The USS Marshall (DD-676), a Fletcher-class destroyer of the United States Navy, was laid down by the Federal Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Co., Kearny, N.J., 29 April 1943; launched 29 August 1943; sponsored by Mrs. Thomas W. Marshall, mother of Lt. Comdr. Marshall; and commissioned 16 October 1943, with Lt. Comdr. Sinclair B. Wright in command. The destroyer's first big assignment came while it was still on its shakedown cruise off Bermuda. Speeding from that area, the ship rendezvoused in mid-Atlantic with Iowa, on 13 December 1943, to escort President Franklin D. Roosevelt back from the Big Three Conference at Tehran. The USS Marshall (DD-676) was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 19 July 1969 and sold for scrapping in July 1970 to Zidell Explorations Co., Portland, Oregon. Between the 1930s up to mid-1970s, millions of seamen may have been exposed to high levels of asbestos, a cancer-causing agent found everywhere on ships from boiler room insulations to toasters in the galley. Asbestos is a thermal and acoustic insulator. It was used to make combustible objects flame retardant. Scientists had discovered asbestos’ link to lung cancer, and the substance became heavily regulated by the EPA in the 1970s.
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