SS Kroonland - Troopship Duties

Troopship Duties

Kroonland served as a troopship for about the next year. In early March, U.S. Navy ordnance officers inspected Kroonland and took measurements in preparation to arm her for defense against submarine attacks. On 13 March, she was assigned guns by the Navy, becoming one of the first seven ships to be armed. With her arming complete, and carrying an armed naval guard to man the guns, Kroonland sailed for Liverpool on 25 March 1917. Twelve days later, the United States formally declared war on Germany.

On the morning of 20 May, while the liner steamed toward Liverpool through a heavy fog, a torpedo struck her without exploding. Two minutes later her lookouts spotted a submarine bearing down on Kroonland so close alongside the liner that her guns could not be depressed enough to open fire on the raider. Although the U-boat, apparently also taken by surprise, reversed her screws and tried to turn to avoid a collision, she lightly struck the liner's hull and scraped along her side before diving out of sight. Meanwhile two more torpedoes came within some 20 feet (6 m) of hitting Kroonland's stern. That afternoon the liner sighted another submarine, surfaced some 1,000 yards (910 m) off her port quarter. Kroonland immediately began shelling the U-boat, forcing the submarine to dive for safety. In early June, this failed torpedo attack on the ship made front page news in American newspapers.

In September, elements of the U.S. 42nd Infantry Division sailed from New York to Halifax on Kroonland. The ship sailed from Halifax on 30 September in an Allied convoy with the American ship Mongolia and Commonwealth ships Carmania (which had led the Volturno rescue in 1913), Anchises, Canada, Grampian, Ionican, Themistocles, Victoria, Carpathia, Medic, Miltiades, Mokoia, and Ruahine. Two days out from Halifax, the last five ships split off from the convoy and headed to Scotland; Kroonland's group sailed to Liverpool.

On 15 October 1917, the United States Shipping Board requisitioned all American passenger ships over 2,500 GT for use by the government in the war effort. Though it is not clear what immediate impact this had on Kroonland, it is known that the liner was operating as a U.S. Army transport (under the name USAT Kroonland) by February 1918, when she was loaded with materiel and departed New York for Saint-Nazaire, France.

In April, the assigned Kroonland to the transport fleet, and after her return from France on 9 April, she was converted to a troop transport in New York by the William J. Kennedy Company. A typical conversion from passenger liner to troop transport involved having all of the second- and third-class accommodations ripped out and replaced with berths for troops. Cooking and toilet facilities also had to be greatly expanded to handle the large numbers of men aboard.