>From the "Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships," 

(1981) Vol. 7, pp.385-386.





U. S. GRANT





	Ulysses Simpson Grant--born on 27 April 1822 at Point 

Pleasant, Ohio--graduated from the United States Military 

Academy on 1 July 1843.  He served with distinction in the 

war with Mexico--under Generals Zachary Taylor and Winfield 

Scott, taking part in the battles of Resaca de la Palma, 

Palo Alto, Monterey, and Vera Cruz.  He was twice brevetted 

for bravery:  at Molino del Rey and Chapultepec.  After 

growing restive during frontier duty in the peacetime Army, 

he resigned his commission in 1854 and attempted to pursue 

careers in business and farming.



	Shortly after the outbreak of the Civil War, Grant was 

commissioned a colonel in the 21st Illinois Volunteer 

Infantry.  He later became brigadier general of volunteers 

on 7 August 1861.  Following the captures of Fort Henry and 

Fort Donelson in February 1862, President Abraham Lincoln 

promoted Grant to major general of volunteers.  These 

victories opened Tennessee to federal forces, and earned 

Grant the nickname of "unconditional surrender." 



	He doggedly pursued the Confederate Army and won 

impressive--but costly--victories at Shiloh, Vicksburg and 

Chattanooga.  His willingness to fight and ability to win 

impressed President Lincoln who appointed Grant lieutenant 

general and gave him overall command of the Army. 



	Grant left Major General William T. Sherman in 

immediate charge of all troops in the west and moved his 

headquarters to Virginia where he turned his attention to 

the long frustrated Union effort to take Richmond.  Despite 

heavy losses and difficult terrain, the Army of the Potomac 

kept up a relentless pursuit of General Robert E. Lee's 

troops and won bloody contests in the Wilderness, at 

Spotsylvania, at Cold Harbor, and at Petersburg.  His 

relentless pressure finally forced Lee to evacuate Richmond 

early in April 1865 and forced him to surrender at 

Appomattox Courthouse on 9 April 1865.  Within a few weeks, 

the War between the States was over. 



	Grant became ad interim Secretary of War on 12 August 

1867--when President Andrew Johnson suspended Secretary 

Stanton--and held the office until early the next year.  He 

ran for the presidency on the Republican ticket in 1868 and 

won the election.  His two terms were marred by economic, 

social, and political turmoil, but Grant himself was not 

involved in the scandals, and his personal reputation 

emerged untarnished. 



	He devoted his twilight years to writing and completing 

his two volumes of Personal Memoirs which were published the 

year of his death.  Grant died on 23 July 1885, at Mt. 

McGregor, N.Y.





Screw Steamer

Displacement:  15,010 t.

Length:  508’2”

Beam:  55’3”

Draft:  27’6”

Depth of Hold:  31’8”

Speed:  15 k.

Complement:  211

Troop Capacity:  1,244

Armament:  4 5"; 2 1-pdrs; 2 machine guns





	KONIG WILHELM II--renamed MADAWASKA in 1917 and U. S. 

GRANT in 1922--was a steel-hulled screw steamer launched on 

20 July 1907 at Stettin, Germany, by Vulcan 

Aktiengesellechaft.  Built for the transatlantic passenger 

trade, KONIG WILHELM II operated between Hamburg, Germany, 

and Buenos Aires, Argentina, under the house flag of the 

Hamburg-Amerika Line, until the outset of World War I in 

1914.  Voluntarily interned at Hokoben, N.J., to avoid being 

captured by the Royal Navy, the passenger liner was seized 

after the United States entered the war on 6 April 1917, as 

were all other German vessels in American ports.  Before 

agents of the Federal Government took possession of the 

ship, her German crew unsuccessfully attempted to render her 

unusable by cracking her main steam cylinders with hydraulic 

jacks.



	Following repairs to the damaged machinery, KONIG 

WILHELM II was assigned the identification number 3011 and 

commissioned on 27 August 1917, Lt. Charles McCauley in 

temporary command pending the arrival of Comdr. Edward H. 

Watson.  Renamed MADAWASKA on 1 September--the ship was 

assigned to the Cruiser and Transport Force of the Atlantic 

Fleet.  During World War I, she conducted 10 transatlantic 

voyages in which she carried nearly 12,000 men to Europe.



	After the armistice of 11 November 1918, MADAWASKA made 

seven more voyages, bringing 17,000 men home from the 

European theater.  She completed the last of these runs upon 

her arrival at New York on 23 August 1919.  She was 

decommissioned on 2 September and simultaneously transferred 

to the War Department.



	Sailing for the Pacific soon thereafter, MADAWASKA 

embarked elements of the Czech Legion at Vladivostok, 

Russia, early in 1920, as part of the evacuation of that 

force in the wake of the Russian Civil War in Siberia.  The 

ship sailed to Fiume, Yugoslavia, and disembarked her Czech 

passengers to return to their homeland.  Subsequently 

sailing for New York, MADAWASKA was inactivated and turned 

over to the Shipping Board for lay-up.



	The following year, however, the War Department 

reacquired the vessel and authorized a major refit for her 

before she could resume active service.  During this 

overhaul, which would last through the spring of 1922, the 

ship was fitted with modern marine watertube boilers for 

greater safety in operation and to enable the ship to make 

increased speed.  On 3 June 1922, at Brooklyn, N.Y., the 

transport was renamed U. S. GRANT; Princess Cantacuzene, 

wife of Major General Prince Cantacuzene, Count Speransky of 

Russia, and a granddaughter of General Ulysses S. Grant, 

christened the ship.



	For almost two decades, U. S. GRANT soldiered on in the 

Army Transport Service, maintaining a regular schedule of 

voyages carrying troops, passengers, and supplies along a 

route which included calls at San Francisco, Calif.; 

Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii; Guam; Manila, Philippine 

Islands; Chinwangtao and Shanghai, China; the Panama Canal 

Zone, and New York.  For many of these years of service in 

the Pacific, U. S. GRANT served as the sole source of 

refrigerated stores from the United States.  Her periodic 

arrivals at Apra Harbor invariably produced a temporary 

improvement in the diet of Americans living in Guam.



	On one voyage to Guam, the transport was nearly lost.  

On the late afternoon of 19 May 1939, U. S. GRANT ran 

aground on the dangerous inner reef in the as-yet unfinished 

harbor.  Fortunately, the accident did not occur during 

typhoon season.  The combined efforts of minesweeper PENGUIN 

(AM-33) and oil depot ship ROBERT L. BARNES (AG-27) failed 

to budge the ship off the coral, leading the Acting Governor 

of Guam, Comdr. George W. Johnson, to hit upon a plan of 

action in collaboration (by radio) with Capt. Richmond K. 

Turner, in heavy cruiser ASTORIA (CA-34), which was then en 

route to the island.



	For 21 hours, members of the U.S. Naval Insular Force 

and local stevedores unloaded 300 tons of cargo from the 

grounded U. S. GRANT, while much of her fuel was transferred 

to ROBERT L. BARNES and ADMIRAL HALSTEAD.  ASTORIA--en route 

for the United States after carrying Japanese Ambassador 

Hiroshi Saito's ashes back to his homeland--arrived at 0630 

on 21 May.  She took up her assigned position, as did 

PENGUIN, ROBERT L. BARNES and ADMIRAL HALSTEAD; at 0809 

U. S. GRANT lurched free of the coral reef, to the 

accompaniment of cheers from the transport's crew.  The 

island's newspaper, The Guam Recorder, subsequently reported 

in its June 1939 edition:  "The short time in which the 

difficult operation was carried out was due to the efficient 

cooperation of all . . . involved, the Army, Navy, and 

Merchant Marine."  All cargo was soon reloaded, and U. S. 

GRANT resumed her voyage.



	She continued under the aegis of the Army 

Transportation Service through 1940.  Then as war clouds 

gathered in the Pacific and Atlantic, U. S. GRANT was 

subsequently reacquired by the Navy.  Armed with seven 

3-inch guns (she had been unarmed while serving as an Army 

transport), the vessel was refitted at the Mare Island Navy 

Yard, Vallejo, Calif., and was commissioned on 16 June 1941, 

Capt. Herbert R. Hein in command.  Continuing her service as 

a transport, the ship received the classification of AP-29.



	U. S. GRANT operated between ports on the west coast 

and into the Aleutian Islands through the outbreak of war in 

the Pacific on 7 December 1941.  She carried passengers and 

cargo to Alaskan ports as the United States built up its 

defenses in that area against possible thrusts by Japan.  In 

February and March 1942, U. S. GRANT conducted voyages to 

the Hawaiian Islands.  During the former month, she returned 

some 1,000 enemy aliens (mostly Japanese with a sprinkling 

of Germans) for placement in internment camps in the 

southwestern United States.  Among these passengers was 

prisoner of war number one, Lt. Kazuo Sakamaki, whose midget 

submarine had run aground off Barber's Point, Oahu, on 

7 December 1941.  In April, U. S. GRANT resumed trips to 

Alaskan ports carrying troops from Seattle to American bases 

on the Alaskan mainland and in the Aleutians and continued 

this vital routine until the spring of 1942.



	The Battle of the Coral Sea during May 1942 convinced 

the Japanese that a thrust at Midway Island was imperative, 

in an attempt to draw out the American fleet--particularly 

the dwindling number of vital carriers.  Consequently, a 

powerful Japanese fleet sailed for Midway, while a smaller 

task force headed northward for the Aleutians to launch a 

diversionary raid.  Carrier-based planes from the carrier 

RYUJO struck Dutch Harbor, Alaska, on 3 June, and Japanese 

troops occupied Attu and Kiska islands on the 7th.



	During this time, U. S. GRANT carried troops to Kodiak, 

Alaska, and Cold Bay into the summer.  She narrowly escaped 

being torpedoed while proceeding from Seattle to Dutch 

Harbor in convoy on 20 July.  Alert lookouts picked out the 

tracks of two torpedoes and evasive action enabled the ship 

to avoid the deadly "fish" which passed close aboard, from 

starboard to port.



	The venerable transport disembarked Army troops at 

Massacre Bay on 14 June, three days after the initial 

landings.  The following month, as American and Canadian 

troops prepared to assault Kiska, Rear Admiral Francis W. 

Rockwell broke his flag in U. S. GRANT as Commander, Task 

Force 51.



	During this operation, U. S. GRANT served as 

combination transport and communications vessel.  The 

Americans eventually discovered that the Japanese had stolen 

away like nomads, leaving only a few dogs to "contest" the 

landings, and had completed their evacuation, undetected by 

the Allies, by 28 July.  During the Kiska landings, the 

transport not only carried Army troops, but also a Mexican 

liaison group; a detachment of Canadian troops, and a group 

of civilian correspondents.



	After a period of repairs in late 1943, which lasted 

into 1944, U. S. GRANT resumed coastwise voyages to Alaska.  

>From April to December, she shifted to the eastern Pacific 

to operate between Hawaii and the west coast.  She often 

embarked medical patients to return them to the west coast 

from Hawaiian area hospitals.  Arriving at San Francisco 

after one such voyage on 23 January 1945, U. S. GRANT 

disembarked passengers and got underway the same afternoon 

without passengers or escort, bound for the Caribbean.  

Transiting the Panama Canal, after embarking passengers at 

Balboa, the ship operated in the Caribbean for the next six 

months, between the West Indies and New Orleans, La., until 

the end of the war.



	U. S. GRANT returned to Pacific duty in September, 

departing San Francisco on the 18th for Okinawa, via 

Eniwetok.  She arrived at Okinawa on 12 October, in the wake 

of a destructive typhoon, and took on board 1,273 passengers 

for transportation to the United States, getting underway 

from the island on 21 October.



	Arriving at San Francisco on 7 November, U. S. GRANT 

disembarked her passengers soon thereafter.  One week later, 

on 14 November, the transport was decommissioned and 

returned to the War Department.  Her name was struck from 

the Navy list on 28 November.



	Turned over to the Maritime Commission, the erstwhile 

transport and veteran of two world wars was sold to the 

Boston Metals Co., on 24 February 1948 for scrapping.



	U. S. GRANT received one battle star for her World War 

II service.





Transcribed by Michael Hansen

mhansen2@home.com