Granville Conway
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Captain Granville Conway (1898–1969) was born in Cambridge, Maryland. Conway distinguished himself in maritime service and served in various positions during the Roosevelt and Truman administrations, including Shipping Advisor to both Presidents and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He received the Medal for Merit in 1947. In his later years, Conway served as president of shipping companies.
In 1906, his father, Captain Edward Conway, was injured, swept off his schooner, and lost in a storm near Baltimore, Maryland. The son graduated from the Government Navigation School in Baltimore and went to sea in 1918. Within four years thereafter he became master of his first ship, steamship Mojave, giving him the distinction of being one of the youngest masters of the entire American Merchant Marine. He was made a Captain of the Shipping Board's Reserve Fleet Division at Norfolk, Va, in 1922. The Captain served as manager for the Shipping Board in New London, Connecticut, and for the fleet of 135 laid-up vessels of World War I vintage – in Kill Van Kull, Staten Island. During this period, he outfitted and delivered ships for explorer Richard E. Byrd's trip to the North Pole in 1926 and the South Pole in 1933. In 1935, he became North Atlantic District Head of the Shipping Board, responsible for the Port of New York.
World War II
He continued with the Maritime Commission and then in March 1944 as Deputy Administrator of the War Shipping Administration as first assistant to Admiral Emory S. Land. He was named head of the War Shipping Administration in 1946.[1]
In World War II, the captain earned much of the credit for the record speed achieved in transporting men and materiel to the European Theater of operations. He was highly entrepreneurial and inventive, shipping millions of tons of badly needed fuel for the allied war effort in ballast tanks and double bottoms otherwise meant for seawater to stabilize ships in bad weather, and to protect against mishaps. He conceived the idea of shipping fighter planes, bombers and all kinds of vital dry cargo on the decks of tankers by building spar decks over the oil piping, otherwise wasted space. In appreciation for this accomplishment the Army Air Forces awarded Captain Conway its Certificate of Meritorious Service – the first time it had ever been given to a civilian. He always kept a letter from Winston Churchill under the glass of his desk; in it, proclaimed that his idea to ship whole fighter planes on the decks of tankers would never work, but FDR supported Conway's intuition and it paid off big in the eventual victory.
Working as a volunteer during World War II, he managed the shipping of all Red Cross supplies to Europe (at no cost to the organization). He was responsible for secretly gathering the available ships from around the world to transport the men and machinery for the D-Day invasion.
After VE-Day and later, V-J Day, he led Operation Magic Carpet – the initiative to bring more than 7.6 million overseas service men home quickly on converted Liberty and Victory cargo ships as well as battleships, aircraft carriers, ocean liners and hospital ships. In addition, he transported almost half a million war brides as well as thousands of prisoners of war and displaced persons.
Throughout the war, Captain Conway was the Shipping Counselor at the White House and for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In this capacity, he attended WWII Allied Conferences of the Heads of Government in Quebec, Yalta and Potsdam. On the occasion of National Maritime Day, May 22, 1946, Congressman Ellsworth Buck said on the floor of Congress, "It was men like Granville Conway who brought glory to the American merchant marine in the past. With the deserved support of the American people and the Congress, it is men like he who will bring glory to the American merchant marine in the future."
He resigned from the War Shipping Administration in the summer of 1947 to head the Cosmopolitan Shipping Company.