SS Exodus

Exodus 1947 was a packet steamship that was built in the United States in 1928 as President Warfield for the Baltimore Steam Packet Company – named for the company's recently deceased president. From her completion in 1928 until 1942 she carried passengers and freight across the Chesapeake Bay between Norfolk, Virginia and Baltimore, Maryland. From 1942 President Warfield served in the Second World War as a barracks and training ship for the British Armed Forces. In 1944 she was commissioned into the United States Navy as USS President Warfield (IX-169), a station and accommodation ship for the D-Day landing on Omaha Beach. In 1947, she was renamed Exodus 1947 to take part in Aliyah Bet. She took 4,515 Jewish migrants from France to Mandatory Palestine. Most were Holocaust survivors who had no legal immigration certificates for Palestine. The Royal Navy boarded her in international waters and took her to Haifa, where ships were waiting to return the migrants to refugee camps in Europe.