Carlos Ralon
Engine Dept
Board of Directors

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Carlos Ralon joined the U.S. Maritime Service in 1944 at age 17. He graduated from the merchant marine training school at Sheepshead Bay with oiler and fireman-watertender papers. During World War II he sailed in Liberty ships and T-2 tankers in the North Atlantic, Mediterranean, South Pacific, Indian Ocean and South Atlantic war zones. En route from Calcutta, India, in August 1945, he and his shipmates learned of the atomic bomb drops on Japan. Returning to Colombo, Ceylon, they discharged their cargo and celebrated the end of the war. Their ship anchored next to the cruiser HMS AJAX, famed for its 1939 battle with the German pocket battleship ADMIRAL GRAF SPREE. Carlos celebrated his 18th birthday aboard a Liberty ship in Santos, Brazil. He helped return French and African troops from Marseilles to North Africa from December 1945 to January 1946, before leaving the merchant marine in 1948.

Carlos joined Project Liberty Ship in 1993 and became an active crew member in 1998. He has taken the necessary training courses aboard the BROWN to reactivate his Coast Guard certification as Qualified Member of the Engine Department (QMED) and also passed the Coast Guard-required STCW training.

Carlos' colorful life includes managing circulation districts for The Washington Star, running three saw mills on Maryland's Eastern Shore and tuning and repairing pianos by the score as a piano technician. He is surely the world's only wartime seaman who tuned White House pianos, fingered a shipboard steam calliope in the Great Lakes and played an organ on a Liberty ship for weddings, memorials and worship services. Carlos is still active as a piano technician and church organist when not aboard the BROWN.

His wife, Edith, is also a BROWN volunteer, working in the ship's store. Their son, Joel, is a volunteer in the BROWN's engine room along with his father.

Carlos was elected to the Board of Directors of Project Liberty Ship in 2005.