President Lincoln
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The President Lincoln was a transatlantic passenger steamer put into service in 1907 by the German HAPAG shipping company, which was used for passenger and mail traffic between Hamburg and New York . Interned in the USA in 1914, he served as a troop transport for the United States Navy from July 1917 . On May 31, 1918, the President Lincoln was sunk in the North Atlantic at position 48 ° 4 ′ 49 ″ N , 15 ° 9 ′ 13.3 ″ W by a German submarine.
Period of service as a HAPAG steamer
The 18,084 GRT steamship President Lincoln was launched on October 8, 1903 at Harland & Wolff in Belfast, Northern Ireland . It was originally to be christened Scotian and put into service 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 part of the International Navigation Company , but it had to end its Mediterranean service.
Immediately after the merger with IMMC, two new sister ships for the North Atlantic service of the Wilson, Furness & Leyland Line were commissioned from Harland & Wolff , which were the largest ships of the Leyland Line up to then with over 18,000 GRT. These were the Scotian and the Servian , which launched two months later. 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 Scotian could carry 202 passengers in the first, 153 in the second, 788 in the third and 2,300 in the fourth class.
After their launch, the Scotian and Servian lay unused in the Musgrave Channel near Belfast for three years in an unfinished state, 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 Lincoln (ex Scotian ) and President Grant (ex Servian ). On May 14, 1907, the President Lincoln was completed, and on June 1, 1907, she left Hamburg on her maiden voyage via Boulogne-sur-Mer and Southampton to New York .
As a US troop carrier
On July 25, 1914, she left Hamburg for her last trip for HAPAG. After arriving in New York on August 5, the President Lincoln was interned in Hoboken, New Jersey, and lay unused in the dock for almost three years. It was confiscated by the US government on April 6, 1917, immediately after the United States entered the war . Since it had been severely damaged by its former German crew, it was subjected to extensive repairs at the Robins Dry Dock & Repair Company in the Lake Erie Basin in Brooklyn .
On July 25, 1917, she was put into service with the United States Navy as a troop transport without the usual ID number . The new commander was Commander Yates Sterling, Jr. The President Lincoln completed four troop trips from New York to France by May 1918, transporting around 23,000 US soldiers who were brought ashore in Brest and Saint-Nazaire .
On May 10, 1918, she left New York for her fifth voyage as a troop ship. On May 23, she reached Brest, where the troops disembarked. On May 29, she left Brest with 715 crew members and soldiers on board and was accompanied by the troop carriers USS Rijndam , USS Susquehanna and USS Antigone . At sunset on May 30, 1918, when it was believed to have passed the danger zone, the convoy disbanded and the four ships made their way back to the United States one by one.
At around 9 a.m. on May 31, the President Lincoln was hit by three torpedoes from the German submarine SM U 90 in the North Atlantic , about 600 miles from Brest , which was on a patrol under the command of Lieutenant Walter Remy . The ship sank in 20 minutes. 26 people were killed. A man, Lieut. Edouard Izac , was taken aboard U 90 as a prisoner . The survivors were picked up that night by the US destroyers Warrington and Smith , which they landed in Brest on June 2. The President Lincoln was the largest ship that U 90 sank during its service life.