page_title: Baltimore Steam Packet Company
section_title: Postwar and the Exodus
hierarchical_section_title: Baltimore Steam Packet Company / History / 1940s / Postwar and the Exodus
caption_attribution_description: English: The former Baltimore Steam Packet Company's President Warfield in February 1947, enroute to Europe where she would be renamed the Exodus. Deutsch: Die von der Hagana erworbene President Warfield im Februar 1947 auf dem Weg nach Europa, wo sie in Exodus umbenannt wurde.
context_page_description: The Baltimore Steam Packet Company, nicknamed the Old Bay Line, was an American steamship line from 1840 to 1962 that provided overnight steamboat service on the Chesapeake Bay, primarily between Baltimore, Maryland, and Norfolk, Virginia. Called a "packet" for the mail packets carried on government mail contracts, the term in the 19th century came to mean a steamer line operating on a regular, fixed daily schedule between two or more cities. When it closed in 1962 after 122 years of existence, it was the last surviving overnight steamship passenger service in the United States.
  In addition to regularly calling on Baltimore and Norfolk, the Baltimore Steam Packet Company at various times provided freight, passenger and vehicle transport to Washington, D.C., Old Point Comfort, and Richmond, Virginia. The Old Bay Line, as it came to be known by the 1860s, was acclaimed for its genteel service and fine dining, serving Chesapeake Bay specialties.
context_section_description: After World War II, the line promoted its automobile service to Florida-bound motorists, advertising the elimination of 230 miles (370 km) of driving by taking the family car on an overnight cruise down the Chesapeake to Virginia, while enjoying a sumptuous dinner and relaxing stateroom aboard an Old Bay Line steamer instead of a roadside motel. In March 1946, the Old Bay Line installed radar on the City of Richmond and City of Norfolk, the first commercial passenger ships to be equipped with radar.
  After the President Warfield was expropriated in 1942 by the War Shipping Administration for national defense as a transport during World War II, it was transferred to the United Kingdom on September 21, 1942. Later in the war, it was returned to the U.S. Navy and commissioned as the USS President Warfield (IX-169) on May 21, 1944. Following the end of World War II, the President Warfield was decommissioned and returned to the War Shipping Administration for disposal as surplus. After inspecting the President Warfield, Old Bay Line officials decided that the expense for reconditioning the badly deteriorated ship was excessive, and accepted a cash settlement from the War Shipping Administration instead of taking back the war surplus vessel.
  The old President Warfield was eventually acquired in early 1947 by Mossad Le'aliyah Bet, a Jewish organization helping Holocaust survivors illegally reach Palestine, then under British mandate. The former Baltimore Steam Packet and U.S. Navy steamship was renamed Exodus when she embarked from France for Palestine on July 11, 1947, carrying 4,515 passengers. Two Royal Navy destroyers rammed the Exodus as she entered Palestinian waters near Haifa on July 18. British forces boarded the damaged ship and eventually deported the passengers. The Exodus remained in Haifa harbor until 1952, when the derelict caught fire and burned completely. The 1960 film Exodus depicted the refugees' odyssey aboard the former President Warfield.
caption: President Warfield en route to Europe in 1947, where she was renamed Exodus
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