The USS Eridanus (AK-92) was a Crater-class cargo ship that served the US Navy in World War II, manned by a US Coast Guard crew. The ship’s mission was to deliver goods and equipment in the war zone. Launched in April 1943 by Permanente Metals Corporation, the ship was acquired by the US Navy two weeks later and commissioned under Lieutenant Commander F. W. Johnson’s command. The vessel spent its wartime carrying cargo and passengers between US West Coast ports and the Hawaiians, New Zealand, the Philippines, and the Palaus, for the US Navy, but also for the US Marines and US Army. The USS Eridanus was decommissioned in May 1946, returned to the War Shipping Administration and laid up in the National Defense Reserve Fleet, James River Group, Virginia. Navy veterans who worked in shipyards from the 1930s to through the 1990s; service members involved in ships' construction, repair, overhaul, or decommissioning, sailors who worked on ships whose keels were laid before 1983; and boiler operators, demolition specialists, hull technicians, machinists, mechanics, pipefitters, welders, and seabees, were exposed to high levels of asbestos.
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