Manchuria (ship)
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The Manchuria was a passenger ship put into service in 1904 by the US shipping company Pacific Mail Steamship Company . She served in the First World War with the tactical identification ID-1633 as a troop transport for the US Navy and after the war drove under the names President Johnson and Santa Cruz again as a passenger ship for various shipping companies. In 1952 it was scrapped in Italy.
Planning and construction
The 13,639 GRT steamship was ordered on December 18, 1900 from the New York Shipbuilding yard in Camden , New Jersey , and laid down on September 3, 1902 under the name Minnekahda . The ship was ordered by the ship magnate Bernard N. Baker, who wanted to put it into service for his shipping company Atlantic Transport Line (ATL), founded in Baltimore in 1881 . At the same time, an identical sister ship was ordered, which was laid down at the same shipyard on June 7, 1902 as Minnelora .
Baker wanted to add the two steamers to his ATL fleet, whose ship names all began with "Minne-" and with which he wanted to profit from the booming trade in the North Atlantic at the turn of the century. In contrast to the existing ships, the two new ships were not built in Great Britain, but in the USA , despite much higher construction costs . Baker believed that the Shipbuilding Subsidy Bill, which was being voted on in Congress at the time, would result in US government grants for shipbuilding for construction and operations.
After the bill was rejected by Congress, the two sister ships were immediately offered for sale during construction and bought by Edward Henry Harriman's Pacific Mail Steamship Company. The Minnekahda was launched on November 2, 1903 as Manchuria and the Minnelora on July 24, 1903 as Mongolia . The Manchuria had a chimney, four masts and two propellers . It was powered by two eight-cylinder quadruple expansion steam engines that could accelerate it to up to 16 knots and had four double-end and four single-end steam boilers with a total of 36 firings.
Service until the First World War
The handover to the shipping company took place on May 25, 1904. On August 30 of the same year, the Manchuria ran out on her maiden voyage . Like Mongolia , it was used on the transpacific route from San Francisco via Hawaii to Yokohama and Hong Kong . When she left San Francisco on July 8, 1905 for another crossing to the Far East, she had a delegation of American Congressmen on board under the leadership of the Secretary of War and later US President William Howard Taft . Also on board were Theodore Roosevelt's 21-year-old daughter Alice and Congressman Nicholas Longworth , whom she married in 1906. In the same year the Manchuria ran aground on the Hawaiian island of Oahu and was freed from the reef with the help of the tugs Maui and Fearless . The Manchuria was towed to San Francisco by the US battleship USS Wisconsin and was only able to return to service after more than a year due to a strike.
In 1915 the five largest ships of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company - the Manchuria , the Mongolia , the Korea , the Siberia and the China - were bought by the Atlantic Transport Line, which needed replacements for their previous war losses. The Pacific Mail Steamship Company justified the sale with the increase in Japanese competition and disadvantages through the Seaman's Act (officially the Act to Promote the Welfare of American Seamen in the Merchant Marine of the United States ) of March 4, 1915, initiated by Senator Robert La Follette The Manchuria left San Francisco for the last time on October 27, 1915 . On June 13, 1917, it collided with the Amphitrite monitor in New York Harbor .
On April 10, 1918, she was requested by the United States Navy as a troop transport and put into service as such on April 25 with the designation USS Manchuria (ID-1633). The command of the ship was given to Commander Charles S. Freeman. She was assigned to the Navy unit Cruiser and Transport Force. As a troop transport, she made a total of 13 troop trips to France, nine of them after the armistice in November 1918. The last of these trips ended on August 25, 1919 in New York. After the war ended, the ship brought 39,500 soldiers back to the United States. On September 11, 1919, the Manchuria was released from the service of the Navy and returned to its owners.
World War II and the end
After the war it was used for the service from New York to Hamburg . In 1923 she was chartered to the Panama Pacific Line and used on the route from New York over the Panama Canal to San Francisco. In November 1928 she was sold to the Dollar Line , which she used under the name President Johnson for her "Round the World" trips from New York via Panama to California , Japan, China, through the Mediterranean Sea and back to New York. On October 26, 1938, the ship was acquired by the United States Maritime Commission and placed under the management of American President Lines , which took over the holdings of the bankrupt Dollar Line.
On November 29, 1941, she was enlisted by the War Shipping Administration for service in the United States Army . On December 5, she left San Francisco for the Philippines , but broke off the journey two days later because of the attack on Pearl Harbor and returned. On December 27, 1941, the first of eight troop trips to Honolulu began . In the remaining years of the war she was involved in various operations in the South Pacific region. Her service in the US Army ended on January 14, 1946.
On April 26, 1946 she was returned to the United States Maritime Commission, which sold her to the Tagus Navigational Company of Panama. From this it was in turn chartered in 1948 to the Italian Società SAICEN based in Savona and used under the name Santa Cruz in the emigration traffic from Italy to South America . In 1952 the ship was broken up in Savona.