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USAT ''Thomas'' was a United States Army transport ship, launched as the SS ''Persia'' in 1894, having been built for the Hamburg America Line's service to New York. She was bought by the Atlantic Transport Line in 1897 because she was "practically a sister" to other Massachusetts class of ships already in service there. She was renamed SS Minnewaska by her new owners.〔 ==Service history== ''Minnewaska'' was one of six Atlantic Transport Line ships requisitioned by the U.S. Government for service as transports during the Spanish-American War, and purchased on 26 July 1898 for $660,000 and renamed ''Thomas'' after General George Henry Thomas, a hero of the American Civil War battle of Chickamauga.〔 ''Thomas'' could accommodate 100 officers, 1,200 men and 1,000 horses, and also had refrigerated capacity for shipping of meat,〔 particularly prized because beef was considered an essential element of the military diet.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Atlantic Transport Line History: War and Wreck )〕 A brief article in the ''Maryville Times'' of 28 October 1899 describes the ship and her facilities: During the Spanish-American War, vessels going to and from the Philippines made a point of stopping and raising the American flag on Wake Island before it was formally annexed by the United States in 1899. One of these, in July 1898, was the ''Thomas''.〔 The Peace Corps tradition was arguably started by the Thomasites, a group of educators who got their name from the ''Thomas''. This ship brought the first batch of 540 American teachers and some of their family members to initiate a new era of public education in the Philippines in August 1901.〔 In early 1916, the ''Thomas'' broke its propeller on a voyage from San Francisco to Manila and put into Honolulu for repairs. The floating dry dock that was available had a capacity of only 4,500 tons, while the ''Thomas'' was an 11,000 ton vessel, and 118 feet longer than the dry dock. Engineers allowed the bow to extend beyond the front of the dry dock granting them access to stern which was lifted out of the water, allowing them to replace the damaged propeller. Though in Pacific service with large troop capacity the ship did not see service in the war zone during World War I due to slow speed and lack of bunker capacity to make a round trip of the Atlantic, where coal in Europe was critically short, without the intermediate bunkering at coaling stations available in the Pacific. According to U.S. Army service records of Private Leroy F Johnson who sailed on this voyage and served in Company E of the 27th Infantry Regiment, the ''Thomas'' sailed from San Francisco on October 16, 1919, and arrived in Vladivostok, Siberia, on November 11, 1919, with U.S. Army troops and supplies to support the American troops already in Siberia. The regiment departed Vladivostok 10 March 1920 aboard ''Thomas'' arriving at Manila on 17 March 1920. Between 10 June and 22 September 1920 ''Thomas'' was one of ten Army transports evacuating members of the Czechoslovak Legion from Vladivostok and transporting them to Trieste, Italy. In October 1922 the ''Thomas'' took aboard passengers and crew of the Los Angeles Steamship Company liner SS ''City of Honolulu'', which had caught fire about 670 miles northeast of the Hawaiian Islands, and landed them at San Pedro, California.〔 From 5—30 September 1923 ''Thomas'' was one of three Army transports involved in earthquake relief operations, Yokohama, Japan. ''Thomas'' made several trips to the Orient from New York via the Panama Canal, but was used mainly on the Manila run, stopping at Honolulu and Guam on the westward trip, and Nagasaki, Japan, and Chinwangtao, China, on the return voyage. She was the last of the more than 50 transports acquired by the U.S. Government in 1898 to remain in service.〔 In March 1928 ''Thomas'' made her final voyage for the Army Transport Service and was turned over to the United States Shipping Board for disposal and sold to the American Iron and Metal Company 14 May 1929 for scrapping at Oakland, California. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「USAT Thomas」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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