Photo by Signal Corps
EMBARKING AT ST. NAZAIRE
Among the materials freighted home were 100,000 tons of road-making machinery. This the War Department turned over to the Department of Agriculture to be used in the construction of highways in the United States. The cargo transports also brought back large ordnance stores, principally artillery, much of it of British and French manufacture. The shipments included a large number of captured German cannon, brought back for distribution among American communities as war trophies.
While the returning troop movement was at its height the Transportation Service was winding up its war business and returning to a permanent peace footing. This program consisted principally of disposing of its vessels and its shore establishments. On November 11, 1918, the Service was operating 580 vessels with a total deadweight of nearly 4,000,000 tons. At the end of 1919 the army fleet consisted of only the few transports actually owned by the Government through purchase, construction, or seizure from Germany or Austria.
Most of its vessels the Army held under charter from private owners. The best interests of the United States required the return of these ships to their ownership just as soon as the Army could do without them. The cargo boats were first to go. In February, 1919, the Transportation Service began turning them back—redelivering them, it was called—at the rate of three ships a day. In July, when the peak of the overseas troop movement had passed, the Service began disposing of its chartered troopships (including the converted cargo transports), redelivering the last of them in December.
The Government faced tremendous costs in these transactions. The charters provided that the Army must restore the shipping to its owners in its original condition, ordinary wear and tear excepted. Nearly every ship had been remodeled to a greater or less extent to make it more serviceable to the Army. All the domestic shipyards and repair yards were glutted with work, and it was evident that it would be a long time before the Transportation Service could recondition the vessels. Meanwhile the Service would have to maintain all of this idle shipping at a heavy continuing expense.
Instead of reconditioning the ships, therefore, the Transportation Service adopted the policy of returning vessels as they were, at the same time compensating the owners with lump-sum settlements for damage done by war service. In most instances the owners were glad enough to accept such an arrangement. To protect the Government in the settlements, joint boards of vessel survey, each consisting of an army, a navy, and a United States shipping board official, were set up at all the ports where ships were to be redelivered. Expert marine surveyors under their direction made detailed examinations of all the ships. With these surveys in hand, and with the complete history of each ship and of the service it had undergone while in the War Department’s possession, the survey boards were able to arrive at a close estimate of the amount of the Government’s financial liability in each case. The owners also employed their expert surveyors, and out of the two examinations grew negotiations which arrived at compromise settlements.
In December, 1918, the Service redelivered ships of approximately 189,000 deadweight tons. In January the redelivered ships aggregated 461,000 deadweight tons; in February, 470,000; and in March occurred the heaviest redelivery, amounting to approximately 532,000 deadweight tons. Redeliveries crossed the two-million-deadweight-ton mark shortly after the middle of April. By June most of the cargo transports had been restored to their owners, except those which had been converted into troop carriers. On June 15 the Army began dispensing with the use of battleships and cruisers, the last of the twenty-four being withdrawn on August 1. The break-up of the troop fleet began in earnest on August 1, and by the first anniversary of the armistice most of the chartered troopships had gone back to commercial work.
Many questions of admiralty law arose in connection with the restoration of the transports to the merchant marine. The legal branch of the Transportation Service on the day of the armistice consisted of but two lawyers. By that time a large number of maritime claims awaiting adjudication had accumulated, and it was recognized that such claims would multiply during the progress of negotiations leading to the redelivery of the vessels. With much difficulty the Service built up a force of twenty admiralty lawyers. In fact, the War Department, after the armistice, was so badly in need of lawyers for use in the liquidation of war business, that for several months it was forced to maintain the rule that no man of legal training should be discharged from the military service.
In breaking up the fleet of troop transports the Transportation Service found opportunity to create for the War Department a large permanent reserve of troopships without expense to the Government for their maintenance. The German and Austrian ships seized by the Government at the outset of the war became in large part the property of the Army. Most of these vessels were admirably adapted to war service, but they were too large and too costly in operation to justify their continuance in the transport service of the peace-time establishment. Consequently the Transportation Service turned thirteen of them over to the Shipping Board under an agreement providing for their charter to private operators, subject to their recall by the Army in the event of another war. These ships can accommodate approximately 50,000 troops at once. All of the special military fittings have been classified and stored away ready for use again, if it ever becomes necessary.