unitedstatesshippingboard

USS Powhatan (ID # 3013), 1917-1919. Originally S.S. Hamburg (German Passenger Liner, 1899). Later named Red Cross, Hudson and President Fillmore USS Powhatan, a 18,026-ton troop transport, was originally the German passenger steamer Hamburg, which had been built in 1899 at Stettin, Germany. Caught at New York when World War I began in August 1914, she was soon chartered by the American Red Cross to take medical personnel and supplies to Europe. Renamed Red Cross, she left New York in mid-September and called at Falmouth, England; Paulliac, France; and Rotterdam, The Netherlands, before recrossing the Atlantic in October with American refugees on board. She remained at New York for the next two and a half years. Also en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Powhatan_(ID-3013) On the "Red Cross":

Thanks trialsanderrors for providing the link to more information about this ship. We'll add some of it to the record the next time we update.

Edited Wikipedia entry to reflect service as SS Red Cross.

This picture ran in the January, 1918 number of The Water Tower, with the description: "THE LAYING OF THE FIRST KEEL On Thursday December 20th [1917] at the Newark Bay Shipyard the first rivet was driven in the first standardized structural steel ship ever built. [...] The picture shows Mr John Hunter, representative of the United States Shipping Board, driving the first rivet after the center vertical keelson had been put in place. The gentleman standing immediately behind Mr Hunter in this picture is Mr Henry R Sutphen, vice president of the Submarine Boat Corporation and the man to whom credit for the production of the standardized structural steel ship is due." books.google.com/books?id=FAY0AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA48&lp...

see also

"During World War I the Submarine Boat Corporation's yard was the second largest shipyard in the United States. There were as many as twenty-five thousand men working there." More on the company and its Newark Bay Shipyard here: www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/newark-bay.htm

A January, 1943 biographical sketch of Henry R. Sutphen (standing at center, above), naming him as the force behind the PT boats of WWII. books.google.com/books?id=y0i4p6MqmPgC&pg=PA164&l...

Art Siegel: thanks for finding the matching published image and for identifying Mr John Hunter and Henry R Sutphen at the Newark Bay Shipyard ceremony. We will add more information to both these images when we update.

Charles Evans Hughes Sr. (April 11, 1862 – August 27, 1948) was an American statesman, Republican Party politician, and the 11th Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. He was also the 36th Governor of New York, the Republican nominee in the 1916 presidential election, and the 44th United States Secretary of State. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Evans_Hughes

Taken likely on the same occasion: www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/50173385046/