SS William A. Graham (MC hull number 160) was a Liberty ship built by the North Carolina Shipbuilding Company of Wilmington, North Carolina, and launched on 26 July 1942.^[2] One of over 2,700 cargo ships produced during an emergency shipbuilding program, William A. Graham was named for William Alexander Graham, a 19th-century governor of North Carolina and a U.S. Secretary of the Navy.

A Liberty ship at sea
History
United States
Name	William A. Graham
Namesake	William Alexander Graham
Builder	North Carolina Shipbuilding Company, Wilmington, North Carolina
Yard number	16
Way number	4
Laid down	1 June 1942
Launched	26 July 1942
Completed	15 August 1942
In service	1942
Out of service	1952
Fate	Scrapped, 1972
General characteristics
Class and type	Type EC2-S-C1 Liberty ship
Displacement	14,245 long tons (14,474 t)[1]
Length	441 ft 6 in (134.57 m) o/a 417 ft 9 in (127.33 m) p/p 427 ft (130 m) w/l[1]
Beam	57 ft (17 m)[1]
Draft	27 ft 9 in (8.46 m)[1]
Propulsion	Two oil-fired boilers Triple-expansion steam engine 2,500 hp (1,900 kW) Single screw
Speed	11 knots (20 km/h; 13 mph)[1]
Range	20,000 nmi (37,000 km; 23,000 mi)
Capacity	10,856 t (10,685 long tons) deadweight (DWT)[1]
Crew	81[1]
Armament	Stern-mounted 4 in (100 mm) deck gun Variety of anti-aircraft guns

Constructed in eight weeks, the 441-foot steamship was operated by J. H. Winchester & Company. of New York. On her maiden voyage carrying Lend-Lease supplies to Karachi, William A. Graham narrowly evaded a wolf pack of German submarines off Cape Town in October 1942. The ship had a second close encounter with the enemy in June 1944, when German bombers attacked the harbor at Anzio where William A. Graham lay at anchor with six other merchantmen.

A record of William A. Graham's maiden voyage is preserved in the diary of the ship’s first assistant engineer, Everett S. Ransom. Copies of the diary have been donated to nearly 30 libraries and museums around the United States, including the Lower Cape Fear Historical Society, the North Carolina Collection at UNC-Chapel Hill, and the Nimitz Library of the United States Naval Academy.

After the war, William A. Graham carried cargo under different operators until being mothballed in 1952 in a reserve fleet in Mobile, Alabama. In 1972, the ship was purchased for scrap and dismantled by the Union Minerals and Alloys Corporation.