Drawn from the collections of The Mariners' Museum Research Library, the archives of Ohef Sholom Temple, the Jabotinsky Institute in Isreal, and private collections, the exhibit has traveled to over seven venues since 1997. On display will be photographs, postcards, news accounts, books, and memorabilia that recount the history of the ship, which began it's career in 1928 as the President Warfield, a luxury steamer transporting passengers between Baltimore and Norfolk. The "aristocrat of the bay" was drafted into service as a troop transport during World War II, surviving a U-Boat attack and German air raids during the Normandy Invasion to return to Hampton Roads in 1945.

Outdated and war-battered, the President Warfield was decommissioned and joined the James River Idle Fleet in Lee Hall in November 1945. The following year, the ship was purchased for scrap by the Potomac Shipwrecking Company. The dilapidated ship was granted yet another life in November 1946 when it was purchased by the Weston Trading Company, a front for Haganah, a group procuring ships to carry Jewish Refugees to Palestine. In March 1947, following veiled efforts to refurbish and register the President Warfield in Baltimore, the ship departed for France where her human cargo awaited. After smuggling aboard more than 4, 500 refugees at Sete, France, the ship was renamed Exodus 1947, and set off on its dangerous voyage to Palestine. Followed by eight British Warships, the overloaded vessel was rammed and boarded off the Egyptian coast in a bloody incident that left three dead and more than two hundred injured. The passengers were eventually taken to refugee camps in Hamburg, Germany, and the Exodus 1947 was later towed to a maritime graveyard off the coast of Haifa. Following a fire in 1952 that destroyed the vessel to the waterline, the hull was towed to Israel's Bay of Shemen, where it remains today. Although the journey of Exodus was unsuccessful, the incident drew international attention to the Jewish situation in Palestine, and the ship eventually became the symbol for the cause that fueled her historic journey.

The Esther Thomas Atkinson Museum is located on College Road, Hampden-Sydney College, Hampden-Sydney, Virginia and is accessible to the disabled. Hours: Monday - Friday, 12:30p.m. until 4:30p.m., and Saturdays by appointment only. For more information about the museum, exhibit schedule, or other programs, please contact Lorie Mastemaker at 804-223-6134.