Pomerania (ship, 1913)
The Pommern was a cargo ship of the North German Lloyd (NDL) . It was confiscated by the USA during World War I and used as a horse transporter by the US Navy under the name Rappahannock . From 1933 to 1952 she sailed under the American and then the Italian flag for private shipping companies .
Pomerania
The ship was on June 3, 1913, the hull number 563 on the shipyard Bremer Vulkan in Vegesack from the stack . It was the third ship in the Rhineland class of the NDL, comprising a total of twelve freighters . The ship was measured with a length of 143.62 m between the perpendiculars , 18.04 m width and 8.10 m draft with 6,557 GRT . A triple expansion steam engine with 4,000 PSi and a screw allowed a top speed of 12.5 knots .
The Pomeranian went to Australia in the freight service . The outbreak of the First World War surprised the ship in Australian waters, but in August 1914 it still managed to sail to Honolulu in the then neutral USA , where it was interned .
USS Rappahannock
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When the USA entered the war, the ship was confiscated as enemy property in April 1917 and then assigned to the US Navy by the United States Shipping Board . The latter had the ship converted into a horse transporter and put it into service on December 8, 1917 as Rappahannock (ID # 1854). To protect against submarines , the Rappahannock was armed with a 12.7 cm and a 7.5 cm cannon. Their crew consisted of 155 men. In the following eleven months, the Rappahannock undertook four transatlantic tours for the Naval Overseas Transportation Service, forerunner of the Military Sealift Command , on which they brought horses and slaughtered oxen to Europe for the American Expeditionary Forces . On her fourth voyage, she reached France on November 16, 1918, five days after the Compiègne armistice . In February 1919 she was assigned to the Atlantic Fleet train . She made one more round trip USA-France before the summer of 1919 at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery ( Maine ) launched was.
On July 17, 1920, the Rappahannock was reclassified to a storage ship ("stores ship") and given the identification AF-6. She was reactivated in June 1922 and served as a supplier to both the Atlantic and Pacific Fleet for the next 30 months . On December 10, 1924, she was decommissioned and launched in the Mare Island Naval Shipyard near Vallejo (California) with the Pacific Reserve Fleet. On July 19, 1933, she was removed from the US Navy ship list.
Another fate
On October 5, 1933, the ship was sold to the Luckenbach Steamship Co. in New York . The ship operated under the name William Luckenbach until 1946.
In November 1946 it was sold to the Italian shipping company Giacomo Costa fu Andrea , now the Costa Crociere cruise line. This had cabins built for 50 passengers, named the ship Maria C and began a liner service with it from Genoa to Montevideo and Buenos Aires . The Maria C was the company's first ship to carry passengers. The ship was decommissioned in late 1952 and broken up in 1953.
Web links
- NavSource Online: Service Ship Photo Archive - ID-1854 / AF-6 Rappahannock
- Rappahannock at US Naval History and Heritage Command
- Luckenbach Steamship Co., New York, 1850-1974, on TheShipsList