Many Lives of Ships

In 1906 my great-grandfather, David Kamenetz, arrived in Baltimore on the steamship Rhein.

Ships undergo adaptive reuse too. When David embarked, it was a passenger ship for Norddeutscher Lloyd, ferrying immigrants—mostly impoverished Russian Jews—from Bremenhaven to Locust Point.

Just a few months earlier, the Rhein had been transporting troops of the German Empire to suppress the Boxer Rebellion.

A few years later, when the war broke out, it was commandeered in port by the Americans, and renamed the USS Susquehanna.

They mounted new machine guns and one pound cannons. It made multiple Atlantic crossings, deploying American soldiers to Europe.

In 1919 it was decommissioned. Ten years later it was sold to a shipbreaking company in Japan, and stripped down to materials.

On the whole, a fairly violent career.

But for a brief time it was in the business of creating American families.

My sentimental photo of the SS Rhein.