recommendations for War Shipping Administration medals to the Navy Department for transmission to the WSA. This did not always happen: the Bronze Star, created in February 1944, was awarded to merchant mariners beyond the two medals listed, but the intent was present. Medal terminology may be similar, and medal designs may follow the same established design rubric, but the methods and means differ. As a rule of thumb, wartime Merchant Marine Meritorious Service Medal citations describe conduct recognized by the period Legion of Merit, Silver Star, Navy and Marine Corps Medal, and Bronze Star. The following considers known citations from usmm.org, the 1956 Seamen Awards Study, military medal criteria, and known Merchant Marine recipients of analogous military medals that honor merit. A military citation did not necessarily guarantee a WSA award. Moreover, do take into consideration that the Merchant Marine Meritorious Service Medal roll mixes seamanship, salvage, rescue and firefighting, much of it in port or after accidents, with acts under enemy attack. The WSA drew one line, conduct “of a meritorious character” short of the Merchant Marine Distinguished Service Medal, and did not divide combat from non-combat. That is the equivalency problem: the same roll maps to different military medals depending on whether the enemy was involved, a distinction the WSA never made.
Legion of Merit. This medal is for exceptionally meritorious conduct in outstanding services, usually of command or staff scale, and not for a single act at risk of life. The few Merchant Marine Meritorious Service Medal entries that read as sustained achievement are the closest, such as Ryan’s convoy navigation to Russia, Robinson’s radio work at Anzio, and Thunberg’s improvised pumping of the SS Northern Sword. Present research does not indicate that any merchant seaman received the Legion of Merit.
Silver Star. This medal is for gallantry in action against an enemy. A small subset of Merchant Marine Meritorious Service Medal citations might read that way, such as the Floyd W. Spenser torpedo avoidance, the Josiah Snelling suicide plane defense and the Alcoa Pioneer fires; muddying the waters a bit: the 1956 study places the highest-risk cases, those facing near or certain death, firmly in the Merchant Marine Distinguished Service Medal camp, the criteria which are nearer to the Silver Star in the aforementioned cases. The usmm.org page on Army and Navy medals awarded to mariners lists only one Silver Star, to Percy Hauffman, master of the Hilary A. Herbert, for landing the ship at Anzio under bombardment. He does not appear on the Merchant Marine Meritorious Service Medal roll. The roll does include Earl Robinson, the Hilary A. Herbert’s radio operator, recognized for the same eight days at Anzio, which shows the two systems recognizing different men for the same action.
Navy and Marine Corps Medal, or the Army Soldier’s Medal. These medals are a functional fit for much of the Merchant Marine Meritorious Service Medal roll. They are for heroism not involving combat with an enemy. Most citations describe accidents, not combat: collision and dock fires (Brookfield, Caleb Strong, James Buchanan, Juan Cabrillo), swimming to rescue shipmates or survivors, and reboarding torpedoed or damaged ships. The services treated comparable conduct this way. Lieutenant Commander Arthur Pfister of the Coast Guard received the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for the El Estero fire. Of the three mariners the usmm.org page lists for this medal, James De Puey, master of the tug Watch Hill, was cited for towing damaged ships off Formosa and also appears on the Merchant Marine Meritorious Service Medal roll. An Atkinson, master of the Mormacwren, appears on the page for towing USS Pasig and on the Merchant Marine Meritorious Service Medal roll. The third, Richard Bordeaux (Anzio), is not on the Merchant Marine Meritorious Service Medal roll.
Bronze Star. This medal covers heroic or meritorious achievement in connection with military operations against an enemy, with the “V” device for heroism. That matches the citations that involve enemy action, such as the Leyte and Okinawa suicide plane fires, the Sicily and Anzio air attacks, the Normandy rescues, and the Bataan blockade runner volunteers. The usmm.org page lists thirteen tug masters among Bronze Star recipients but does not indicate which service awarded them: nine for Normandy and four for New York. The four New York awardees are the El Estero masters (Carlson, Ericksen, Gully and Striffolino), and they are the only tug masters on that list who also appear on the Meritorious Service Medal roll; the El Estero fire of 24 April 1943, was an accident at an Army ammunition depot, not combat. The military therefore used this medal for noncombat service connected with military operations, which is the same distinction the Merchant Marine medal drew. The domestic harbor cases on the roll without a Bronze Star listing, the Panuco pier fire and Tug 32 at Hoboken, suggest the WSA recognized harbor emergencies that the military awards did not reach, but that is an inference from two entries.
Used only as a rough guide, the Meritorious Service Medal sits a rung above the Mariner’s Medal, which the 1956 study describes as issued for injuries from enemy action and therefore comparable to the Purple Heart. Each of the military medals discussed above ranks above the Purple Heart in military precedence. The two systems also operated side by side. Four Meritorious Service Medal recipients (Maury, Hodak, Lowry and White, all of the Lyman Abbott) also appear among the Purple Heart recipients listed for the Bari air raid, an Army award. Only Maury’s roll entry includes a citation describing his conduct at Bari, so the other three medals were likely for the same night, but the record does not show that.
Nearly five decades after the 1943 ribbon chart, MARAD formalized the precedence of medals and decorations in a pamphlet published circa 1990, in the period before the plan to convert ribbons and bars to medals. The pamphlet above was a planning document used by the U.S. Army’s Institute of Heraldry (TIOH) for Merchant Marine medal design; precedence was printed and penciled in, and the checkmarks appear to mark items for which TIOH provided medal designs. Another marked pamphlet included equivalents for military campaign medals.
The record does not say why the WSA built its ladder this way. It lacked decades of experience and tradition, but the former military men who served on its Seamen’s Service Awards Committee had a vocabulary and structure to draw on. What resulted looks less like a copy of the military system than a ladder of its own, sketched by Collins in 1942 and completed in 1944.
Limbo
PostwarThe joint resolution of 25 July 1947 repealed the 1942 act authorizing the Merchant Marine Distinguished Service Medal [Pub. L. 80-239, § 1, 61 Stat. 450]. It does not mention Executive Order 9472 or the Merchant Marine Meritorious Service Medal, and the National Archives’ disposition tables list the order as amended by Executive Order 9692 (5 February 1946) with no revocation. The medal therefore rested on the order alone, but the order defined it by reference to the Distinguished Service Medal, whose statute had been repealed. The record does not answer whether the repeal legally affected the Merchant Marine Meritorious Service Medal. It appears, however, to have chilled the award of decorations the repeal did not reach, since Proceedings of the Merchant Marine Council (October 1956) records that a cautious Maritime Administration considered itself unable to issue decorations until Congress restored the authority. In 1956, Congress repealed the 1943 and 1946 acts [Pub. L. 84-759, § 5(a), 70 Stat. 606] and authorized the Secretary of Commerce to award a meritorious service medal “for meritorious act, conduct, or service in line of duty, but not of such outstanding character as would warrant an award of the distinguished service medal” [§ 1(a), 70 Stat. 605], placing the presidentially created medal on a statutory footing. Congress named the medal again in 1988 [Pub. L. 100-324, § 2, 102 Stat. 576], and the authority is now codified at 46 U.S.C. § 51901(b)(2) [Pub. L. 109-304, § 8(b), 120 Stat. 1584]. The 1944 order and the statutory authority since 1956 belong to one award’s history, but they are different legal authorities.
Legislation
Executive Order 9472
Establishing Certain Awards for the Merchant Marine [Federal Register Doc. 44 13133; Filed, August 29, 1944; 2:38 p.m.]
By virtue of the authority vested in me as President and as Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, it is hereby ordered as follows:
1. (a) The Administrator of the War Shipping Administration, hereinafter referred to as the Administrator, is hereby authorized to issue a citation as public evidence of deserved honor and distinction to any United States ship or to any foreign ship operated by or for the account of the United States Maritime Commission or the War Shipping Administration which, subsequent to September 8, 1939, or during the present war has served or shall serve in outstanding action against attack or in gallant action in marine disasters or other emergencies at sea.
(b) The Administrator shall award a plaque to any ship so cited; and a replica of such plaque shall be preserved, under such regulations as the Administrator may prescribe, as a permanent historical record.
(c) The Administrator shall also award an appropriate citation ribbon bar to the master and each person serving on board such ship at the time of the action for which citation is made, as public evidence of such honor and distinction:
Provided, That whenever such master or person would be entitled hereunder to the award of an additional citation ribbon, a suitable device shall be awarded, in lieu thereof, to be attached to the ribbon originally awarded.
2. (a) There is hereby established the Merchant Marine Meritorious Service Medal, with accompanying ribbon and appurtenances, for award by the Administrator, under such regulations as he shall prescribe, to any master, officer, or member of the crew of any United States ship, or any foreign ship operated by or for the account of the United States Maritime Commission or the War Shipping Administration who, subsequent to September 8, 1939, or during the present war has been or shall be officially commended by the Administrator for conduct or service of a meritorious character but not of such an outstanding character as would warrant an award of the Merchant Marine Distinguished Service Medal established pursuant to the act of April 11, 1942, ch. 241, 56 Stat. 217.
(b) No more than one Merchant Marine Meritorious Service Medal shall be awarded to any one person, but for each succeeding commendation justifying such an award a suitable device may be awarded to be worn with the medal and ribbon.
3. The Administrator is hereby authorized, until two years after the termination of the present war, to provide and issue, under such regulations as he may prescribe, a distinctive service ribbon bar to each master, officer, or member of the crew of any United States ship who shall have served at any time during the period beginning September 8, 1939, and ending December 6, 1941.
4. In case any person who is entitled to an award under this order dies before the award can be made to him, the award may be made to such representative of the deceased as the Administrator may deem proper.
5. The design of the plaque, medal, and ribbons herein authorized, shall not duplicate the design of any medals or ribbons awarded by the War or Navy Department. 6. The Administrator may delegate his authority hereunder and issue such other regulations as may be appropriate to carry out the provisions of this order.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
The White House, August 29, 1944.
Eligible conduct under EO 9472 began after 8 September 1939 [EO 9472, sec. 2(a)]. Congress authorized the medal by statute in 1956 [Pub. L. 84-759, § 1(a), 70 Stat. 605]