World War I
Vaterland was seized by the United States Shipping Board when the United States entered World War I on 6 April 1917. Of all the German ships seized, Vaterland was the only one not to have engines and machinery damaged by the German crews.[12][13] Her German crew was sent to a new internment camp in Hot Springs, North Carolina, where many of them later died of a typhoid fever outbreak in summer 1918 as they were about to be transferred to Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia.[14] Despite the lack of intentional damage the ship was badly deteriorated, requiring major repairs, cleaning and painting. The work was going slowly under the USSB, with the Navy recommending that it take charge of that process and the ship was turned over to the custody of the United States Navy (USN) in June 1917. Vaterland was the last of the German ships turned over to the Navy to complete repair and conversion.[12][13]
She was commissioned by the USN in July 1917 as the USS Vaterland, Captain Joseph Wallace Oman in command. On 6 September 1917 she was redesignated SP-1326 and renamed Leviathan by President Woodrow Wilson.[13]
The trial cruise to Cuba on 17 November 1917 prompted Captain Oman to order 241 Marines on board to relieve a detachment of Marines and to station themselves conspicuously about the upper decks, giving the appearance from shore that the great ship was headed overseas to increase the American Expeditionary Forces.[15] Upon her return later that month, she reported for duty with the Cruiser and Transport Force.[12][13]
The transport sailed for Europe on 17 December 1917 with 7,250 troops to Liverpool, England where the transport's size, a major advantage with its troop capacity, demonstrated how highly that size limited the ports and repair facilities that could be used in Europe. The ship entered dry dock there but could only enter or leave the dry dock on full moon tides that were required to float the ship over the dock's sill. In the fifty days there the ship's troop capacity was increased to 8,200. The ship was repainted with the British-type dazzle camouflage scheme that she carried for the rest of the war. After return to New York her capacity was increased to 8,900. On 4 March 1918 the ship again sailed for Liverpool but diverted to Brest for future voyages due to poor berthing and coaling facilities in Liverpool. In early summer of 1918 the ship's troop capacity was increased to 10,500.[12][13]
Leviathan began regular passages between the Hoboken Port of Embarkation and Brest, France, delivering up to 14,000 persons on each trip. Once experience in embarking troops was gained, 11,000 troops could board the ship in two hours.[16] While officers had staterooms, the ship was so crowded that one wrote that he supervised a room with 487 enlisted men, with four bunks above each other. Men ate twice a day in groups of 500, marching in a precise path to the dining room where they had exactly 20 minutes; with 12,000 soldiers and 2,000 crew, eight hours were needed to feed the passengers one meal. Men were taken up on deck for an hour each day; if the weather was poor they had to wait until the next day, "as every hour of the day every foot of deck space was taken up".[17]
To meet the troop transport demands in reaction to the German offensive of March 1918, the fastest ships began the system in which troops shared bunks taking turns to sleep. Leviathan thus doubled its capacity from 7,000 to 14,000 troops. With their speed Leviathan, SS Northern Pacific (1914) and SS Great Northern (1914) sailed without escort together. In June 1918 the German Admiralty announced Leviathan was sunk with American troops. The German press was enthusiastic in the claim that the former Vaterland converted to an American troop transport, had been sunk, and in the midst of this enthusiasm she was reported mistakenly as having been torpedoed, when in fact it was the British troopship SS Justicia that had actually fallen victim to German submarines.[12] On 29 September 1918 she left New York for Brest on a voyage that would prove to have the worst in-transit casualties of the deadly second wave of the Spanish flu. By the time she arrived at Brest on 8 October, 2,000 were sick, and 80 had died.[18]
Transports, including Leviathan, underwent a needed overhaul after signing of the armistice before the major effort of returning the troops began.[12] After that date Leviathan, repainted grey overall by December 1918, reversed the flow of men as she transported the veterans back to the United States with nine westward crossings, the last ending on 8 September 1919. On 29 October 1919, Leviathan was decommissioned and turned over to the US Shipping Board and again laid up at Hoboken until plans for her future employment could be determined.
Before the armistice was signed on 11 November 1918, the ship made ten round trips from Hoboken to Europe transporting more than 119,000 fighting men.[13] Leviathan carried 14,416 troops on one trip, setting a record for the most humans on one vessel. Amongst the ship's US Navy crew in this period was future film star Humphrey Bogart.
