CECILIE

KRONPRINZESSIN  CECILIE

Kronprinzessin Cecilie - Departing Bremen,Germany-Arriving at Ellis Island 11 July 1911

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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, stepmother 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   4 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