Texas Oil Company, Florence E. Rodgers, who, grasping the ceremonial bottle of champagne in her hand, pronounced the words: The ship slid down No. 2 slipway, entering the waters of the Delaware River. The existence of Ohio would, in her initial years, be uneventful and ordinary, plying between Port Arthur and various other American harbors. She set a speed record from Bayonne to Port Arthur, covering in four days and twelve hours, an average of more than seventeen knots. Malta, "Pedestal" planning and Ohio In 1942, Britain was waging war in the Mediterranean against the German Afrika Korps and Italian forces in North Africa. Crucial to this theatre of operations was the island of Malta, sitting in the middle of Axis supply lines and, if supplied with sufficient munitions, aircraft and fuel, capable of causing severe shortages to the German and Italian armies in North Africa. Munitions and aircraft were available – during a brief lull in the Axis attacks, for example, the island's defenses were reinforced by 38 Spitfire Mk V aircraft flown in from – but these, along with food and fuel, remained in critically short supply. Successive attempts at resupplying the island had mostly failed; the convoys "Harpoon" (from Gibraltar) and "Vigorous" (from Alexandria, Egypt) saw most of their merchantmen sunk and escort ships damaged by aerial and surface attacks. One of the ships lost during "Harpoon" was Ohios sister ship Kentucky, crippled by a German air attack and then abandoned. The tanker was eventually finished off by the Italian cruisers and and two destroyers. On 18 June, after the failures of "Harpoon" and "Vigorous", the Commander in Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet cabled UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill to express his doubts about attempting another convoy. Three days later Ohio steamed into the mouth of the Clyde, under the command of Sverre Petersen, a former Master in Sail from Oslo, in Norway. In early May 1942, a radio message had reached Captain Petersen which diverted the ship to Galveston in Texas, and then ordered the tanker to proceed to Britain. Before leaving, Ohio was defensively armed with one gun on her stern and one anti-aircraft gun in the bow. She then moved to Sinclair Terminal, Houston in Texas, where she loaded a full cargo of of petrol (gasoline), and sailed on 25 May. Ohio discharged her cargo at Bowling-on-the-Clyde, then steamed out into the tideway and