WORLD WAR II AND HUGH MULZAC

When the United States entered the Second World War in December 1941, it faced a shortage of merchant mariners. Supplies were desperately needed overseas. The massive sealift would require not only a huge fleet of cargo ships, but the seafarers to sail them. Thus the door opened a bit to Black mariners for a range of shipboard jobs. One of the most dramatic stories of the era involved shipmaster Hugh Mulzac.

Born in the British West Indies in 1886, Mulzac went to sea after high school, sailing on British vessels. He later attended the Nautical School in Swansea, England, earning a mate's license. He sailed as a ship's officer in World War I, and came to the United States, becoming a citizen in 1918.

By 1920, Mulzac passed the examination as a U.S. shipmaster, but there were no shipboard berths available to a Black captain. Although holding his master's license, he worked for the next 20 years mostly in the steward's department of various shipping lines. This was the only shipboard work he could find, and he became an expert in food service management.

With the outbreak of World War II, Mulzac recognized an opportunity to use his license and command a vessel. At age 56, he was named master of the new Liberty ship BOOKER T. WASHINGTON. At the risk of losing his command, he insisted on having an integrated crew, not the all Black crew that had been planned. The U.S. Maritime Commission relented, and the BOOKER T. WASHINGTON made 22 round-trip voyages with Mulzac at the helm.

With the war's end, Mulzac found himself "on the beach," again the victim of discrimination. Because of his involvement in the 1930s in the labor union movement, he also fell prey to the rampant McCarthyism of the early 1950s.

It was not until 1960, at age 74, that Mulzac could obtain another maritime officer job, as a night mate. He died in 1971, but left a legacy of courage, fierce determination and accomplishment in the face of extreme hardship.

Joseph B. Williams, the first African American graduate of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, sailed as a cadet-in-training aboard the Liberty ship BOOKER T. WASHINGTON. He remembered Capt. Hugh Mulzac as a "demanding taskmaster," but who taught him "how to be a qualified officer."

Williams graduated from the Academy in 1944. After the war, he pursued a career in law, eventually serving on the bench of the New York State Supreme Court prior to his retirement. He died in 1992.