Wednesday, March 22, 2023

Inventing Bobbing in Bed And a Murfin Memoir

Regular readers of this little blog know that we like to highlight the innovations and inventions that have improved the world and made America great.   Take, for instance, the example of the late 20th Century waterbed which was introduced as a class project by design student Charles Prior Hall at San Francisco State University in March of 1968.  At the height of its popularity 19 years later in 1987 nearly one quarter of all mattresses sold in the U.S. were waterbeds.

In the late spring of 1971, I took off on one of the great adventures of my young lifehitch hiking from Chicago to the Bay Area of California.  From there, I was to work my way up the Pacific Coast hopping freight trains on an old fashion soap box speaking tour for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).  I was lucky.  I got most of the way to the coast in three long rides. 

I picked up the last one as I was leaving Salt Lake from a young dude in a 1950’s sedan who had spent the winter in a high country cabin tending sheep all alone and dropping acid.  He was more than slightly crazed, but he got me across the dreaded salt flats.  Just as we crossed into Nevada he stopped to pick up two more long haired kids who were headed west looking for work in the fruit harvests.  The car broke down outside of Elko, but I got a short lift to a junk yard and took a fan belt off a junker.  By the time we got to his hometown just east of the Bay area, the driver was in full hallucination mode.  The kids took him into his parents’ home and I continued on my way.

The destination is wrong, but the gear was about the same except I wore cowboy boots and jeans on my Western trip.

My next ride from a Middle age guy in a late model Oldsmobile turned out badly.  The guy seemed friendly enough at first and told me that he had hitch hiked as a young man.  Then he started questioning me about my trip.  I told him about my plans for the speaking tour and explained the IWW.  He asked me if I was a demonstrator and I told him that I had been in the streets during the ’68 Democratic Convention in Chicago.  We were on an Interstate overpass in the late afternoon nearing Palo Alto where I was planning to crash with an old friend when the driver suddenly pulled over and told me to “get the fuck out of my car.”  It was a very dangerous spot and told his I was afraid I would be hit by traffic and asked if he could at least take me to the next exit.  He told me “That’s too damn bad.”

The Freeway was so busy, that I was surprised he hadn’t been hit letting me off.  Standing in a strip less than two feet wide while cars zipped by at 70 mph, I stood there with my bedroll and the gasmask bag stuffed with a change of clothes and had to make a quick choice.  I looked over the railing and saw that a busy surface street ran under the overpass.  Some sort of vines covered a steep embankment to the road.  I had to jump for it dropping maybe ten feet and hoping I didn’t break anything tumbling down the rest of the way.  I tossed the bindle and the bag over and followed.  I landed in one piece and slid to the sidewalk by the road—right in front of a local cop.  Naturally, he was curious about why I had just leapt from the freeway.  But despite my scruffy appearance in my beat up old Stetson and jean jacket with Wobbly colors sewed on back, he accepted my story.  He patted me down and checked my bag and bedroll for drugs and weapons.  I had neither except for an old Boy Scout pocketknife, but lots of people carried that kind of thing and it wasn’t considered a real weapon.  He let me off with a warning to be more careful and even gave me vague directions to my friend’s place two or three miles away.

After my heart stopped pounding, I noticed what a pleasant, warm, and sunny afternoon it was.  I was surprised that the air seemed perfumed.   Bougainvillea and other flowers grew in perfusion in yards along fences.  Evidently spring came earlier and more seriously to California than still frosty Chicago.  I ambled my way through the streets getting lost once or twice.  Finally, I found a pay phone and got directions.  Soon I was at the small cottage my friend shared with a male roommate who was apparently off doing something else.

My friend was, in fact, an old girl friend from Shimer College and the great unrequited love of my life.  I had wasted years mooning over her with suitable romantic angst and in the process missed most of the sexual revolution everyone else seemed to be enjoying.  We will call her Sarah E.  She was a pretty ash blonde, keenly intelligent, with her own streak of restless melancholy.  We were still close, but I was definitely on the best friend desert island like the wisecracking third wheel of a romantic comedy.

A few months after my Western trip at an IWW picnic in Chicago's Oz Park.

Sara greeted me warmly, poured a generous glass of wine and fed me a dinner with tofu and veggies, a sure sign I was on the left coast.  After dinner we sat on her porch in the gloaming smoking excellent dope out of a carved stone pipe.  We talked long into the seemingly tropical night recalling old times and catching up with each others lives.  I harbored dim hopes that we would fall into each other’s arms and weep over time lost.  We did not.  Instead of leading me to her alluring bed with the Indian print spread, she took me to her roommate’s room.  And that is where for the first time in my life, I beheld a waterbed—something I had only heard rumors about and read jokes about in Playboy. 

I bet you never thought we would get back to the blog topic at hand, but here we are.

The bed was little more than a giant flat plastic bag lying on the floor, filled, naturally, with water.  I don’t think it even had a frame.  Several light blankets were thrown on it.  I was advised to use most of them under me.  The heater did not work very well if at all.  The water in the bag was, at best, room temperature.  When I lay down—alas, alone—I could feel the cool through the layers.  The bed never warmed up like I was used to from the heat of my own body.  I was surprised and a little alarmed by the rolling motion of the bed every time I moved.  In point of fact, after the tofu, wine, and dope, it made me a little queasy.  But I was exhausted and slept the sleep of the dead waking up refreshed.

Sarah made strong coffee in a French press and made paper thin crepes for breakfast.  She had a day off and the use of her roommate’s VW Bus.  She drove me around the Bay, up the East side giving me a short tour of Oakland and Berkley where I had stops in a couple of days, then over the wide bridge to San Francisco itself.  We cruised the Haight and the Castro district and had dinner in Chinatown before she deposited me at the apartment of Phil Mellman, an 80-something Wobbly and former seaman who was my host for my Frisco appearance at Golden Gate Park the next day.  There I was given a seamans bunk and it was up at six bells to swab the bare wooden floors as if they were the decks of a tramp steamer, where the Joe was boiled mud and breakfast a glop of oatmeal.

We will leave the story of the tour for another day and return now, at long last, to the saga of the waterbed.

What was notable is that in just three years the waterbed had gone from college project to a consumer product that could be found in some homes and that could be the butt of jokes in a mens magazine.  And bigger things yet were ahead.

Now for a quick look back to the origins of the idea.

Noted Scottish physician Dr. Neil Arnott invented what is likely the first waterbed to prevent bed sores in invalids.

The use of some sort of water mattress for therapeutic purposes dates back to the 19th Century and perhaps even earlier.  In 1832 noted Scottish physician Dr. Neil Arnott invented and put into use what he called the Hydrostatic Bed to prevent bedsores in invalids.  It was also later used for burn victims and others for whom pressure from lying on relatively unyielding mattresses produced excruciating pain.  The bed enclosed what he called a “bath of water” in a casing of rubberized canvas.  Arnott declined to patent his invention hoping that other physicians would copy and use it.  By the mid-century his bed or similar ones developed by others were in use in the most progressive clinics and hospitals on both sides of the Atlantic but were still generally considered novelties.

North and South, an important novel by English author and social reformer Elizabeth Gaskell in 1855 described a waterbed used by an invalid character.  In America, Mark Twain described and praised their use at an infirmary for invalids in his hometown of Elmira, New York in an article for the New York Times in 1871.

Science Fiction pioneer Robert A. Heinlein invented but did not build a surprisingly modern water bed in the 1930's when he was enduring a long bed rest convalescence. 

While bedridden for an extended time with chronic tuberculosis which he contracted as a young Navy officer, pioneering science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein designed a waterbed to ease his discomfort from bed sores.  While he never constructed it, similar water beds were described in his classics Beyond This Horizon (1942), Double Star (1956), and Stranger in a Strange Land (1961).  Years later in 1980 in his anthology of short stories and non-fiction Expanded Universe, Heinlein described in detail his never-built water bed.

I designed the waterbed during years as a bed patient in the middle thirties; a pump to control water level, side supports to permit one to float rather than simply lying on a not very soft water filled mattress. Thermostatic control of temperature, safety interfaces to avoid all possibility of electric shock, waterproof box to make a leak no more important than a leaky hot water bottle rather than a domestic disaster, calculation of floor loads (important!), internal rubber mattress and lighting, reading, and eating arrangements—an attempt to design the perfect hospital bed by one who had spent too damn much time in hospital beds.

In fact, it sounded a lot like the water beds found in stores across the county.

How much, if anything of all this that design student Charles Hall knew is open to conjecture.  Like Dr. Arnott and Heinlein, Hall’s initial design was therapeutic.  He wanted to build a chair for those in chronic pain.  Working with the assistance of fellow students Paul Heckel and Evan Fawkes he first experimented with filling a vinyl bag filled with 300 pounds of cornstarch.  He hoped that the fine powder would provide just enough “give” and softness.  Unfortunately, it was uncomfortable. He next turned to gelatin, but it had a tendency to decompose even in the sealed bag.  

He abandoned the idea of a chair, and turned to making a bed, which was structurally simpler.  He soon turned to water to fill the bag.  The resulting simple waterbed was much like Arnott’s more than a hundred years earlier.  His main innovation was replacing the rubberized canvas with modern, flexible vinyl.  He also discovered in addition to any health benefits and patient comfort, the motion of his beds enhanced sexual calisthenics. 

Hall obtained a patent and founded Innerspace Environments which became a pioneering waterbed manufacturer, distributor, and retailer.  He marketed his products as pleasure pits.  Sales took off.  But Hall, like many inventors, never really got rich from his innovation.  His basic original idea—a single chamber bag with a rudimentary heating system was so simple that it was easy for competitors to make improvements and get their own patents.  Hall spent so much money on fruitless patent infringement lawsuits that his business was barely profitable.  And many of those innovations, especially multiple sections and baffling to reduce motion, as well as more sophisticated heaters and thermostats, made his simple original model rapidly obsolete. 

How could anyone resist a deal like this?  An ad like this undoubtedly ran in the Chicago Seed.

If Hall did not become rich selling water beds, plenty of others did.  Several regional and national retail chains made the waterbed store a ubiquitous urban feature.  Until they became sold with elaborate frames and platforms and later models incorporated padding, water beds were significantly cheaper than brand name box spring and mattress sets.  And they had the caché of hot sex.  They were naturally popular among young people.

But they had their drawbacks—most notably the “domestic disasters” Heinlein tried to avoid.  They could, and did, spring leaks.  I had a friend whose cat tried sharpening her claws on a mattress and flooded her apartment and drenched the one below.  There were many cases reported of the heavy beds crashing through floors that could not support them.  The beds were also a hassle to drain and move.  Heaters often failed and were expensive to continuously operate.

Like all fads interest eventually waned.  Some blamed landlords who increasingly banned them, and insurance companies that either canceled policies of water bed owners or charged exorbitant premiums.  Meanwhile there was a revolution in conventional mattresses including layers of padding, improvement in innerspring coil technology, and especially the introduction of memory foam. 

Today waterbed stores have virtually disappeared.  Only about 2% of American mattress sales are waterbeds and they are made, just as old Dr. Arnott had hoped, mostly for therapeutic purposes.  

 

 

Tuesday, March 21, 2023

From Little Wanton to a Far Away Death—With Murfin Verse

 

Pocahontas imagined as a Powhatan "princess" with facial features based on her from life 1616 English portrait.

On March 21, 1617 Rebecca Rolfe, the 22 year old wife of John died, probably of smallpox or pneumonia, in England leaving behind an infant son, Thomas.  This incident, while tragic was so common that it would hardly be remembered today except for Rebecca’s maiden name—Pocahontas.  

She was born about 1598 in what is now Virginia, the daughter of Wahunsunacah, principal chief of a network of Algonquian speaking tribes and known by the ceremonial title of Powhatan.  Her birth name was Matoaka.  

 

                                                                            A Powhatan girl like "Little Wanton"  from a contemporary drawing by a Virginia settler.

Pocahontas, the name by which she was introduced to the English settlers at Jamestown, was said to mean “little wanton.” As a child of about ten, she captured the colonists attention by regular visits to them while cavorting naked and apparently unashamed.  

Years later Captain John Smith, the leading soldier of the colony, told a story of how the young Indianprincess” had saved him from being executed by her father.  In embellished accounts she literally threw herself over Smith’s body to prevent his decapitation

Some historians doubt the veracity of the story.  Smith did not report it in his first writings about the colony but only years later in a letter to Queen Anne asking that the girl be received in Court.

John Smith's romantic yarn of being saved by Pocahontas captured the imagination of generations but may never have happened.

But it is undoubtedly true that Smith had a relationship with the girl and may have made promises of future marriage to either her or her father.  At any event she did bring Smith gifts of provisions which helped the nearly starving colonists survive.  

Relations between the Powhatan Confederacy and the English deteriorated as more settlers arrived.  In 1609 Smith was injured in a powder explosion and returned to England to recover.  For some reason Pocahontas was told by the colonists that he had died, although her father warned her that it might not be so because “the English lie.”  

Around 1612 she may have married a tribesman, but little is known about that marriage.  At any rate, in 1613 she was living with another tribe, the Patawomeck, trading partners of the Powhatan, near present day Fredericksburg.  She was seen and recognized by visiting Englishmen and kidnapped to be held for ransom in exchange for prisoners held by her father. 

She was kept for over a year, reportedly in “extraordinary courteous usage” as negotiations dragged on.  Powhatan did release prisoners but refused other demands.  Meanwhile the young woman was being instructed in Christianity and learned to speak fluent English.  She allowed herself to be baptized and took the name Rebecca.  

 

John Rolfe and Rebecca, A/K/A Pocahontas.

John Rolfe, a recent widower who had developed a new strain of tobacco suitable for widespread cultivation and export, may have contributed to her conversion.  He certainly wooed her and made it clear that he could not marry a “heathen.”  She met with a large band of Powhatan after an armed conflict with her captors in March 1614 and she told them that she rebuked her father for not valuing her above “old sword pieces, or axes,” and proclaimed that she would rather live with the English.   

Rolfe wrote the Governor for permission to marry her, pointing out that he was also saving her soul by bringing her to Christianity.  The couple wed in April and settled on Rolfe’s plantation.  The marriage did produce peace between Powhatan and the English.  It also produced son Thomas in January, 1615 almost exactly nine months after the wedding.  

The following year the family set sail for England in hopes of recruiting more settlers and getting financial backing for the struggling colonies.  Rebecca was valuable as a symbol that the colonies could both live in peace with the natives and convert them to Christianity.  She was received in Plymouth and latter in London with great interest and won friends with her charm.

When Smith heard she was in the country, he wrote the letter to Queen Anne that first told the story of his rescue.  In 1617 the Rolfes were introduced to King James himself at Whitehall Palace

 

Rebecca, Mrs. John Rolfe, in full Court regalia in 1616 painted from life.  She charmed and fascinated a King.

The same year she met John Smith at a social gathering and had what Smith recorded as an uncomfortable private meeting with him.  She reminded him of broken promises he had made, shamed him by calling him “father,” and finally forgave him.  

The Rolfe family was on board a ship to return to Virginia when Rebecca was taken ill.  She was brought ashore and died at Gravesend, Kent.  

Her grief stricken husband and son returned to Virginia.  Through Thomas many of the great Tidewater aristocratic families can trace decent from the “Indian princes.”  These include the Randolphs of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson, the ByrdsAdmiral Richard and Senator Robert—and First Ladies Edith Wilson and Nancy Reagan. 

Claiming descent from Pocahontas was a two edged sword.  On one hand it provided a colorful and romantic background and was proof of a lineage tracing back to the revered First Families of Virginia.  On the other hand, as racial attitudes and prejudices hardened progressively through the 18th and 19th Centuries acknowledging Pocahontas meant admitting to having tainted blood Families and individual vacillated between bragging about the connection and trying to obscure it.

It turns out Pocahontas can still carry a sting by associationDonald Trump slurred Senator Elizabeth Warren repeatedly as Pocahontas for claiming some Native American blood.  It was an effective sting against one of his most voracious Democratic critics and potential challengers.   Some think that attack so undermined Warren that it contributed to her failure in Democratic Presidential primaries in 2020.

Disney's version of Pocahontas was one of the first to ethnically broaden the studios signature princes.  It also recast her as a symbol of ideal ecological awareness but liberalism still erased the real woman.

The story of Pocahontas has been told and retold and highly romanticized. That reached its zenith with the 1995 Disney animated film which resurrected a romance that may never have happened and transformed the girl into an ecological guru.

A few years ago, I was moved to commit poetry.

Death of a Princess

March 21, 1617

 

They saw you gambol naked

            in their midst.

Little wanton they called you

            as they lusted in their

            Christian hearts.

 

They stroked you and cooed soft words.

You had your father bring them presents

            and won for him some iron trinkets

            that made him the richest man

            in the forests.

 

You may, or may not,

have saved the life

            of a golden hair in shining armor.

He may, or may not,

            have lain with you on the soft leaves

            and, chest heaving, have made

            promises he could not keep.

 

You were traded away,

            made captive and ransomed.

Abandoned by your people,

            you made the best deal for yourself

            to an earnest widower with a fine farm.

 

You lost your name, whatever it was.

He took you across the great water.

They gaped at you in wonder

            and swathed you in acres

            of the finest cloth.

 

What happened to your naked soul

            in that wide, stiff ruff,

            rigid bodice and skirts

            too voluminous to take a petty

            brook in a joyful leap?

 

And they wondered what killed you.

 

—Patrick Murfin

Monday, March 20, 2023

The USS Langley Where Naval Aviation Took Off

 

The USS Langley (CV-1), the U.S. Navy's first aircraft carrier with her compliment of  Vought VE-7 Bluebird fighters. 

When the USS Langley (CV-1) was officially commissioned on March 20, 1922, the United States Navy took a semi-timid step into its future.  The Langley was the first American aircraft carrier and the second in the world, after Britain’s primitive HMS Argus in 1918.  But the Navy was already behind the aggressive Japanese who had already finished and would commission in just months the Hōshō, the first ship built from the keel up to launch and retrieve combat aircraft. 

By contrast the Langley, which was built on the hull of a decommissioned collier, was a slow, lumbering tub.  But then it’s eventual compliment of fighter planes—Vought VE-7 Bluebirds—were already obsolete World War I canvas covered biplanes which were not much faster.  Still, its 540 foot long flight deck gave a generation of naval aviators their sea legs including many who would go on to become senior flight officers in World War II.

Her origins were somewhat humbler.  She was built at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo, California as the USS Jupiter, a 19,670 ton collier.  President William Howard Taft was on hand for ceremonies when her keel was laid in 1911.  It was highly unusual for a President to attend such a ceremony for all but the most important capital ships.  Maybe it was just that he was on a rare visit to the West Coast and need some events to round out his schedule and get his picture in the newspapers.  After all, he was up for re-election the next year.  But it might also have been an indication of the importance of this new class of ships which would dramatically extend the range and time at sea for America’s aging Great White Fleet during an age of an intense international naval arms race.  The sister ships would follow—USS Cyclops, USS Proteus, and USS Nereus.   Cyclops would be lost without a trace in the North Atlantic during World War I and Nereus would vanish in the same waters in the next war, both presumed to have been sunk by German U-boats.

The Langley was built on the hull of the USS Jupiter, collier which had seen service in World War I.

Jupiter was launched on August 14, 1912.  Besides a large capacity for coal and modern heavy equipment to transfer the fuel to warships, she was the first Navy electrically propelled ship powered by General Electric Turbo Electric Motors turning twin propellers. 

After completing sea trials and assigned to the Pacific Fleet one of her first missions was not as a collier but as a troop transport.  During the 1914 Vera Cruise Crisis she carried a contingent of Marines to stand-by off shore at Mazatlán, Mexico threatening the country’s West Coast.  After the crisis passed Jupiter became the first Navy ship to transit the Panama Canal west to east as she sailed to join the Atlantic Fleet.

During World War I she supported Navy operations in the Caribbean and North Atlantic.  Also in the build-up of American forces in Europe, she made two runs as a freighter/troop carrier including one that delivered the first American aviators into the war zone—a naval aviation detachment of 7 officers and 122 men to England.  At war’s end she supplied coal to the ships bringing members of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) home through much of 1919.

After a short tour with the Pacific Fleet again, Congress authorized her conversion into an entirely new classification of warship—the aircraft carrier.  Previously naval aircraft had been launched and retrieved from short flight decks built onto cruisers like the USS Birmingham.  While those tests showed that it was practical, the jerry-rigged conversions could not carry enough aircraft to be useful in combat beyond reconnaissance duty.  The Jupiter class colliers were just the right size and had very little superstructure to remove to add a flight deck.

Jupiter sailed once again to through the Panama Canal to report to the Norfolk Navy Yard in Virginia where she was decommissioned and work begun on her conversion.  On April 11, 1920 she was renamed in honor of aviation pioneer Samuel P. Langley. 

Upon being commissioned at Hampton Roads in 1922 Commander Kenneth Whiting, who had advocated the construction of a carrier and had helped oversee its construction, assumed temporary command.  He would later server as the ships Executive Officer and be directly involved in the launch and command of the Navy’s first five carriers.  Often called the Father of the Carrier Whiting had been the young Lieutenant in command of that naval aviation detachment that the Jupiter had delivered.

Whiting recognized that the Langley was more of test laboratory than an effective member of the battle fleet.  She was far too slow to keep up with the fleet.  But he felt sure it would suffice to train pilots, refine the techniques for using the catapult launch and breaking cable tail hook recovery necessary for operations.  In additions crews would learn how to use the elevator to bring up aircraft from the below deck hanger.  All of this was essential to modern aircraft carrier development. The fledgling carrier began to rack up firsts. 

The First tail hook landing on board.

On October 22, 1922 Lt. Virgil C. Griffin became the first pilot to take off from the deck in his Vought bi-plane.  Nine days later Lieutenant Commander Godfrey de Courcelles Chevalier made the first landing in an Aeromarine 39B.  Tragically this promising young officer died of injuries sustained in the crash of a Vought on a routine flight from Norfolk to Yorktown.   On November 19 Cmdr. Whiting himself became the first flyer to be launched from the ship’s catapult.

In January 1923 the Langley began regular sea duty in the Caribbean.  She would conduct training off of the East Coast and impress dignitaries in Washington with demonstrations of her capacities.  As expected, the demonstration whetted the appetite for additional ships.  Congress had already authorized the conversion of another collier, although Whiting had begged for new construction capable of operating with the fleet.

Fate stepped in before the second conversion could get underway.  The Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 pledged all of the Great Powers to a level of naval disarmament.  Not only were some in-service capital ships to be scrapped, but projects under construction had to be halted.  For the U.S. that meant stopping work on two fast, modern cruisers—USS Lexington and USS Saratoga both of which had completed, or nearly completed hulls laid down.  But the treaty failed to include aircraft carriers as capital ships.  Congress quickly scrapped plans to convert another collier and ordered that the two ships be converted to carriers.  These new ships were a significant upgrade from the Langley.  Their pilots and crews were largely trained on the original ship.

From 1927 Langley sailed the waters off of California and Hawaii in training fleet units, experimentation, pilot training, and tactical-fleet problems.  But by 1936 she was clearly obsolete as a carrier.  She put into Mare Island where she was reconfigured as a seaplane tender with the new hull designation AV-13.

She joined the Aircraft Scouting Force of the Pacific Fleet and was on regular sea and patrol duty until the American entry into World War II.  Stationed off of the Philippines when the Japanese attack on those islands began on December 8, 1941, Langley was ordered to sail for the Dutch East Indies and from there was forced to retreat to Darwin, Australia where she joined the make-shift American-British-Dutch-Australian Command (ABDACOM) naval forces.  She first assisted the Australians in anti-submarine patrol.

Seaplane Tender USS Langley under attack off of Java.

Then in February she was assigned a critical mission, delivering 32 P-40 fighters belonging to the Far East Air Forces 13th Pursuit Squadron and their pilots and ground crews to Java.  After departing Melbourne in a strong convoy, the Langley and the Sea Witch split off to make their run to Java.  After rendezvousing with a two destroyer screen escorts on February 27, the two transports came under attack by waves of Japanese Aichi D3A1 Val dive bombers.  In the third attack the Langley was hit 5 times and 16 of her crew were killed.  The ship was soon dead in the water and listing badly.  An order to abandon ship was given and her escort destroyers sunk her with gunfire to prevent her from falling into the hands of the enemy.

The bad luck of the survivors, however, was just beginning.  After being transferred to USS Pecos, many of her crew were lost when Pecos was sunk en route to Australia. Then thirty-one of the thirty three pilots assigned to the 13th Pursuit Squadron were lost with the USS Edsall was sunk on the same day while responding to the distress calls of the Pecos.  The whole operation was a devastating loss.

The new USS Langley (CVL-27) in action near Singapore.

The name USS Langley lived on when light Independence class carrier of the same name was commissioned in 1943 with the hull designation CVL-27.  The new ship saw action in several Pacific battles.  After the war she was transferred to France where she was re-named the La Fayette.  She was decommissioned and scrapped in 1963.