Asbestos Exposure Aboard the SS African Lightning

Her name suggested velocity and power. She was a ship built to move swiftly between continents, cutting through the South Atlantic with the purpose and energy that the postwar American merchant marine brought to the trade routes of the world. The SS African Lightning was a C3-type break bulk general cargo vessel built by Federal Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company and delivered to the American South African Line on 19 February 1947. She was, from her first day of service, a ship of the postwar era, purpose-built for the American flag trade between the East Coast of the United States and the ports of Africa, and operated throughout her commercial life by the company that would become Farrell Lines. For more than two decades she carried American goods outbound and African raw materials homeward across thousands of miles of open ocean. And for every one of those decades, asbestos was a part of her engineering plant, her piping systems, her bulkheads, and her accommodation spaces, placing every member of her crew at elevated risk of the diseases like mesothelioma and lung cancer.

The Federal Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company in Kearny, New Jersey, was one of the most productive shipyards in the United States during the wartime and early postwar period. This was a subsidiary of United States Steel Corporation that had built hundreds of vessels for the Navy and the merchant marine during the years of conflict. The African Lightning was among the postwar generation of vessels that emerged from American shipyards in 1946 and 1947, built not for war but for the peacetime trade routes that American shipping companies expected to dominate in the decades ahead.

She was a C3-type vessel, the Maritime Commission’s workhorse design for ocean cargo service, a type that had proven itself in both commercial and military applications throughout the war years. The C3 was a capable and reliable platform, well suited to the long blue-water passages of the Africa run. She bore MARAD official number 251451 and was of the specific subtype C3-S-BH2, a break bulk configuration optimized for general cargo service.

From the day she left the Federal Shipbuilding yard, the African Lightning was built in the manner of every major commercial vessel of her era: saturated with asbestos-containing materials from keel to superstructure. Asbestos was widely used in maritime and naval ships, including cargo ships, tankers, and freighters, until the late 1970s. Asbestos was used in insulation on boilers, as insulation wrap for steam pipes, and in gaskets and packings used in pipes, valves, and machinery. The African Lightning, delivered in 1947 and operating through the 1960s, spent her entire commercial life within this era of unrestricted and largely unwarned asbestos use.

A Ship of the Farrell Lines Africa Run

Farrell Lines was renamed in 1948 to reflect its expanded operations across Africa and to honor their father, James A. Farrell, Sr., a prominent industrialist and former president of the United States Steel Corporation. Farrell’s American South African Line was formed in 1925 to operate cargo and passenger services from New York to West and South Africa. In 1935 a service was inaugurated to East African ports and Mauritius. The African Lightning served this route throughout her commercial life, calling at the ports of West Africa and continuing around to South Africa on sailings that took her crew far from home for weeks at a time.

The cargo generally consisted of manufactured goods outbound from the U.S. and raw materials inbound from Africa. The vessels had deep tank capacity capable of carrying such commodities as tallow, lubricating oil, and other liquid cargo alongside conventional breakbulk freight. On those long passages between New York and the African coast, her crew lived and worked continuously in a vessel whose every compartment harbored asbestos-containing materials, with no opportunity to escape the contaminated environment until the ship reached port.

The motion of a vessel at sea further accelerated the deterioration of asbestos-containing insulation. Vibration from the propulsion plant, thermal cycling as the boilers heated and cooled between watches, and the physical stresses of long ocean passages caused asbestos insulation to crack, crumble, and shed fiber. As asbestos wrap ages, it can become brittle and release asbestos fibers into the air. Microscopic asbestos fibers can float in the air for days, allowing them to be unknowingly inhaled by merchant marine seamen working and sleeping in the ship’s confined spaces.

The African Lightning was ultimately sold as scrap to Tai Kien Industry Co., Ltd. on 9 July 1973, ending a commercial life that had stretched across more than a quarter century of continuous service on the Africa run. That scrapping, like the scrappage of every asbestos-saturated vessel before it, represented one final and concentrated exposure event for the workers who dismantled her, tearing apart decades of accumulated asbestos-containing insulation, tile, and structural materials in the course of breaking her down.

Asbestos Throughout the Ship

Asbestos-containing materials could be found from stem to stern on commercial cargo vessels like the African Lightning. Boiler rooms and engine rooms were among the areas with the most prevalent concentrations of asbestos. Given the extreme heat generated in these spaces, asbestos insulation was used extensively on pipes, boilers, and other equipment to prevent overheating and potential fires. Asbestos could also be found in sleeping quarters and mess halls, where it was used in flooring, ceiling tiles, and wall panels as a fireproofing measure. Even the paint used on walls and other surfaces might have contained asbestos for added fire protection. Asbestos was also common in wiring insulation and electrical panels as it effectively prevented electrical fires.

Asbestos cement was used as a form of insulation in engine rooms and was also used as a form of repair putty or caulk to make repairs throughout the vessel. Asbestos wrap insulation was fitted around boilers and pipes. Gaskets and packing for valves, pipe fixtures, and boilers released asbestos fibers when installed, maintained, or repaired, and were often dry cut by hand, causing asbestos exposure among those directly performing the work and anyone else working nearby.

The cargo-handling equipment that made the African Lightning a working breakbulk carrier presented its own exposure pathway. Brake linings in winches generated a great deal of asbestos dust, especially when the linings required sanding or cutting. The winches that operated the ship’s cargo booms, hoisting freight in and out of her holds at ports from New York to Dakar to Cape Town to Mombasa, depended on asbestos-lined brake components that shed fiber with every operation, adding yet another source of fiber into the air of spaces where crew members worked.

A C3 in the Fleet of Her Sister Ships

The African Lightning did not sail alone. She was one of a fleet of Farrell Lines vessels that shared the Africa run across the postwar decades. Her fleet mates included vessels like the SS African Patriot, the SS African Pilot, and the SS African Pilgrim, all built during the same postwar era, all operated on the same routes, all saturated with asbestos-containing materials in the same manner.

The workers who served across multiple Farrell Lines vessels during their merchant marine careers accumulated asbestos exposure across each vessel they crewed, compounding the total dose they absorbed over years of service. A machinist’s mate who served successively aboard the African Lightning, the African Patriot, and the African Pilot accumulated asbestos exposure from three separate vessels, all built to the same standards and all presenting the same engineering space hazards. The individual voyages added up, and so did the fiber.

Who Was at Risk

The asbestos hazard aboard the African Lightning extended to every member of her crew, but those whose duties placed them in the engineering spaces faced the most concentrated exposure. Boiler room firemen and operators handled steam lines, lagging, and firebrick that contained or were wrapped in asbestos. Fibers became airborne on a daily basis as they were moved. Mechanics and pipefitters were exposed to asbestos in gaskets, packing, and valves. The fibers were released during grinding, welding, and cutting of materials. Electricians were often working without any protective gear, breathing in fibers regularly. Welders were constantly cutting through asbestos-covered bulkheads, pipes, and decks during maintenance, leaving them very vulnerable to mesothelioma.

A study published in the Journal of Industrial Medicine by researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York analyzed the chest X-rays of more than 3,300 long-term U.S. merchant marine seamen and found that a third of the seamen showed signs of asbestos-related lung abnormalities. There was a correlation between the likelihood of abnormalities and the length of duty on a ship, as well as the job aboard ship. The prevalence of changes caused by asbestos was greater among merchant marine seamen who worked in the engine room compared to other duties. For merchant mariners exposed to asbestos more than 40 years prior, that statistic rose to 38.5 percent.

But the exposure and the risk were not limited to those below deck. The hazard was present throughout the vessel in accommodation spaces, in the galley, in the passageways, and in every compartment where crew members lived their daily shipboard lives. A deck officer navigating the African Lightning across the South Atlantic, a cook preparing meals in the ship’s galley, and a boatswain supervising cargo operations at an African terminal all lived and worked in the same asbestos-contaminated environment as the machinist’s mate who spent his watch in the engine room.

Seamen were exposed to asbestos while at sea by living onboard ships and from the continual release of asbestos fibers due to the motion of a vessel. On a ship making the long passage from New York to the West African coast, that continuous exposure accumulated day by day across weeks of steaming.

The Families Who Did Not Know

The asbestos fibers that accumulated in work clothing during long voyages did not stay aboard when the ship reached port or when a seaman signed off at the end of a voyage. They traveled home with every man who went on shore leave and with every mariner who ended his engagement. Spouses who laundered work clothing, children who greeted a returning merchant seaman, and family members who shared a household with someone who had served aboard the African Lightning were exposed to secondary contamination without any knowledge of what was arriving with him.

This secondary or take-home asbestos exposure is a well-documented pathway to asbestos-related disease that has claimed the health of family members of merchant mariners across the country, extending the reach of the African Lightning’s asbestos legacy far beyond her crew manifest and into the homes and lives of the families those men returned to.

The Knowledge That Was Concealed

The manufacturers of the asbestos-containing products installed throughout the African Lightning knew what those products could do to the people who worked with them. These companies prioritized profits over the safety of those using their products; they concealed the dangers from the merchant marine for decades. The boiler insulation suppliers, the gasket manufacturers, the pipe covering companies, the makers of the asbestos brake linings in the cargo winches, and the producers of every other asbestos-containing product installed throughout the vessel all had access to medical evidence linking their products to fatal lung disease. They chose not to act on it and they chose not to warn the men who worked with those products every day.

The merchant mariners who crewed the African Lightning performed their maintenance duties in good faith, trusting that the materials their employer had provided were safe. No one told them to wear respirators. No one told them to change their clothes before returning to the berthing compartments. No one warned the engineers and deck crew of the invisible hazard that surrounded them on every voyage between New York and the ports of Africa.

Mesothelioma Risk Follows Workers Across Decades

Mesothelioma is an aggressive and incurable cancer of the tissue lining surrounding the lungs, abdomen, or heart, caused by asbestos exposure. If asbestos-containing products were damaged or disturbed, fibers could be released into the air. This is what leads to cases of mesothelioma in merchant mariners 10 to 50 years later. A fireman who stoked the African Lightning’s boilers on the long passage between New York and Cape Town in the 1950s or early 1960s may have spent the next four or five decades in apparent good health before a diagnosis arrived to connect the present to those long-ago watches in the fire room.

Any former crew member of the African Lightning who has received one of these diagnoses, or whose physician has identified signs of asbestos-related lung disease on imaging studies, should consider whether their maritime service may be a contributing factor.

Seeking Justice

If you or someone you love served as a merchant mariner aboard the SS African Lightning at any point during her service with the American South African Line or Farrell Lines, or worked as a shipyard employee at Federal Shipbuilding and Dry Dock in Kearny during her construction, or performed repair or maintenance work on the vessel at any point during her commercial life, or worked on her scrapping in 1973, and has since been diagnosed with mesothelioma, lung cancer, asbestosis, or another asbestos-related illness, legal options may be available to you.

Merchant mariners and shipyard workers diagnosed with mesothelioma or other asbestos-related diseases have the right to seek justice through civil litigation against the manufacturers of the asbestos-containing products to which they were exposed. These lawsuits are filed against private companies that made or supplied asbestos products, not against the government or the shipping line itself. Asbestos trust funds established by bankrupt manufacturers contain an estimated $30 billion set aside for victims of asbestos-related disease, and an experienced maritime asbestos attorney can help identify the specific manufacturers whose products were aboard the vessels you served on and pursue compensation through personal injury litigation or trust fund claims, at no upfront cost.

Statutes of limitations apply to asbestos claims, and the window to file can close. For a disease that takes decades to appear, acting promptly upon diagnosis is always the most critical step.