"President Franklin Delano Roosevelt referred to them as the 'Ugly Ducklings,' yet they provided a vital link between the United States' Arsenal of Democracy and the Allied Forces. A total of 2,710 Liberty ships were built during the course of the Second World War and they transported 75 percent of the nation's cargo overseas during those turbulent years. From a distance, it is impossible to distinguish one Liberty ship from another.

However, what made each vessel unique was not where it was built, or its name, or any other distinguishing mark on its hull, but the men and women who walked upon the deck and how they carried themselves through the greatest conflict the world has ever seen. This is the story of one such crew and their ship, the SS Henry Bacon, and its mission to save the lives of nineteen Norwegian refugees, fleeing from the destruction and onslaught of the Nazi Army.".

"The Last Voyage of the SS Henry Bacon is not merely a sea story about an American freighter fighting its way on the dreaded Murmansk Run - the northern supply route to the Soviet Union. It involves a little known military campaign at the top of Europe, in northern Norway (a region known as Finnmark), and how the local Norwegians fought, evaded, escaped, and refused to buckle under to Nazi domination.

The fate of the village of Soroya, and that of the SS Henry Bacon, are forever intertwined as that vessel loaded some of the survivors, saved in a daring raid by the British Royal Navy, and then tenaciously persevered through the onslaught of Nazi U-boats and Luftwaffe bombers as part of Convoy RA-64. A fierce North Atlantic storm separated the ship from its protective escorts, and alone, the ship fell victim to the Germans."--BOOK JACKET.