Ice cream barge is the colloquial term for a BRL (Barge, Refrigerated, Large). BRLs were towed vessels employed by the United States Navy in the Pacific theater of World War II to store frozen and refrigerated foodstuffs. They were also able to produce ice cream in large quantities to be provisioned to sailors and US Marines. Three in total were produced: USS Hydrogen, USS Calcium, and USS Antimony.
The ships, concrete barges acquired from the US Army and worth one million dollars, stored 1,500 tons of frozen meat and 500 tons of refrigerated vegetables, eggs, and dairy products indefinitely at 15 °F. To improve the morale of overseas troops, an ice cream freezer facility was included, able to create 10 gallons of ice cream every seven minutes.
They were employed in the U.S. Navy’s Western Pacific area of operations, at one point anchored at Naval Base Ulithi near Papua New Guinea. Some accounts link the U.S. Navy’s 1914 alcohol prohibition under General Order No. 99 to ice cream becoming a common morale-boosting substitute for sailors.
A 1945 article in ‘Pacific Marine Review’ reported that three BRL-type refrigerated concrete barges (Hulls Nos. 45, 46 and 47) were completed by Concrete Ship Constructors at National City, California, and delivered to the U.S. Army. The same report described a reinforced concrete hull 265 feet (81 m) long, 48 feet (15 m) in beam and 17 feet (5.2 m) in depth, with an insulated wooden deckhouse and diesel-driven generators supplying power for the refrigeration machinery, including two 50-ton York ice machines.
BRL-3071 also appears in the ‘Navy and Marine Corps Awards Manual’ (rev. 1953) campaign participation listings with credited service dates from 13 to 30 June 1945.
Later accounts of U.S. Navy ice-cream culture often cite the loss of the aircraft carrier Lexington during the Battle of the Coral Sea on May 8th 1942. In a 2017 ‘U.S. Navy’ feature, Lexington survivor Julius ‘Harry’ Frey recalled breaking into the ship’s ‘geedunk’ (snack bar) with a fire axe and using his helmet to carry pineapple sherbet to shipmates as the crew prepared to abandon ship. A 2017 article in ‘The Atlantic’ similarly reported survivors describing sailors breaking into freezers and scooping ice cream into helmets during the abandonment.
The Daily Omnivore 