Excellent attention to detail has brought forth a superb rendering of the armed American merchant marine freighter S.S. PLEIADES in wartime grey departing Le Havre during World War I.

The painting shows the Steamship PLEIADES steaming out of the French port of Le Havre. Within a year of this painting's 1917 date the ship would be commissioned as the US Naval Ship USS PLEIADES. The ship was built in 1900 by the Maryland Steel Company our of Sparrows Point, Maryland and as depicted in the painting she was an armed merchant freighter of 3753 gross tons.

Civilian ships were already a significant part of the war effort for combatant nations when this was painted. Many were commissioned by the navies of their respective countries and often refitted and repainted- some with the dizzying patterns of dazzle camouflage to obscure their more luxurious or utilitarian origins. PLEAIDES here is decked out in classic battleship gray.

When thinking about civilian losses in WWI we remember the sinking of civilian passenger liners like the LUSITANIA and the BRITTANIC but so many more ships both passenger and merchant met their end trying to cross the Atlantic during the war. In just April of 1917 ships totaling 1,250,000 deadweight tons were sunk in all. Britain estimated they lost one in four ships attempting the crossing in the same year.

This meant that even before the US got involved in the war there were problems moving cargo in and out of ports along the entire Eastern Seaboard. Resultant food shortages were part of what swayed public opinion in the US to support a declaration of war against Germany. Also there was an increasing loss of American lives at sea due to Germany's newly adopted ... Read More