President Grant
.jpg) President Grant in Honolulu, Hawaii, November 1937
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
.svg){kind=small}
The President Grant was a transatlantic passenger steamer put into service in 1907 for the German HAPAG shipping company, which was used for passenger and mail traffic between Hamburg and New York . After seven years of service in the North Atlantic, the ship was interned in New Jersey (USA) in 1914 and used as a US troop transport during the First World War under the identification USS President Grant (ID-3014) . After the war it remained under the name Republic for a few years with the American shipping company United States Lines , was used again as a troop transport during World War II as the USS Republic (AP-33) and was scrapped in Baltimore in 1952 .
Period of service as a HAPAG steamer
The President Grant had a long and eventful history. On December 19, 1903, the 18,072 GRT steamship was launched at the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast, Northern Ireland . It was to be put into service under the name Servian for the British shipping company Leyland Line , based in Liverpool . The Leyland Line, which had existed since 1873, was bought up in 1901 by the shipping trust International Mercantile Marine Company (IMMC) of the influential US banker JP Morgan and incorporated into it in 1904. The Leyland Line was awarded the European division of the International Navigation Company, for which it had to end its Mediterranean service.
Immediately after the merger with IMMC, two new sister ships were ordered from Harland & Wolff for the North Atlantic service, which with over 18,000 GRT were the largest ships of the Leyland Line to date. These were the Servian and the Scotian , which was launched two months before her. The two steamers were over 180 meters long and over 20 meters wide. They each had a chimney, six masts , two propellers and were powered by two quadruple expansion steam engines that could accelerate them up to 14 knots. They were the only two six-masted passenger ships ever built. The Servian was designed for 200 passengers in the first, 150 in the second, 704 in the third and 2,300 in the fourth class.
After their launch, the Servian and Scotian lay unused in an unfinished condition in the Musgrave Channel near Belfast for three years, as the planned North Atlantic service of the Wilson, Furness & Leyland Line never came about. In 1906, the two steamers were finally bought by HAPAG and renamed President Grant (ex Servian ) and President Lincoln (ex Scotian ). It was initially planned to name the Servian Berlin . On September 14, 1907, the President Grant was able to set out on her maiden voyage from Hamburg via Boulogne-sur-Mer and Southampton to New York .
US troop ship during and after the First World War
When the First World War broke out in the summer of 1914, the ship was launched in New York, as a return to Germany seemed impossible. Since August 4, 1914, the President Grant was in Hoboken, New Jersey, and stayed in the dock for almost three years. When the United States of America entered the war in 1917, it was seized by the US government on April 6, 1917 and made available to the United States Navy as a troop transport under Commander JP Morton on August 2, 1917 with the tactical identification ID-3014 posed.
During her time as a troop ship, the President Grant made 16 crossings from New York to various French ports and carried a total of 77,129 soldiers and officers. On October 6, 1919, the ship was transferred to the service of the United States Army . From January to November 1920, the President Grant undertook two trips under the name USAT (United States Army Transport) Republic to repatriate the Czechoslovak legions from Vladivostok , where they had fought against the Bolsheviks , across the Suez Canal to Trieste . In March 1921 the steamer was handed over to the United States Shipping Board , renamed President Buchanan and launched.
US passenger liner and service in World War II
In 1923 the President Buchanan was reactivated and extensively renovated at Newport News Shipbuilding in Newport News, Virginia (including two of the six masts removed). The ship was provided with new passenger accommodation for 600 passengers in the cabin class and 600 in the third class. As a result of the renovations, the volume was reduced slightly to 17,910 GRT. The ship went to the United States Lines in 1924 , which received several former German passenger ships as war reparations. Renamed again to Republic , the ship went on its first voyage for the United States Lines on April 29, 1924 from New York via Plymouth and Cherbourg to Bremen .
In 1926 the passenger classes were changed into cabin class, tourist class and third class. On July 17, 1931, the Republic left for its last civilian voyage from Hamburg via Southampton and Cherbourg to New York. From 1932 to 1941 she served again as a US troop transport ( Republic ) and operated between San Francisco , Hawaii and Manila .
On July 22, 1941 she was taken over by the US Navy with the tactical identifier AP-33 and placed under the command of Commander G. Clark. Their armament consisted of one 5-inch and four 3-inch guns. The Republic was used to transport troops in the Pacific from San Francisco to Australia. She reached Pearl Harbor on November 28, 1941 and replenished her supplies there. She cast off again on December 6 and learned of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor the following day . Between March and November 1942, the USS Republic brought troops from San Francisco to Honolulu , Hawaii, making a total of seven crossings.
In 1943 and 1944, she transported troops and supplies from Honolulu to the Southwest Pacific, calling at the Fiji Islands, Samoa , Nouméa , Guadalcanal , Sydney , Funafuti and Hollandia . On January 27, 1945, the ship in New Orleans was released from the service of the US forces and on February 2, 1945 removed from the Naval Vessel Register . The Republic was overtaken by the Waterman Steamship Corporation in Mobile (Alabama) in the summer of 1945 and was to serve the US Army as a hospital ship in the future .
In February 1946, when the ship was on the way to its next location in Manila, this decision was reversed. Instead, the ship was used to bring war veterans from Tacloban City and Leyte Island to San Francisco in March 1946 . In May 1949, the Republic was released from the service of the United States Army Transportation Corps (USATC) and transferred to the United States Maritime Commission . It was launched in Olympia , Washington State in the National Defense Reserve Fleet and sold to the Bethlehem Steel Company for demolition on March 11, 1952 .