William P. Frye was a steel-hulled, four-masted barque, named after a US Republican politician William P. Frye, from the state of Maine. Arthur Sewall & Co of Bath, Maine built her in 1901,[1] andoperated her thereafter. The Imperial German Navy merchant raider SMS Prinz Eitel Friedrich (1914) sank her in 1915. She was the first US vessel sunk in World War I.[2]
Building
Arthur Sewall & Co built William P. Frye in Bath, ME, in 1901. Her registered length was 332.4 ft, her beam was 45.5 ft, and her depth was 26.2 ft. Her tonnages were and. She had four masts. She was registered as a full-rigged ship, but photographs show her as a barque. Sewall registered her in Bath. Her US official number was 81792, and her code letters were KRGL.
Loss
The ship sailed from Seattle, Washington, on November 4, 1914, with a cargo of 189950 USbu of wheat for the United Kingdom. She was to call at Queenstown (now Cobh), Falmouth, or Plymouth,[3][4] presumably for further orders of where to take her cargo, as she had no wireless.
The UK was at war with Imperial Germany, but the United States was still neutral. On January 27, 1915, off the coast of Brazil, the German merchant raider SMS Prinz Eitel Friedrich stopped William P. Frye[2] and put a boarding party aboard her. While William P. Frye was US-owned and thus a neutral ship, her cargo was deemed contraband, because the Germans believed it was bound for Britain's armed forces. The captain of Prinz Eitel Friedrich, Max Thierichens, ordered that William P. Frye's cargo of wheat be thrown overboard. When his orders were not followed quickly enough, he took the ship's crew and passengers prisoner, and on January 28, 1915 he had her scuttled.[4] William P. Frye was the first US ship sunk in World War I.[2]
Aftermath
The crew and passengers of William P. Frye, including women and children, were among about 350 people taken prisoner from eleven different ships that Prinz Eitel Friedrich had searched and sunk. All 350 were released on March 10, 1915, when she docked in the Us port of Newport News, Virginia, due to engine trouble.[5] An outraged American government forced the Germans to apologize for the sinking.[2] The owners of the ship, Arthur Sewall & Co, sought damages for the sinking of the ship and presented a claim for $228,059.54 ($0 in ).[3]
See also
- American entry into World War I
- United States in World War I
Annotations
Bibliography
Notes
References