USS Comfort (AH-3) - World War I

World War I

After her requisition by the U.S. government, Havana was turned over to the United States Army on 24 May 1917 for service as a transport ship. She was hastily outfitted for trooping duties, and at daybreak on 14 June, USAT Havana, with fellow Army transport ships Saratoga, Tenadores, and Pastores, accompanied by cruisers Seattle, DeKalb, destroyers Wilkes, Terry, Roe, and converted yacht Corsair, set out from Ambrose Light for Brest, France. They were in the lead group of the first American troop convoy to France during World War I. Corsair was unable to maintain the 15 kn (17 mph; 28 km/h) pace and fell back, being replaced by destroyer Fanning from the second group.

Wounded soldiers being unloaded from Comfort, December 1918

At 22:15 on 22 June, some 850 nmi (980 mi; 1,570 km) from its intended destination of Brest, Havana’s group of the convoy was attacked by submarines. Two torpedoes passed near Havana and two torpedoes straddled DeKalb. No submarine was definitively sighted and the convoy, scattered by the alarm, reformed the next morning. The group, alerted by reports of submarine activity near Brest, diverted to Saint-Nazaire and arrived on 25 June.

Havana made only the one transatlantic crossing as an Army transport and was transferred to the U.S. Navy on 17 July. The ship was outfitted at the New York Navy Yard by the John N. Robins Co. of Brooklyn, New York; renamed Comfort on 14 March 1918; and commissioned 18 March 1918 with Medical Inspector C. M. Oman, USN, commanding. Comfort and Mercy (former Ward Line mate, Saratoga) were the first Navy hospital ships to have female nurses aboard, with a capacity of seven, including a chief nurse. Both ships were outfitted with state-of-the-art operating rooms, X-ray labs, rest rooms, and could accommodate 500 patients each.

After serving from 24 July-5 October 1918 as a floating hospital at New York, Comfort joined the Cruiser and Transport Force of the Atlantic Fleet to return wounded men from Europe. In three voyages between 21 October 1918 and 13 March 1919, she brought home 1,183 men from France, Britain, and the Azores. She sailed from Charleston on 9 June for repairs at Mare Island Navy Yard where she went in ordinary 11 September 1919.

At Mare Island, Comfort had her boilers replaced and the electrical system was revamped, which entailed replacing all temporary wiring with permanent wiring and watertight fixtures. The crew quarters of the ship had also become infested with bedbugs from older German-style hospital bedding and remedies and eradication were performed. But Comfort had seen the end of her Navy service; she was decommissioned 5 August 1921, and was sold at Mare Island 1 April 1925.

Author and poet William Nelson Morell, in his book of poems related to Navy service during the war, was inspired to write these lines about Comfort:

They never billeted a better crew

That sailed out of any port
Than that which carried the wounded through

The war zone,—on the new “Comfort” —"The U.S.S. Comfort (Hospital Ship)"