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The incredible saga of a fleet of converted steamboats - formerly known as the "Honeymoon Fleet"- that set course to Britain to fight World War Two
During the balmy summer of 1974, the remaining vestiges of the steamer John A Meseck were hoisted onto a barge at a Camden, New Jersey, scrap yard and cut to pieces. Thus ended the career of a vessel that figured in one of the most unusual sagas in modern day naval warfare.
The 45-year-old Meseck was the last floating link with the fabled "Honeymoon Fleet" of American steamboats that answered the call to duty during World War Two and crossed the hostile Atlantic. The historic Meseck had lain unused and unloved for more than a decade when she was towed from Norfolk, Virginia, to the scrap yard in 1974. There was no one to see her oft save for a few diehard enthusiasts that recognized the importance of her wartime heroics. One is tempted to draw an analogy with Gen. MacArthur's famous statement, "Old soldiers don't die, they just fade away." The John A Meseck and her late fleetmates were certainly "old soldiers" in the best sense.
Today, the "Honeymoon Fleet" is a fading, but important, memory. Important not so much because of the vessels' mission or cargo, but simply by the fact they were there to serve the country in a time when U-boats mied the Atlantic - steaming into a situation for which their original designers could not even dream of.
It all began early in 1942 when the planning for the invasion of Europe was just starting to get underway. The British government was in need of relatively fast, shallow-draft vessels to serve in cross- channel service as hospital ships, cargo carriers, and training vessels.
Practically every British vessel already had an assigned mission and new ships were out of the question because of more pressing work in shipyards. Subsequently, the British Ministry of War Transport turned to the USA for assistance. There were, however, no US Navy ships or ocean-going steamers that would fit into the mission, but the War Shipping Administration advised the Brits that it could have a number of East Coast pleasure steamers for conversion purposes.
At the time, these shallow-draft,...