Continuing with the Jim Wich collection this week with two more '50s vintage photos scanned from 35mm slides.  This week I am posting  photos of a ship by the name of Pan-Massachusetts that came hobbling through the Panama Canal on it's way to Kure, Japan to be refitted and placed back in service.  The ship collided with another ship name Phoenix in the Delaware River in 1953 and both ships exploded and burned.  Phoenix was broken in two and was a total loss.  Read the whole story by visiting this website https://nashbulk.steamcheng.net/panmass.html 

The photo above shows Pan-Massachusetts entering Pedro Miguel locks stern first because of obvious reasons when you see the next photos.  There are several  rust brown PCC tugs and a couple of sea tugs on her stern taking her on her long journey.  Below are three other photos that Jim took of the stern and three of the bow.  What a mess this ship is in and you wonder how it could be sea worthy to make it from Baltimore to Japan.  How....towing it backwards.

An interesting thing I found while doing research on this boat was that there was another Pan-Massachusetts that was built before this one and served in WWII.  The first Pan-Massachusetts was sunk by a German U-Boat ...... now get this........sunk by the U Boat off the coast of Florida near Canaveral.  One of the only U-Boat fatalities in U.S. waters.  Considering the bad luck of the ship featured in this week's photos, they should have never named the ship the same as a the one that sunk.

More from the Wich collection next week.