On 29 September 1918, the USS Leviathan transport ship was preparing to leave Hoboken, New Jersey, to sail to Brest, France. The vessel, along with other ships, was due to ferry around 100,000 troops across the Atlantic to France during October. On her ninth voyage to France, the Leviathan would carry troops from ten different army organizations, including nurses and combat replacements.
The USS Leviathan, operating as an American troopship in 1918, began life in Hamburg in 1914, where she was launched as the Vaterland, the pride of the German passenger fleet. When the USA entered the war in 1917, the Vaterland was resting at anchor in New York. As her German captain was unwilling to scupper her, the Vaterland became ‘the most gigantic Prisoner of War the world has ever known’. She was seized by US Customs officials in the early morning of 6 April 1917, and turned over to the Shipping Board to be manned and operated. After nearly three years in dry dock at Hoboken, she was finally turned over to the Navy Department on 25 July 1917,
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