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dues. As a result, the Leviathan "shrank” to 49,800 gross tons, much to the dismay of her followers.
The U. S. measurement is based on an 1865 law which has never changed since. It says gross tonnage shall include only those areas encompassed by the ship’s hull and the deck attached directly to the hull. This was all there was when the law was enacted. But with the passing of sails and the rising of a ships superstructure, ships came to have more tonnage if all new areas were included.
Can a ship at one and the same time have more than one official gross tonnage? Such was the case with the USS Leviathan (SP-1326), the Navy’s largest troopship in World War I. She made 38 transatlantic crossings during the war period, including nine in which she brought U. S. soldiers home following the armistice. The Leviathan took one of every ten combat troops of the American Expeditionary Force across, several times carrying more than 14,000 persons on a single trip. She became a national institution—lovingly known as "The Big Train” and "Levi-Nathan.”
The huge ship began her life in 1914 as the SS Vaterland (fatherland), a German liner. At the time, she was the largest ship in the world. The liner was seized by the U. S. government at Hoboken, New Jersey on 6 April 1917, the day the United States entered the war. Renamed the Leviathan, she was rebuilt by the Navy for troopship service. Her wartime experiences were filled with gallantry, escapes from U-boats, and a number of great achievements.
On 29 October 1919, the day she was decommissioned by the Navy, the Leviathan was turned over to the U. S. Shipping Board, a government agency set up to manage seized German ships. At that point the nation’s foremost naval architect, William Francis Gibbs (known as "Mr. Navy” in World War II), took charge and rebuilt her to serve once again as a passenger liner. He was aware that her German sistership was slightly longer and would soon come out as the British liner Majestic. She had been launched just before the war as the SS Bismarck and was seized as part of German war reparations. She would have a gross tonnage of 56,000, whereas the
Leviathan’s was only 54,000 (a gross ton is 100 cubic feet of permanently enclosed earning space—with many complicated exceptions). Gibbs, who wanted the Leviathan to have the title "world’s largest ship,” knew the tonnage system well and was aware that an admeasurer at one custom house might not agree with another because of differing techniques of measurement. He knew all the tricks and used them to give the Leviathan a larger gross than she had originally. She came out of Newport News shipyard measuring 59,956.65 tons. It was merely a paper change, although there had been many structural alterations during the reconditioning. The British could have done the same, but it was beneath their dignity. Thus both claimed for their vessels the title of "world’s largest ship.” In 1923, the Leviathan was sold to the United States Lines. With the onset of the depression, the new owners realized they could use the American tonnage measurement system and pay less in port
The British, Germans, and others changed their rules, but the United States didn’t. So under foreign rules a passenger ship is about 20% larger. One great liner put a bed in a cargo hold going through the Panama Canal and made a few other such temporary changes to cut her gross enough to save thousands of dollars of canal tolls- There are tonnage specialists who do nothing but devise ways to reduce a ship’s tonnage so she has lower porr charges or Suez or Panama canal tolls- But the contrast between U. S. measurement and foreign has been a most striking and yet little understood fact f°r many years. The SS America, built at Newport News in 1939 and famous the World War II Navy troopship Point (AP-23) was 26,314 gross tons under the U. S. flag but, using British measurement, she became 33,532 as a Greek liner under the Chandris house- flag. The Leviathan was scrapped in Scotland in 1938-39—just too late t0 be our largest World War II troopship-
l 'j Urn‘ng to the United States in April jy ^ecretary of the Navy Josephus
^ an,e‘s, center, poses on the Leviathan’ sh ^ Uith CaPtain W- W- Phelps, the rJ*s '■'‘demanding officer, and three admirals who were bureau chiefs:
^ r'ght, David W. Taylor, OrJtrUC*'0n anc^ Repair; Ralph Earle, na”ee; Robert S. Griffin, pa^’neerittg. Top, the Leviathan, nted the colors of the United States C0l ’ du’arfs ‘he adjacent USS jg^°ra<^° (BB-45) at New York in her^ Center, the troopship still wears har^ar Pa‘nt as she enters New York