Talk:SS Amerika

message: I reverted the addition of the 'largest passenger ship' series box because all the available information - both on Wikipedia and the linked-to sites - tells me that SS Amerika was never the largest passenger ship.  It was at one point the second largest, after the RMS Baltic. Matthew Brown (Morven) (T:C) 06:22, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Largest box 

message: Followup on Wekipedia article on SS Amerika: A first hand account of the fate of the USAT E.B. Alexander, nee, SS Amerika, after it exploded in the North Sea and foundered during Sept. 21,1946
"As I remember it our short wave distress signal at midnight reached all the way to the Cape Cod antenna and was picked up by every vessel in the North Sea. Within an  hours  we listed severally to port by which time a whole fleet of ships from all the nations contiguous to the North Sea arrived. I believe a British RN Destroyer was among them. All 200 of the ladies aboard along with most of the ship's officers and army troop command officers got away with the ladies in the st'bd side boats  and were picked up by the rescue ships  We (the crew) remained aboard along with Chief Mate Cappello who ran about with a .45 to keep order because many of the Steward Dept. crew panicked. Because of this I nearly went overboard trying to lower my boat. Most of these people were not trained to handle  lifeboats and I do not remember any lifeboat drills except one. That was when we were inbound to Germany with 2500 wives and children of our occupation forces. The drill was a fiasco as women ran about screaming and gathering up their small children and trying to report to their abandon ship boat stations. I still have nightmares about what would have happened if they were aboard when the explosion took place. It would have been a horror as bad as the RMS Titanic. After the ladies and their kids were safely disembarked in Bremerhaven we headed back to sea for a first stop at Southampton, UK and then for Naples, Italy. We blew up instead and all power was disabled and the pumps knocked out. We began taking on 400 gallons of water a minute until the black gang down below heroically managed to shut the sea cocks when they were neck high in water that flooded the engine room. What caused the explosion is quite another story. There was no Gov't record of what happened and in 195? all official record of U.S. Army ships manned during WWII were destroyed along with all record of the merchant seamen serving as crew aboard such vessels. The Army scuttlebut had it that we struck a mine but the crew generally agreed that a bomb was set by the German post-war underground forces. When the ship was drydocked and ship was high and dry the the crew was anxious to see the  ship's bottom. It was unscathed. A skeleton crew remained aboard during repair and the rest of the crew, including myself, were transported back to the U.S. "troop class" aboard the USAT Gen CC Ballou.  There is no record of this. I managed to retain a signed paper from the Alex's Capt. Cline citing that I was discharged from the vessel in Bremerhaven. I retained this discharge and earned a U.S. Army Honourable discharge because of it. To date I have not been able to find any of the crew, ship's officers or the 200 Service Women passengers aboard during the incident, except one, Mr. Ed Wood, a ship's engineer. Mr. Wood and myself shared in the search for the crew and an army record but to no avail. We both maintain the ship did not strike a mine but was sabotaged by the post-war German underground. There is good reason for this. The Alexander was originally a German passenger ship built in Great Britain for the German Hambugh line in 1908. The German SS Amerika was the first and finest ship of its class, making the transatlantic  run to the U.S. and, as such, competed with the British Cunard Line until 1912 when it followed RMS Titanic on its maiden voyage. On the way out the SS Amerika struck a British submarine operating submerged in the Channel. There were only a few submarine survivors. The Amerika continued on. Three quarters way across the Atlantic it encountered much ice and icebergs and radioed ahead to the Titanic about the ice.  The Titanic ignored the radio warning. When the Amerika caught up to the by then sinking Titanic it was noted by Capt. Smith and the Titanic sent up flares. They were, however, the wrong colored flares: white instead of red that would have signaled distress. A large line of ice prevented the Amerika reaching the Titanic and it  sailed on. This was the "mystery ship" on record according to accounts of the disaster. The Amerika continued its transatlantic service until the Great War when it was interned by the U.S. in Boston, converted for duty as a U.S. army troopship and renamed the SS America. At war's end the America found itself mothballed until the second World War for service as a troopship and renamed the E.B. General Alexander. My friend, Irving Touster, of Woodstock, NY was a troop passenger aboard the Alexander during the U.S. invasion of North Africa. The Alex continued as such throughout the war and of which there is no record. After the Nazi surrender she was well suited to serve, because once a fine passenger ship, to transport war brides and the women and children dependants of the U.S. German occupation forces. The war was not over for U.S. Armed Forces until December of 1946, as mandated by Pres. Truman. I signed aboard the vessel carrying 2500 women and children to Bremerhaven, Germany in September of 1946 when it exploded, fortunately after the women and children were safely disembarked and we were headed for Southhampton (and when I looked foward to visiting my lady acquaintance of London). The explosion of no official record aborted such anticipation. 
Also of no official record was the first U.S. forces invasion of Greenland during 1949. I was then signed aboard a recommisioned LST (Landing Ship, tank) loaded with giant yellow painted bull dozers with snow plows and stenciled in blue the words "Operation Blue Jay." We put to sea out of Norfolk VA and joined up with a large convoy of supply ships that were joined off Newfoundland by a U.S. Navy task force composed of destroyers, cruisers and an aircraft carrier. The carrier was out of sight except every morning TBF carrier planes buzzed us at mast head height no doubt on patrol to locate submarines. We were headed for Thule, Greenland, just below the North Pole, to build an early warning facility to guard against a possible over the Pole warplane  or missle strike at the beginning of the Cold War. The fear was that the Russians would intercept our ships and I began to worry about Russian submarines and a renewed torpedo warfare. Besides, I was already enrolled in the Cooper Union Art School with a fellowship and the shipboard worry was that our supply ships would be iced in and suffer a North Pole winter. As a result I would be dismissed for missing my second semester at college.  As good fortune took place for me and not the ship and our mission, we cracked a cylinder head in our portside diesels, could not keep up with the task force and the convoy, and  ordered home to the Brooklyn Army troopship base. Most of this recall remains undocumented and lost as a part of maritime history and my hope is that this ocean liner, the oldest ever in service in maritime history comes to public attention.
     
thanks again, for your interest,
Bernard X. Bovasso
Saugerties, NY 12477
Bernard X. Bovasso (talk) 03:24, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  1946 explosion