Design 1099 Ship. The Emergency Fleet Corporation Design 1099 was a steel-hulled cargo ship design approved for mass production by the United States Shipping Boards Emergency Fleet Corporation in World War I.  A total of 91 of these ships were produced.  Of these, 88 were purchased by the Shipping Board.  The remaining three were cancelled by the Shipping Board, but completed for private companies. 

The design 1099 ships became part of a global glut of shipping capacity in the 1920s, after the war's demands subsided.  Many of them were idled, two dozen were scrapped, and most of the remainder were sold to cargo fleets around the world by the Shipping Board.  By the beginning of World War II they were very widespread and carried critical materials for all the major combatants.  Twenty-five of the ships were sunk by enemy action during the war.  The last of the class was likely wrecked in 1958.

Construction 
Design 1099 ships were referred to as  "Lakers" since all were produced in shipyards on the Great Lakes, and most were named after lakes. Production was spread over eight shipyards: 

 American Ship Building Company,  Cleveland, Ohio shipyard (9 ships)
 American Ship Building Company, Lorain, Ohio shipyard (13 ships)
 American Ship Building Company, Superior, Wisconsin shipyard (6 ships)
 Buffalo Drydock Company, Buffalo, New York shipyard (1 ship)
 Chicago Shipbuilding Company, Chicago, Illinois shipyard (7 ships)
 Detroit Shipbuilding Company, Detroit, Michigan shipyard (24 ships)
 McDougall Duluth Company, Duluth, Minnesota shipyard (15 ships)
 Toledo Shipbuilding Company, Toledo, Ohio shipyard (16 ships)
All 91 ships were completed in 1919 and 1920.  Costs varied slightly among design 1099 ships.  For example, Bartholomew cost $781,925.46, while Detroit Wayne cost $777,751.41.

Characteristics 
Design 1099 ships were built of welded steel plates.  They were  long between perpendiculars, with a beam of , and a depth of hold of .  Their fully loaded draft was just over .  Deadweight tonnage, the weight of cargo which could be carried, varied among ships between 4,000 and 4,155 tons.  Gross register tonnage varied between 2,542 and 2,810, while net register tonnage varied between 1,512 and 1,704. 

All design 1099 ships had a single propeller which was driven by a single triple-expansion steam engine creating .  Two slightly different engine configurations were built.  One had high, medium, and low-pressure cylinders with diameters of 22, 36, and 59 inches, and the other 21, 35, and 59 inches.  Both types had a stroke of 42 inches.  Steam was provided by two oil-fired boilers, except on Lake Farlin which burned coal.  The ships were capable of reaching .  Their fuel tanks could hold between 664 and 708 tons of oil, giving them a steaming range of about .

There were two cargo holds, each of which had two hatches.  Each hold was serviced with four cargo booms, each of which had its own winch.  The heaviest load that could be winched aboard was 4 tons.  Depending on the type of cargo and the ship, design 1099 freighters had between  of effective cargo space.

The design 1099 ships that were pressed into service by various governments during World War II were armed variously.  USAT City of Houston, launched as Lake Strymon, was armed with a 3-inch gun on the stern and four 20 mm Oerlikon anti-aircraft guns, two on the stern and two on top of the pilothouse.

Class history 

Completed in 1919 and 1920, the design 1099 class arrived too late to make a difference in World War I.  Instead of solving the  problem of ship scarcity during the war, it became part of a ship surplus after the war.  In 1919 the Shipping Board adopted a policy of selling its steel ships to American companies to strengthen the private sector of the industry.  Congress passed the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, which advocated a strong merchant marine on both national defense and international commerce grounds.  The law authorized the Shipping Board to operate, charter, and sell ships to support a strong American merchant marine, and to dispose of excess ships which it deemed unnecessary for a strong merchant marine.  Sales of ships to foreigners were allowed, but only if the Shipping Board was unable to sell them to Americans.    

Shipping Board design 1099 ships were operated by American companies briefly after the end of World War I.  They sailed all over the world, Lake Fansdale to Le Havre, and Lake Faulk to Hong Kong, for example.  Then, in the spring of 1920, ocean shipping rates collapsed, in part because of the overproduction of shipping during the war.  Many design 1099 ships were idled because they were small and slow compared to much of the merchant marine fleet.  By 1923 the shipping board declared that its two paramount objectives were to create a strong privately-owned merchant marine, and to dispose of as many ships in its own fleet as possible consistent with that end.The Shipping Board began selling design 1099 ships to American companies in 1922.  By 1926, it found qualified American buyers for 48. President Coolidge addressed the Shipping Board fleet in his 1927 state of the union speech.  By that time, he and many others judged "Public operation [of the merchant marine] not a success," because it was a constant drain on the U.S. treasury, and often protected private interests, rather than the public good.  Coolidge's view was that the ships should be sold as quickly as possible.   As the ships lost value as they aged and as political pressure grew, the Shipping Board began selling design 1099 ships not just to American merchant marine firms, but for scrap metal and to foreign buyers.  An additional 24 ships were sold in this manner.  The Shipping Board sold 72 of its 88 design 1099 ships in the decade after it began the process.  

Some design 1099 ships were transferred to other government entities, rather than being sold to private interests.  became California State, the training ship for the California Maritime Academy.  Lake Fairfax, Detroit Wayne, Lake Fenn, and Lake Faxon were transferred to the War Department.  In 1932, Lake Fairfax was converted into a suction dredge using parts from Lake Faxon, and Detroit Wayne became a suction dredge using parts from Lake Fenn.  The two dredges went to work for the US Army Corps of Engineers on the Mississippi River, while the two parts ships were scrapped.

World War II 

The entire class of design 1099 ships missed World War I, but two-thirds of the ships were still at sea in 1940 as World War II grew in scope.  While the Shipping Board had sold most design 1099 ships to American firms, these had since been sold on to a wide range of operators around the world.  In 1940, the Soviet Union had the largest foreign fleet of design 1099 with eight ships, but the ships also sailed under the flags of Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, France, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Norway, and Panama.  As a result, design 1099 ships both supported the war aims of, and were sunk by all the major combatants.  

Eight design 1099 ships were chartered or requisitioned to become US Army transport ships, and another served a similar function as a British Ministry of War transport ship.  Several were assigned to the US Army Small Ships Section, an improvised fleet of civilian ships based in Australia which supported the advance of General Douglas MacArthur in the southwest Pacific.  They frequently carried cargoes to the front lines of the war.  For example, on one trip to Biak, USAT City of Fort Worth carried frozen food, 155 mm shells, jeeps, 105 mm guns, and fuses for every shell aboard.    

Whether as a military auxiliary or a commercial freighter, World War II was dangerous for slow design 1099 ships.  Of the 59 afloat in 1940, 25 were sunk by enemy action during the war.

Postwar 
Beyond the 25 ships that were sunk by enemy action, at least another 7 foundered or were wrecked in maritime accidents from 1940 to 1945.  Fifteen design 1099 ships are known to have survived the war, but the fate of the ships in the hands of the Soviets, devastated Japan, and revolutionary China is unknown.  The last design 1099 ship afloat may have been Avia, a Panamanian-flagged ship that was launched as Lake Falun.  She was wrecked on Alacranes Reef, off the Yucatan coast, on 26 December 1958, just short of 38 years after her completion in Detroit.

References

Standard ship types of the United States
World War I cargo ships of the United States
Ships of the United States Army