From the archives: Exodus: A steamer for history

This story was originally published in Newsday on February 5, 1995.

In the summer of 1947, the aging steamship President Warfield, crammed with more than 4,500 Jewish refugees from camps in Europe, chugged toward Palestine. As the ship neared its destination, the crew gave it a new and soon-to-be-famous name: Exodus 1947.

Defying orders to stay away from Palestinian waters, the ship clashed with British naval vessels enforcing immigration restrictions that had been designed to placate the Arabs. The refugees were sent back, but the incident generated international protests that helped to spur the creation of Israel later that year.

With the approach of the 50th anniversary of the voyage - recounted in the Leon Uris novel "Exodus" - Jewish and maritime history groups are urging the U.S. Postal Service and Israeli government to issue commemorative stamps. Among those hoping the stamp is issued are a 76-year-old retired LILCO employee from Levittown, who served as an officer on the ship when it was being used by the Navy in World War II, and a 70-year-old Jewish activist from Bethpage, who was aboard when it made its fated journey as the Exodus.

"The story of the Exodus is one of the great maritime stories of all time," says Frank Braynard, curator of the American Merchant Marine Museum in Kings Point. The ship is included in the museum's National Maritime Hall of Fame not only for its Exodus role, but also for its previous lives as a coastal steamer and warship.

The elegant 330-foot President Warfield, named for the president of the Old Bay Line, was built in 1928 for trips on Chesapeake Bay between Baltimore and Norfolk, Va. David C. Holly, author of "Exodus 1947," a 1969 book being updated for reissue in April, says, "She was the queen of the bay." The ship was elegantly fitted with mahogany paneling, chandeliers and gilt trim, and it served food as fine as the top Baltimore restaurants. The Warfield also operated on Long Island Sound when it was chartered by two companies for the New York-to-Boston run between 1929 and 1931.

The Warfield returned to the Chesapeake and was commandeered by the government and loaned to the British in 1942. The ship sailed for Europe with seven other coastal steamers escorted by two British destroyers. Six steamers and an escort were sunk by U-boats, and Warfield evaded a torpedo by 30 feet.

Reaching England, the Warfield served as headquarters for an amphibious unit until April, 1944, when it was turned over to the U.S. Navy and commissioned as the U.S.S. President Warfield.

When Lt. j.g. Donald DuBrul, now a 76-year-old retired LILCO cartographer who lives in Levittown, boarded the obsolete ersatz military ship as executive officer, "I was horrified." But there were compensations. "I was assigned to a stateroom with a bathtub."

DuBrul recalls how the ship was ordered to Omaha Beach in France a month after the D-Day landings, and how it served as a floating headquarters and hotel. German aircraft were bombing the area often, but the Warfield had more trouble from the weather. A severe storm came, DuBrul remembers, and he ordered everyone away from a straining mooring cable. "This thing was humming like a violin string." Just when everybody was clear, the cast-iron mooring bitt broke loose from the deck. "If I hadn't moved I would have had two broken legs for sure, or I'd be dead."

DuBrul remained aboard the ship until its decommissioning late in 1945. "You get attached to it after a while," he said. "We used to call her the 'Old Girl.' "

The Warfield was sold in November, 1946, to a New York-based agent of Haganah, the Jewish underground group.

A succession of small ships had carried illegal immigrants to Palestine, and Haganah wanted to up the ante with a large vessel to step up pressure on the British to increase immigration. The British were trying to juggle the interests of the Jews and Arabs in Palestine and restricted Jewish immigration to maintain the shaky peace. The Warfield was crewed primarily by Jewish activists, including Murray Aronoff, now 70, who lives in Bethpage. He had been part of a youth group in the United States committed to helping Jewish immigration, and he described himself at the time as a "wild one." Though he had polio in one leg, and "I had never been to sea before in my life," he was eager to be part of the effort to create a Jewish homeland.

Warfield left Baltimore for Europe in February, 1947, and almost sank in a storm. The second attempt in March was uneventful and the ship arrived July 9 in the congested harbor of the French city of Sete. Refugees had traveled from camps in Germany and Poland to villas nearby. Early the next morning 70 Haganah trucks carried them to the port. Under pressure from England, the French ordered the ship not to leave, but the Warfield did anyway, colliding with a sea wall and then running aground in the dark before escaping. A British warship waiting in international waters began shadowing the Warfield.

With 4,515 refugees plus the crew overloading the steamer, "conditions were impossible," Aronoff recalls. Water had to be rationed. One woman died in childbirth and was buried at sea.

Approaching Palestine, the British fleet shadowing Warfield grew to nine ships. Haganah planned to beach the Warfield near Tel Aviv. The British anticipated this and decided to board the ship - illegally - in international waters. At 2:45 a.m. on July 18 an officer on a destroyer announced that the Warfield was to stop and prepare to be towed into British-controlled Haifa. The Warfield crew responded by raising the Mogen David, the white and blue flag of Israel, and turned over the ship's nameboards to reveal the new name, "Haganah Ship - Exodus 1947."

The destroyers began crunching into the side of Exodus 1947 and sailors began boarding. The first six across seized the wheelhouse. Crew and passengers showered the British with canned goods and bottles, knocking many of them into the sea. Those who made it across were engaged in hand-to-hand combat. "We locked them in cabins," Aronoff said. "We threw their guns away."

Second Mate William Bernstein received a fatal wound. After firing a pistol taken from a British sailor in the wheelhouse, Aronoff was clubbed in the head. Two others aboard, including a 15-year-old orphan, were shot and killed. After two hours a British officer persuaded the crew to capitulate because Exodus was in danger of foundering.

When the refugees docked in Haifa, three transports were waiting. The ships returned the Jews to France where Haganah told those onboard that only the injured like Aronoff should disembark. The French opted not to force the others to leave the transports. Aronoff was spirited away by Haganah agents and, after recuperating, returned to the United States to make speeches. Later he sailed as a crew member on the first ship carrying legal immigrants to Israel after partition. He remained in the country for 20 months until returning to the U.S. and working for United Jewish Appeal before taking a job in the New York garment district.

The stalemate on the transports lasted three weeks, with no loss in determination by the refugees. "The British now recognized that they had committed a monstrous blunder," Holly writes. "Their position in Palestine, already precarious, was rapidly becoming untenable under the weight of world opinion . . ." Then the British compounded their initial political blunder by sending the refugees to Germany. The idea that people who had escaped concentration camps would be back in camps on German soil brought denunciation from around the world. The ships arrived in Hamburg on Sept. 8, 1947, and many of the passengers had to be dragged ashore by 2,500 troops. When the transports had docked back in France, the underground had promised to get all the refugees to Israel, and it completed the task a year later.

Exodus 1947 was still in Haifa when on Nov. 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly voted to partition Palestine and establish an independent Jewish state. In 1951, the mayor of Haifa announced plans to turn the Exodus into a museum, but before anything was done the ship burned to the waterline and sank on Aug. 26, 1952.

DuBrul thinks the Warfield / Exodus is a natural choice for a commemorative stamp. "It's something [important] that happened in history," he said. ". . . If I had a choice between putting Elvis Presley on a stamp or the Warfield, I'd choose the Warfield."