Robert Dale Owen

Liberty Robert Dale Owen, n. 1974, was built in the may of 1943 in the shipyard of North Carolina Shipbuilding Company, Wilmington. She due her name to a social reformer (1801-1877), Indiana delegate to the Congress from the 1843 to 1847 and which contributes also to the foundation of Smithsonian Institute.
Robert Dale Owen made 8 different voyages carrying, in the first time, materials for the Allied in North Africa. In the February of 1944 she was sent to Baltimore and she was converted by cargo in troopship, so as to load a maximum of 550.
After few months, on the 4th of July, she left Norfolk for a demanding mission, during which the crew earned the Award of Operation and Engagement Star for the participation to the Operation Dragoon. In practice, it was the invasion of South France (15 August-25 September 1944) that, after the Normandy landing, surrounded the Germans forcing them to the retreat and causing so them defeat.
Robert D. Owen mission was to land the troops on Delta Beach (St. Maxime). After this operation, she left again after one week with 528 German captives who were destined to Oran, in North Africa. After the end of the war she was insert in the Ship Sales Act and she was sold to the Greek ship owner Panagos D. Pateras, which renamed Kalliopi intending to use as merchant ship.
During her first trip after the sale, full of only ballast, on the 20th of December 1947, while she’s sailing from Charleston and she was nearly to her destination, Rieka (Croatia), she bumped against a mine sinking and breaking it in three stumps.
Mine responsible of her sinking, after a lot time the finish of the war, it was one of numerous German mined fields placed for the defense of Rieka that escaped to Yugoslav minesweeping operations and caused others important ship sinking.