Charlie Cox, rejected by the Navy and the Army in World War II because of a finger cut off in a childhood accident, eagerly joined the U.S. merchant marine and served in the Atlantic and the Pacific in World War II and beyond.

The salt air percolated inside him and four decades later, after a career in a hot Baltimore steel mill, he became an enthusiastic pioneer in reviving the Liberty ship SS JOHN W. BROWN.

Cox died of cardiovascular disease April 10, 2011; he had turned 86 six days before his death.

Fireman/watertender Cox sailed four ships in the war starting with the Liberty ships ALEXANDER LILLINGTON and ABRAHAM ROSENBERG. Other vessels followed. Assigned to the LILLINGTON as his first ship on Christmas Eve 1944, Cox sailed from New York to Norfolk to Marseilles, with troops and cargo, returning to New York by way of Oran, Algeria. The ROSENBERG then took him to Antwerp with war supplies and back to New York.

"We were at Pearl Harbor on the NORTHERN VOYAGER, a laker, when the war ended August 15. Then we went to Eniwetok, Marshall Islands, and back to Pearl Harbor for engine repairs. After the SEA DOLPHIN, I signed on with a Waterman ship, the ANDREW JACKSON (a C-2), and I sailed around the world: Gulf ports, Galveston, New Orleans, Mobile, Gulfport, Panama Canal, Honolulu, Philippines, Kobe in Japan, Shanghai, Singapore, Malacca, Penang, Port Sweatingham, Malaya, Suez Canal, the Med, paid off in Baltimore April 2, 1947. I remember the names and places.

"I saw a lot in my time at sea. My last ship was the ROSWELL VICTORY -- Philadelphia, Boston, various ports in South and East Africa. Retired with Seafarers International Union of North America September 10, 1947. So I was at sea from 1944 to 1947.

"I remember on one ship a storm came up at sea and an Armed Guard was swept off the bridge and off the ship by a big wave. Just as quickly he was swept back on deck.

"I went back to International Harvester at home in Rock Island, Illinois, where I worked before the war. But I had met a girl in Baltimore -- Dorothy -- and came back to Baltimore and we were married in 1948. Back to Harvester but they had a big strike, so I got a job at the Glenn L. Martin Company, the airplane plant in Baltimore. The Harvester strike ended. I wanted to return. Wife said no. So I didn't go back to Illinois. We've had a good life.

"I began working at Bethlehem Steel's Sparrows Point Yard in the rolling mill, rolled sheets. I just came across a paycheck for Christmas week 1968, sixty dollars. I worked there 36 years until 1985."

Cox was a plank owner, among the first aboard the JOHN W. BROWN.

"I read about the BROWN in the paper. Charlie Crabbin, the first secretary, had called for volunteers. I attended the early meetings in 1988 before we pulled the ship up. Walter Magalis and I slept in the gun tub on the way up. The Armed Guard called it the Band Box. Not much pigeon shit up there but grass was growing. People like Bob McLaren were there too. Paul Esbensen had a tough time getting a flag up but he did it. It was hotter than a pistol that day, August 14. We were thinking this is gonna take a lot of money and a lotta work. But it was a friendly atmosphere, gung ho, positive. Many of us didn't know each other. Like me, most had sailed but hadn't been on a ship for years.

"Of the 48 or 50 people who came up, only about 25 stayed in the weeks ahead in Baltimore to start the real work on the ship."

They were taking the first steps in a zany adventure of restoring an old ghost ship and making her sail again under her own power. A grinning Charlie told of being the first volunteer hurt on the Brown, his head cut open by a paint brush accidentally dropped from above on that first 28-hour overnight trip. That made him "Eight-Stitch Charlie."

McLaren and Cox became buddies in the engine room, a story of lingering BROWN friendships. "Charlie was a great guy, easy to get along with, we always agreed on things," said McLaren. "We made at least 20 trips together to the National Defense Reserve Fleet in the James River, getting tools and other gear for the BROWN. We teamed up for safety when we went down into those deep, dark holds of the rusty old ships. We brought back tools and Charlie built a tool board in the engine room. Charlie, Eugene Airey and I were the first firemen/watertenders on the BROWN."

Two weeks before Charlie's death, the pair had the last of many lunches together, McLaren said. "Charlie was in a wheelchair, his body hurting, his appetite virtually gone. He said he'd have whatever I had ... western omelet. He picked away at it, ate only the egg, said very little."

The friendship was remembered. "Bob McLaren was such a good friend for dad to the end," said the oldest Cox son, Charles Jeffrey Cox, of Baltimore. "My father was ill for so long but he fought and fought and fought; his doctors called him the EverReady Bunny.

"He had an incredible will to live. His wife Dorothy died in 2004. He had taken care of her for seven years after her stroke; she died from another stroke. They were married 56 years. He wanted to remain independent. But he was too sick.

"But he had a wonderful life and he travelled all over the world. He loved the BROWN."

Cox is also survived by two other sons, Ronald Alan Cox, Richmond, Virginia, and Kenneth Stephen Cox, of Arlington, Virginia, and five grandsons.

Cox might have become a railroad man but fate intervened. He was born in Rock Island, Illinois. "Remember the song, 'Rock Island Line, Mighty Good Road'? The Rock Island depot was six blocks away from my home. I began working first at International Harvester. Maybe I might have joined the railroad.

"When the war came, all my friends were in the Army and Navy. I couldn't get in. My right index finger was cut off when I was 11 months old. I crawled underneath a washer and got my finger caught in a gear drive. The Army and Navy didn't want that kind of guy."

His mother would tell how Charlie was ridiculed on the street as a civilian coward while everyone else was in uniform, said son Charles. The merchant marine in Chicago was happy to take Cox on October 10, 1944. Training was six weeks at Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, New York, then off to sea December 24, 1944. His first job was in the crew mess on the LILLINGTON. Other sea jobs included wiper but he eventually settled in as fireman/watertender, the job he did on the BROWN.

"My father was always a Democrat who followed politics and spoke up, even to the end. Last time, he thought Hilary Clinton would be a better president but Obama was more electable because the younger people were for him," said son Charles.

"But more important than any party, Dad said an American had a sacred trust in voting and everyone should vote. If you don't vote, you can't complain."