30111. (lot 3 photos) SS San Jacinto (SS Fort Mercer) Once Again Breaks in Half After Explosion c.1964. c. March 27, 1964. Lot of three (3) press photos 7 ½” x 10” show excellent details of the T-2 tanker SS San Jacinto, once named SS Fort Mercer. In 1952 18 crewmen were rescued from the tanker Fort Mercer after she split in two off Chatham in a fierce northeast storm. During this storm the SS Pendleton also split in two in the same area prompting the rescue of 32 crewmen by the Coast Guard’s CG-36500, a rescue immortalized in thje book and movie The Finest Hours. One photo in this lot shows good detail of the SS Fort Mercer before the 1952 tragedy. The strange fate of the Fort Mercer did not end here, however. Its owner, Trinidad Corp., had the stern towed to the Todd Shipyards Corp.’s Galveston, Texas, yard, where a new bow was attached to the stern section. When the 545-foot re-christened vessel, the San Jacinto, left the yard in 1953, it was 40 feet longer. In 1964, as the reincarnated tanker steamed 40 miles off Virginia, an explosion blew the San Jacinto in two during a routine cleaning of its tanks, leaving one man dead. A second photo shows the stern, which had drifted some 40 miles from the bow. The section was picked up by salvage tugs which towed it to Newport, R.I., eventually through Long Island Sound to New York. A third view shows the stern section right after the accident as a Navy helicopter hovers over the vessel ready to remove the crew if needed. The ship would emerged a third time, in 1965, not as one ship, but two: the Pasadena and the Seatrain Maryland. The unlucky F ort Mercer saga finally ended in a Bangladesh shipyard, where the Seatrain Maryland was broken up in 1983. Clear, close, nice detailed views with descriptions and dated. (VG+). $78. (available individually $34 each)