General Stuart Heintzelman: The Ship

The Heintzelman was one of 30 C4–S–A1 vessels, troop transports built to the same plan between 1942 and 1945. These ships are known also as the General GO Squier class, after the first of them to be launched.

Heintzelman at anchor, possibly in 1945 (US Navy photo from navsource.org)

The C4–S–A1 design was created for the American-Hawaiian Lines in 1941, prior to the entry of the United States into World War II, but taken over by the United States Maritime Commission in late 1941, initially for cargo ships. All were powered by a single-screw steam turbine delivering 9,900 shaft horsepower, so capable of 17 knots. After an agreement between the US Army and Navy in March 1943 that they become Army troop transports crewed by Navy personnel, all were named after American Generals.

The final ship, the Heintzelman, was launched on 21 April 1945, acquired by the US Navy on 12 September 1945 and departed San Pedro, California, on her first voyage on 9 October 1945. She was built at the Kaiser company’s Yard 3 in Richmond, California. On 12 June 1946, the Heintzelman was transferred to US Army and fitted out to carry 3,142 troops. She was commissioned as the USAT General Stuart Heintzelman on 20 August 1946.

The C4–S–A1 ships could be crewed by 256 men. They were 159 m long by 22 m wide, with a draft of 8 m and a cruise radius of 12,000 miles (19,300 Km).

By mid-1947, there was less military demand for them, so 10 were placed at the disposal of the International Refugee Organisation (IRO). This organisation had been tasked with moving millions of displaced persons from Europe, especially West Germany, at the end of the War. They included refugees from the Soviet invasion of the Baltic States and the Communist takeover of other Eastern European governments, known as the Soviet satellite states.

The IRO passenger configuration required the women to be separated from the men. This meant that no more than 1,000 passengers were supposed to be carried on each trip to Australia and, for that matter, the United States, Canada and some South American countries. On the Heintzelman, the women were ushered into cabins designed for Army officers, four to a cabin. The men occupied the open quarters below deck which had been fitted out for the US Army’s enlisted men.

The Heintzelman made four trips altogether to carry refugees from Europe to Australia. The first, berthing in Fremantle on 28 November 1947, is the one on which this blog concentrates. She brought 822 refugees to Melbourne on 20 April 1948, 1,301 to Sydney on 24 November 1949 and 1,302 to Melbourne on 3 March 1950.

After that voyage, the IRO returned the Heintzelman to the US Navy. Crewed by civilians, she now was known as the USNS General Stuart Heintzelman or T–AP–159. She operated out of San Francisco carrying troops to the Korean Peninsula for another war there. Then she travelled via the Panama Canal to New York for transport duty in the Atlantic and Caribbean. She carried passengers to Bremerhaven, where she had berthed in 1947, to La Pallice in France, to Southampton, England, to Newfoundland in Canada, to Iceland and Puerto Rico.

In 1954, she was laid up, which is to say, she was kept ready to be reactivated quickly in an emergency. Fourteen years later, she was converted to a container ship, the Mobile, deepened nearly one metre, by the Alabama Drydock and Shipbuilding Company for the shipping company, Sea-Land Services. Sad to say, on 15 June 15 1984 she was sold to the Han Sung Salvage Co. to be scrapped, after 39 years of great service, at Incheon, Republic of Korea. 

Sources:

Cooke, Anthony, 1992. Emigrant Ships: The vessels which carried migrants across the world, 1946-1972. Carmania Press, London, p 91.

Dictionary of American Fighting Ships, ‘General Stuart Heintzelman’, http://www.hazegray.org/danfs/auxil/ap159.htm, accessed 6 May 2000. 

Charles, Roland W, 1947. Troopships of World War II, Army Transportation Association, Washington, DC, p 115. 

Naval Cover Museum, ‘General Stuart Heintzelman AP 159’, https://www.navalcovermuseum.org/wiki/GENERAL_STUART_HEINTZELMAN_AP_159, accessed 29 September 2021. 

Plowman, Peter, Emigrant Ships to Luxury Liners, NSW Press, Sydney, 1992, pp 36-37. 

Priolo, Gary P, 'USNS General Stuart Heintzelman (T–AP–159) ex USAT General Stuart Heintzelman (1946-1950), USS General Stuart Heintzelman (AP–159) (1945-1946)', http://www.navsource.org/archives/09/22/22159.htm, accessed 29 September 2021. 

Sawyer, LA and WH Mitchell, 1981. From America to United States, Part 2. World Ship Society, Kendal, England, 1981, p 72. ‘United States Maritime Commission C4 Type Ships’, http://www.usmm.org/c4ships.html, accessed 31 July 1999. 

Videoinside.org, ‘USS General Stuart Heintzelman (AP–159)’, http://videoinside.org/show/USS_General_Stuart_Heintzelman_(AP-159), accessed 14 September 2008. 

Wikipedia, ‘USS General Stuart Heintzelman (AP-159)’, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_General_Stuart_Heintzelman_(AP-159), accessed 29 September 2021.

USAT General Stuart Heintzelman: The Route to Australia

As the Heintzelman neared the Australian coast, a Souvenir Edition of the 1st Sailing to Australia was published on board.  It appeared on 26 November, edited by a team of Reinhold Valter Põder (Estonian), Emils Dēlinš (Latvian) and Romuldas Mazillauskas (Lithuanian).  They must have had typists and artists among the passengers to help them.  

They had the use of the ships roneoing equipment and supplies.  A roneod newsletter was issued for each day of the voyage, but only a few individual copies survive.  Clearly, those who ran the ship had learned already what was necessary to keep their previous US Army passengers occupied and entertained.  Below is the front cover of the Souvenir Edition.

For those of you not old enough to remember, roneoing involved typing or drawing first on a stencil with a wax-coated surface.  The typing was not clear unless the typeface had been cleaned first.  It was hard for the artist to see if their artwork was creating clean lines.  No wonder photocopying took over from roneo stencils in the 1970s!

Fortunately for our interpretation of some places on the map above, there is a list of dates and places elsewhere in the Souvenir Edition.  It advises that:

The Colombo stop was needed to allow the ship to refuel while taking on fresh water and provisions.  It also provided the passengers a few hours ashore in an exotic location.

The 11 pm crossing of the Equator explains why there are no photos in albums of the usual visit of King Neptune and associated rituals.

The Souvenir Edition contains summaries in English of the histories of the three Baltic States, which a foreword confirms are for the benefit of the Heintzelman's crew.  There's other information of continuing interest to descendants of the passengers on this 'First Sailing', such as lists of the senior crew and profiles of their leaders.  An anonymous contributor has written an essay about shipboard life.  These will be added to this blog.

My copy of the Souvenir Edition comes from the archive of its Estonian editor, Reinhold Valter Põder.  This is held by the Estonian Archives in Australia and I thank the Archives for granting access.