The ninth division is known as the Bluejacket guard and has the policing of the ship, also furnishes orderlies for the Commanding and Executive officer and all ship’s guards.
The tenth division is the engineer’s force consisting of half the ship’s crew, and includes all men working in the engine rooms, firerooms, and dynamo rooms. The radio force of the ship is also included in this division.
The ship’s complement is 68 officers and 2,240 men.
The Trial Trip
G. B. G.
“I have to report that the Engineering Department of this vessel is in all respects ready for sea.”
Thus read Lieut. V. V. Woodward’s official report to Captain J. W. Oman, November 16, 1917, an expression of confidence not unanimously shared by the crew or public. The Captain, Engineer Officer, the Navy Department, were confident she would leave despite boasts to the contrary by German agents and sympathizers.
Promptly at 9:30 A. M., November 17, 1917, upon signals from the bridge, steam was admitted to the Leviathan’s great turbines, the hull was felt to quiver slightly, and the greatest passenger carrying ship on the ocean backed smoothly from her moorings of three years into the North River. Here was another triumph of Yankee ingenuity.
No blare of brass bands was heard, no cheering crowds thronged the river front, as, amid a fleet of eighteen tugs, the former pride of the German maritime world, manned by an all-American crew, straightened her course and under her own power, headed slowly for the open sea.