U.S.S. Mount Vernon
1466
1917
(Carlo Marquadt CM-P-53)
- Class: 1 transport of 1917
- Displacement: 19,053 tons
- Dimensions: 707 x 72 x 32 ft
- Machinery: 2-shaft reciprocating (VQE) engines 45,000 ihp = 23.6 knots
- Armament: 4-5in/51
- Complement:
- Builder: A. G. Vulcan, Stettin, Germany, 1907
- Commissioned: 28 Jul 1917
- Service: Built as Norddeutscher Lloyd liner Kronprinzwssen Cecilie, the last of four express liners built for NDL between 1897 and 1907, including Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse. She was named for the Kaiser's daughter-in-law and had accommodations for 1,806 passengers (740 first class, 326 second class, 740 steerage) with a crew of 602. She ran with her sisters for seven years, maintaining weekly service between Bremen and New York, via Southampton and Cherbourg. At the start of World War I she was homeward bound from New York with a cargo that included 40 million marks in gold. Rather than risk capture by the British, she returned to the United States where she was interned first at Bar Harbor, and later at Boston. When the U.S. entered the war against Germany in April 1917, the ship was taken over and commissioned as the troop transport USS Mount Vernon. On 5 Sep 1918 she was about 200 miles west of Brest, homeward bound in a convoy, when she was hit by a single torpedo from U-82. It knocked out half her boilers and killed 36 crew members, but the ship was able to return to Brest for repairs. She continued in service through 1919. Turned over to the U.S. Shipping Board in 1920, but plans to put her into commercial service with a U.S. line fell through, and she was laid up in the Chesapeake from 1924 to 1940, before finally going to the scrapyard.
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