USS Princess Matoika (ID-2290) - United States Lines

United States Lines

Upon the formation of the United States Lines in August 1921, Princess Matoika and the eight other ex-German liners formerly operated by the U.S. Mail Line were transferred to the new company for operation. The Princess, still on New York–Bremen service, sailed on her first voyage for the new steamship line on 15 September. In October, Matoika crewmen were reported as taking advantage of the German inflation by consuming champagne available for $1.00 per quart and mugs of "the best beer" for an American penny. In November, United States Lines announced that Princess Matoika would be replaced on the Bremen route in order to better compete with North German Lloyd, the liner's former owner, but that never came about. The Princess continued on runs to Bremen, calling at the additional ports of Queenstown, Southampton, and Danzig, as her schedule shifted from time to time.

On 28 January 1922, the Matoika departed with 400 passengers, among them, 312 Polish orphans headed for repatriation in their homeland. Two days and 100 nautical miles (190 km) out of New York, the liner experienced a heavy gale that disabled her steering gear, and forced her return to New York after temporary repairs failed. The captain was able to steer her through the use of the ship's engines, and arrived safely back in port on 31 January. This incident was the yet another misfortune that had befallen the young Poles. After being orphaned by the fighting between Polish and Soviet forces, the orphans had been taken across Siberia, evacuated to Japan, transported to Seattle, Washington, and taken by rail to Chicago, Illinois, where they were enrolled in school while searches for relatives in Poland were conducted.

After four Bremen roundtrips for United States Lines, Princess Matoika had sailed her last voyage under that name. When newly built Type 535 vessels named for American presidents came into service for the company in May 1922, the Princess was renamed SS President Arthur in honor of the 21st U.S. President, Chester A. Arthur, matching the naming style of the new ships.

After her rename, she continued plying the North Atlantic between New York and Bremen, and was involved in a few episodes of note during this time. In June 1922, two years into Prohibition in the United States, President Arthur was raided while at her dock in Hoboken, New Jersey, which netted 150 cases of smuggled spirits. Officials involved denied reports that the raid was conducted as a legal test case intended to test the determination of chair Albert Lasker that United States-flagged ships could carry and sell alcohol outside the three-mile territorial limit of the United States. Congressman James A. Gallivan (D-MA), an anti-prohibition leader, publicly demanded to know why the ship had not been seized for violating U.S. laws.

In September, President Arthur carried Irish republicans Muriel MacSwiney, widow of the recently deceased Lord Mayor of Cork Terence MacSwiney, and Linda Mary Kearns, who had been jailed for murder under the Black and Tans, to New York. Wearing buttons with pictures of Harry Boland, an anti-treaty Irish nationalist who had been killed the previous month, the two women were there to raise funds for orphans of Anti-Treaty IRA forces, who were then fighting in southern Ireland. In October, a Hoboken man, after securing a last-minute court order, was able to halt the deportation of his German niece on President Arthur; she was retrieved from the ship ten minutes before sailing time.

In November 1922, U.S. Customs Service agents, seized a cache of Colt magazine guns aboard President Arthur. The entire crew was questioned but all denied any knowledge of the eight weapons found stowed behind a bulkhead. In August the following year, President Arthur took on board a seaman suffering from pneumonia from the Norwegian freighter Eastern Star in a mid-ocean transfer. The ship's doctor and nurse attended to the sailor but were unable to save him.

President Arthur sailed on her last transatlantic voyage from Bremen on 18 October 1923, carrying 656 passengers to New York. Anchoring off Gravesend Bay on 30 October, President Arthur was one of 15 passenger ships whose arrival in New York was timed to coincide with the opening of the November immigration quota period. Under the Emergency Quota Act passed in 1921, numerical limits on European immigration were imposed which created nationality quotas. At the conclusion of this voyage, President Arthur was laid up in Baltimore, Maryland, for almost a year.