Kronprinzessin Cecilie
Kronprinzessin Cecilie -
Departing Bremen,Germany-Arriving at Ellis Island 11 July 1911
# FAMILY MEMBER BIRTH DATE BIRTH
PLACE DEATH DATE DEATH PLACE
2278 WIEST,Jacob 22 Oct 1884 Worms, Russia
Nov 1970 Conrad, Montana
Final
Destination Wishek, North Dakota
Jacob's
Father, tepmother and Siblings arrived October 3,1911 aboard
the same ship
per below
Kronprinzessin Cecilie - Departing Bremen,Germany-Arriving at Ellis Island 3
October,1911
#
FAMILY MEMBER BIRTH DATE BIRTH PLACE DEATH DATE
DEATH PLACE
2274 WIEST,Friedrich Nov 1851 Russia
1913 Wishek, N.D.
2282 MARTEL,Louisa Abt 1858 Honezalleren
2284 WIEST,Arnold 22 May 1892 Russia
2287 WIEST,Edward Abt 1897 Rohrbach
2 Nov 1987 Hennepin Co., Mi.
2285 WIEST,Alexander 8 Jan 1899
2283 WIEST,C.Friedrick Dec 1889 Russia 10
Jun 1927 Hennepin Co., Mi
2286 MITZEL,Bertha 14 Apr 1890 Russia
Final Destination
Wishek, North Dakota
Built
by A/G Vulcan Shipyard, Stettin, Germany, 1906. 19,360 gross tons; 707 (bp) feet
long; 72 feet wide. Steam quadruple expansion engines, twin screw. Service speed
23 knots. 1,970 passengers (558 first class, 338 second class, 1,074 third
class).
Built for North German Lloyd, German flag, in 1906 and renamed Kronprinzessin
Cecilie. Bremerhaven-New York service. Seized by United States Government,
American flag, in 1917 and renamed Uss Mount Vernon. Laid up 1919-40. Scrapped
at Baltimore in 1940.
..........
The fifth and last of the German four-stackers, Kronprinzessin Cecile was built
by Vulkan of Stettin, as were all four of her predecessors. Launched in 1906,
she made her Bremerhaven-New York maiden voyage on 6 August 1907.
Her commercial career ended when World War I began seven years later. At sea on
31 July, only 900 miles from reaching Plymouth, Kronprinzessin Cecile was
ordered to return to the United States with her 1,216 passengers. (She was also
carrying over $14 million in gold and silver destined to pay American industrial
borrowings from British and French banks.) During the crossing, the tops of her
buff funnels were painted black in an effort to disguise the ship as White
Star's Olympic. She arrived at Bar Harbor, Maine, on 4 August and, after her
passengers disembarked and the gold and silver were unloaded, she remained there
for six weeks, guarded by a Coast Guard cutter and two destroyers. She was then
escorted to Boston, where she was interned until the United States entered the
war in 1917.
Taken over and converted into an armed troopship, Kronprinzessin Cecile became
the USS Mount Vernon and made her first troop-carrying departure from Hoboken,
New Jersey, on 31 October 1914. Initially painted gray, Mount Vernon was
repainted in a blue, gray, black and white dazzle design in 1918. She survived a
direct hit from a torpedo launched by U82 in September 1918, but 34 of her
furnace room crew were killed.
After temporary repairs at Brest, France, and a complete overhaul of her damaged
boiler rooms at Boston, Mount Vernon returned to service in February 1919. Her
last ocean crossing came in the fall of that year, when she was sent across the
Pacific to Vladivostok to evacuate refugees and foreign troops trapped there
after fleeing the Russian civil war.
On her return, Mount Vernon was transferred to the United States Shipping Board
and laid up in the Patuxent River. Various plans to return her to commercial use
came to naught, and she was ultimately scrapped in Baltimore in 1940.
Source: The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation. American Family Immigration History Center