World War I
Konig Wilhelm II was a steel-hulled screw steamer launched on 20 July 1907 at Stettin, Germany, by Vulcan Aktiengesellschaft. Built for the transatlantic passenger trade, Konig Wilhelm II operated between Hamburg, Germany, and Buenos Aires, Argentina, under the house flag of the Hamburg-Amerika Line, until the outset of World War I in 1914. Voluntarily interned at Hoboken, New Jersey, to avoid being captured by the Royal Navy, the passenger liner was seized after the United States entered the war on 6 April 1917, as were all other German vessels in American ports.
Before agents of the U.S. federal government took possession of the ship, her German crew unsuccessfully attempted to render her unusable by cracking her main steam cylinders with hydraulic jacks. Following repairs to the damaged machinery, Konig Wilhelm II was assigned the identification number 3011 and commissioned on 27 August 1917, Lt. Charles McCauley in temporary command pending the arrival of Comdr. Edward H. Watson.
Renamed Madawaska on 1 September, the ship was assigned to the Cruiser and Transport Force of the Atlantic Fleet. During World War I, she conducted 10 transatlantic voyages in which she carried nearly 12,000 men to Europe. After the armistice of 11 November 1918, Madawaska made seven more voyages, bringing 17,000 men home from the European theater. She completed the last of these runs upon her arrival at New York on 23 August 1919. She was decommissioned by the Navy on 2 September and simultaneously transferred to the War Department.
Read more about this topic: USS U. S. Grant (AP-29)
Famous quotes containing the words war i, world and/or war:
“War is the supreme drama of a completely mechanized society.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)
“It is too late—the world is too dark for any thought ahead. Others are writing my biography, and let it rest as they elect to make it. I have lived my life, well and ill, always less well than I wanted it to be but it is, as it is, and as it has been; so small a thing, to have had so much about it!”
—Clara Barton (1821–1912)
“The funny part of it all is that relatively few people seem to go crazy, relatively few even a little crazy or even a little weird, relatively few, and those few because they have nothing to do that is to say they have nothing to do or they do not do anything that has anything to do with the war only with food and cold and little things like that.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)