Rijndam (ship, 1901)
.jpg) As USS Rijndam in New York City (ca.1919)
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The Rijndam (I) was a 1901 passenger ship of the Dutch shipping company Holland-America Line , which was used as a transatlantic liner on the North Atlantic and carried passengers , freight and mail from Rotterdam to New York . During the First World War , the ship was used as the USS Rijndam (ID-2505) as a troop transport for the United States Navy . After the end of the war, she was back in service as a passenger ship for Holland-America Line until she was sold for demolition in 1928 and scrapped in Hendrik-Ido-Ambacht (Netherlands) the following year .
The ship
The contract to build the 12,527 GRT steel- made steamship Rijndam at the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast, Northern Ireland, for Holland-America Line was signed on April 18, 1897. The keel was laid on November 23, 1899 and the ship was launched on May 18, 1901. She was the first ship of the shipping company with this name (the second and third Rijndam followed in 1951 and 1994 respectively ). The first Rijndam was a 167.64 meter long and 18.90 meter wide passenger ship with a chimney, two masts and two propellers . She was the sister ship of the Noordam (I) (12,531 GRT), also built by Harland & Wolff , which was completed in March 1902 and was in service until 1927.
The Rijndam was powered by two triple expansion steam engines from Harland & Wolff, which made 7500 bhp ("brake horsepower") and allowed a speed of 15 knots. 149 tons of coal were required to operate the ship every day . In the passenger quarters there was space for 286 passengers in first, 196 in second and 1,800 in third class. The ship had a total of four decks as well as watertight bulkheads and a radio device for wireless telegraphy .
Early years
On October 3, 1901, the completed Rijndam was handed over to its owners and a week later, on October 10, 1901, it left Rotterdam on its maiden voyage to New York . After the Titanic sank in April 1912, eight additional lifeboats were installed, a measure that many shipping companies took after the disaster.
On May 25, 1915, the ship collided with the Norwegian flag cargo ship Joseph J. Cuneo (874 GRT) of the United Fruit Company about ten nautical miles off the Nantucket Shoals south of Nantucket . The battleships USS Texas , USS South Carolina , USS Louisiana and USS Michigan responded to the emergency call and carried the Rijndam's 230 passengers . In September of the same year, two crew members in storage room No. 2 suffocated as 925 boxes of stored flowers released a large amount of carbon dioxide .
On January 18, 1916, the ship ran off the Thames estuary on a sea mine laid by the German submarine UC 1 ( Oberleutnant zur See Egon von Werner ) . Three coal trimmers were killed in the explosion on board. Makeshift repairs were carried out in England before the ship returned to Rotterdam for final repairs. In the fall of 1916, the Rijndam had to be towed into New York Harbor after colliding with another ship in the fog off the American east coast.
War effort and late years
During the First World War , the Rijndam, like many other European merchant ships, was interned in New York until it was seized by the US government on June 20, 1917 along with 88 other Dutch ships and handed over to the United States Customs and Border Protection . 31 of these ships were put into service with the US Navy , including the Rijndam as USS Rijndam (ID-2505) (from May 1, 1918). Commander John Joseph Hannigan took command.
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On May 10, 1918, the Rijndam left New York for the first of six convoy voyages it made before the end of the war. She was accompanied by the USS President Lincoln (ex HAPAG ), the Dwinsk operated by the Cunard Line (ex Russian American Line ) and the Italian passenger ships Caserta and Dante Alighieri . The convoy (the 35th American convoy of World War I) joined another group of ships that came from Newport News on the same day in the Atlantic , including the formerly German passenger ships USS Princess Matoika (ex Kiautschou ), USS Antigone (ex Neckar ) and USS Susquehanna (ex Rhein ), the formerly Russian Kursk and the former Italian ocean liner Duca d'Aosta . The cruiser USS Maryland was made available as escort . On May 23, 1918, the convoy reached the city of Brest on the French Atlantic coast. On the way back to New York, the Rijndam was almost hit by a torpedo from the German submarine U 90 (Kapitänleutnant Walter Remy) about 300 miles west of Brest , which sank the President Lincoln (18,084 GRT) during this attack . The ship also almost collided with the submarine, which was moving to periscope depth.
By the end of the war in November 1918, the Rijndam brought troops and supplies to Brest three more times and once to Saint-Nazaire . Immediately after the war, the ship made a total of seven crossings from Brest, Saint-Nazaire and Quiberon to the USA to bring soldiers home from Europe. During some of these ocean crossings, she had more than 3,000 people on board. In total, she carried 17,319 people during her war deployment.
On August 11, 1919, the ship was handed over to the Third Naval District by the Cruiser and Transport Force and finally to its former owner, the Holland-America Line, on October 22, 1919. On July 31, 1920, she left Rotterdam for her first civil post-war voyage to New York. In May 1926, the first, second and third class were abolished and replaced by cabin class and tourist class, which was felt to be more contemporary.
On September 18, 1926, the ship set off on a seven-month cruise for 506 New York University students , with the words "University World Cruise" written on both sides of the hull . In December 1928 the Rijndam was sold for demolition and scrapped in April 1929 at the NV Frank Rijsdijk's Industrieele Ondernemingen in the Dutch town of Hendrik-Ido-Ambacht .