
Ferris steamship
A world war was raging and German U-boats were sinking merchant ships faster than they could be built, so the United States government decided to build an emergency fleet of standardized ships. The goal was to build the ships quickly and cheaply to counter the submarine threat.
If the year was 1941, this might be the story of the Liberty ships. Instead, the year was 1917 during the First World War and the US Emergency Fleet Corporation (EFC) set out to contract for the construction of 703 wooden cargo steamships to supplement its slowly growing fleet of steel cargo ships. Several similar designs were ultimately built but the standard design was Theodore Ferris’ type 1001 design. They were 3 islander ships, 82.2 meters long (270′) 13.7 meters wide (45′). They had triple-expansion steam engines and were capable of cruising at 10 knots.