The USS Henderson was with ‘The First to France’. Tremendous difficulties were overcome that she might carry the first American fighters “over there”. It was a tense hour when she steamed down the Narrows to join the formation. June 14, 1917, as her first load of Marines waved farewell to the Statue of Liberty. Those ships went to meet the initial test in transporting the American army over three thousand miles of submarine-infested water.
But four days previously, she, a newly-built ship, traversed her first mile of water. She made her first run from Philadelphia, where she was built, to New York, to report for overseas duty. Sailing down the Delaware River, she experienced engine trouble. That run to New York, with her mainmast not aboard, with mechanics from the Philadelphia Navy Yard still working up to the last moment, with her decks and holds littered with the debris of speedy completion – that run was counted as her trial trip.
Just six days before leaving for France her boilers for the first time felt the pressure of steam. The first power ever developed aboard the USS Henderson was on June 8, 1917. She left with the convoy June 14th.
But three weeks before sailing she was commissioned at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. Her completion was feverishly hastened by the declaration of war. Day and night, without ceasing, her decks rang with the sounds of many workmen. Her crew was messed aboard neighboring ships, and her light and heat came from the Yard until just before the lines were cast off.
When on the evening of June 12th she proceeded up the North River and anchored off ninety-sixth street she was ready for a maiden voyage to Europe with “The First to France”.
Only by the urgent insistence of her Commanding Officer, Captain Steele, was she permitted to go at all. Her machinery, and especially her turbo-generators, were in an untested and uncertain condition. It was probablematical how far she could run on her fuel and it was reported that no fuel oil could then be obtained in France. It was a venture demanding the maximum of courage and resourcefulness to take an untried vessel through submarine-haunted waters with almost two thousand souls aboard. The urgent need of getting men to the other side was a strong argument supporting the Captain’s plea to the Admiral that the Henderson be allowed to go.
The first trip tested the mettle of officers and crew. It was only by indomitable will that she held her position in the convoy as she did. The fifth day out she twice dropped from formation for repairs, first having difficulties with the electric steering gear which necessitated hand steering, and then having trouble with the port engine throttle. The day following, the feed pumps failed, the steering gear again went wrong, the starboard engine stopped altogether, and the port engine had to be cut down to one third normal revolutions. This required the entire convoy to drop its speed to five knots for several hours during the afternoon, but by nightfall the troubles had been solved and the ships were once again making normal progress. There were other times during the trip when she temporarily from the convoy. Each day brought its new problems.
Those hours were grim enough, but at the time there was little realization of the calibre of the undertaking. It was a new and untested vessel, in the hands of officers and a crew who scarcely knew each other’s names, solving the problems of the first over-seas convoy, meeting engine room and steering gear difficulties day after day, steering by hand in the exacting zig-zagging convoy formation. The Henderson is proud of her entire record, but if one achievement stands out above the others as the highlight of that record, it is her first trans-Atlantic voyage.
~~ Lt. Henry J. Fry, Chaplain's Corps, USN, The War Record of the USS Henderson,
published by Brooklyn
Eagle Press, 1919.
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