SS Robert E . Peary SS " Robert E . Peary " was a Liberty ship which gained fame during World War II for being built in a shorter time than any other such vessel . Named after Robert Peary , an American explorer who claimed to have been the first person to reach the geographic North Pole , she was launched on November 12 , 1942 just 4 days , 15 hours and 29 minutes after the keel was laid down . Construction . The SS " Robert E . Peary " was built at the Permanente Metals Corporation No . 2 Yard in Richmond , California and was the 47th ship built at the yard . The record set in her construction was the result of a competition between shipyards to see which could build a Liberty ship the fastest . The Oregon Shipbuilding Corporation had built another Liberty ship , the SS " Joseph N . Teal " , in only ten days between September 13 and September 23 , 1942 . The yard ' s owner , Henry J . Kaiser ( who also owned the Richmond Shipyards ) , was asked by a reporter if it could have been done quicker . He replied that it could have been constructed in eight days but had been delayed to allow President Franklin D . Roosevelt to attend . Roosevelt agreed to a proposal to build a ship in half the time . To meet the deadline , the Richmond Shipyard prefabricated as much of the vessel as possible at its No . 2 Yard and pre - positioned the sections to enable the workers to assemble it with maximum efficiency . The keel was laid at 12 : 01 am on November 8 , 1942 . The rest of the ship was built from prefabricated 250 - ton sections with the engines already in place . The bottom shell unit was installed first , followed by the inner - bottom unit to support the boiler , engine and pump . The boilers were put in place by mid - morning , followed by transverse bulkheads and the shaft tunnel . The upper deck was completed on the second day , with the installation of the lower forepeak , more bulkheads and the fantail . The masts , derricks and superstructure were installed on the third day . During the final day the wiring , welding and painting was completed along with the installation of the forward gun platform and the inner stack . She was launched at 3 : 27 pm on November 12 after around 250 , 000 individual parts weighing had been assembled . After 26 minutes of speeches , Mrs . James F . Byrnes , the wife of the head of Roosevelt ' s Economic Stabilization Office , christened the ship and it was sent down the slipway into San Francisco Bay . It was delivered for service on November 15 , setting an additional record of 7 days , 14 hours and 32 minutes from laying the keel to delivery . The record speed of the construction was a propaganda effort intended to show that the United States could produce ships faster than they could be sunk . Normally , the Permanente yard took an average of about 50 days to build a Liberty ship . In fact , though , it could not realistically be done much faster as there was not enough steel or capacity to build them at such a pace . The ship was referred to as a " stunt ship " , though Henry Kaiser referred to it as an " incentive ship " because of the boost that it provided to his workers ' morale . Nonetheless , the extreme rapidity of the " Robert E . Peary " construction illustrated how successfully US shipyards had adopted methods of mass production that had been pioneered in the motor industry ; at the start of the Liberty ship program , the ships took an average of 1 . 4 million man - hours and 355 days to build , but by 1943 the figures had come down to under 500 , 000 man - hours ( or , 57 man years ) and an average of 41 days . Service career . The SS " Robert E . Peary " sailed on her maiden voyage on November 22 . She was operated by the Weyerhauser Steamship Company and first served in the Pacific Theatre , sailing to Noumea , New Caledonia before heading onwards to Guadalcanal . She sailed to the Atlantic Ocean in April 1943 and operated there for the remainder of the war on the convoy routes to Europe , ferrying prisoners of war from North Africa and serving off Omaha Beach on D - Day . She was withdrawn to the Wilmington Reserve Fleet in December 1946 and was scrapped in June 1963 at Baltimore , Maryland .