Wartime designation: USS Araner (IX-57)
Type: Auxiliary Ketch
LOA: 106′ 5″ / 32.44m – LWL: – Beam: 25′ 2″ / 7.67m – Draft: 10′ 6″ / 3.20m – Displacement: 147 Tons – Sail Area: – Original Owner: Walden W. Shaw, Chicago Industrialist – Original Name: Faith – Year Launched: 1926 – Designed by: John Griffin Hanna – Built by: Arthur D. Story Shipyards, Essex, Massachusetts – Hull Material: Wood – In service: 26 February 1942 – Out of service: 14 October 1944 District: 11th District (The Los Angeles District had three hundred miles of exposed coastline.)
Historical:
USS Araner was a Jack Hanna-designed wooden-hulled auxiliary ketch built in 1926 at Essex, Massachusetts by the Arthur D. Story Shipyards and acquired by motion picture director John Ford in June 1934. Originally named Faith, she was refurbished, and renamed Araner in honor of the Aran Islands, whence his wife’s family had come.
WWII service
The film director (John Ford) was appointed a Lieutenant Commander in the United States Naval Reserve in September 1934 and, according to one of his biographers, used Araner off Baja California for intelligence-gathering operations. In 1940, the commandant of the 11th Naval District commended Ford for his “… initiative in securing valuable information…” on that region.
After he was recalled to active duty in the summer of 1941 however, Ford had little use for his yacht. Shortly thereafter, America’s entry into World War II in December 1941 prompted the US Navy to acquire many private vessels and Araner was among them, for local patrol duties. Taken over on a bareboat charter on 27 January 1942, Araner was delivered to the US Navy at the section base at San Diego, California. Classified as a miscellaneous auxiliary and given the designation IX-57, she was placed in service on 26 February 1942. Assigned initially to the 11th Naval District and then, on 23 July 1942, to the Western Sea Frontier, the ketch operated out of San Diego, under sail power for much of the time, patrolling off Guadalupe and San Clemente Islands.
Transferred back to the 11th Naval District forces upon completion of her duties under the Commander, Western Sea Frontier, Araner was laid up at the Naval Frontier Base San Diego on 1 May 1944; and her crew transferred to YAG-6. Delivered to Mrs. John Ford on 12 July 1944, Araner was struck from the Naval Vessel Register on 14 October 1944.
Provenance (The Wall of Remembrance – The Owners, Notable Guest, and Reunion Information):
Ex; Faith; Windjammer
Owner/Guardian: (1926) – Walden W. Shaw, Chicago Industrialist – launched name Faith
Owner/Guardian: (1934) – (1971) John Ford, motion picture director – Renamed vessel Araner
Owner/Guardian: (1971) – Fran M. Dimond, Honolulu Hawaii, renamed Faith, 1975.
Owner/Guardian: Guam Rent-a-Car Company
Guest: John Wayne
Guest: Maureen O’Hara
Guest: Preston Foster
Guest: Ward Bond
Guest: Wingate Smith.
Donovan’s Reef (1963) Lee Marvin wanted to read the script first but the director John “Jack” Ford said, “Don’t read it just do it…don’t you want to spend eight weeks in Hawaii this Summer…don’t you want your kids to be brown as berries…so do the film” So off Lee went with all of Jack’s old pals to Hawaii. John Wayne, Jack Warden, Elizabeth Allen, Cesar Romero, Dorothy Lamour…etc. Kind of a good bye film for a final collaboration with friends to the Pacific on Jack’s Schooner Araner.
Acclaimed director John Ford’s boisterous, rowdy South Seas escapade. The Duke, Lee Marvin and Jack Warden play World War II navy buddies who have made the French Polynesian island of Haleakaloha their post-war paradise. Local headquarters is Donovan’s Reef, Wayne’s rough-and-tumble watering hole where bragging, brawling, and full-blown misbehavior are the order of the day. But destined to create more turmoil than any barroom fisticuffs is the sudden arrival of Elizabeth Allen, a straight-laced Boston blue blood. She’s hoping to locate her long-estranged father (Warden), affirm that he is “not of good moral character,” and then assume control of the family’s shipping dynasty back home in the States. Suave, debonair Cesar Romero and a sarong-clad Dorothy Lamour add to the laughs — and mayhem — in this tropical comedy treat.