USS ''Recruit'', also known as the Landship ''Recruit'', was a wooden mockup of a dreadnought

battleship A battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of large caliber guns. It dominated naval warfare in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The term ''battleship'' came into use in the late 1880s to describe a type of ...

constructed by the

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

in New York City, as a recruiting tool and training ship during the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. Commissioned as if it were a normal vessel of the U.S. Navy and manned by a crew of trainee sailors, ''Recruit'' was located in

Union Square Union commonly refers to: * Trade union, an organization of workers * Union (set theory), in mathematics, a fundamental operation on sets Union may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Music * Union (band), an American rock group ** ''Un ...

from 1917 until the end of the war. In 1920, with the reduced requirements for manning in the post-war Navy, ''Recruit'' was decommissioned and dismantled, having recruited 25,000 sailors into Navy service.

Description

Operating as the U.S. Navy's headquarters for recruiting in the New York City district, ''Recruit'' was a fully rigged battleship, and was operated as a commissioned ship of the U.S. Navy. Under the command of Acting Captain C. F. Pierce and with a complement of thirty-nine bluejackets from the Newport Training Station for crew, ''Recruit'' served as a training ship in addition to being a recruiting office. The Navy also offered public access and tours of the ship, allowing civilians to familiarize themselves with how a Navy warship was operated. The accommodations aboard ''Recruit'' included fore and aft examination rooms, full officer's quarters, a

wireless Wireless communication (or just wireless, when the context allows) is the transfer of information between two or more points without the use of an electrical conductor, optical fiber or other continuous guided medium for the transfer. The most ...

station, a heating and ventilation system that was capable of changing the temperature of the air inside the ship ten times within the span of an hour, and cabins for the accommodation of the sailors of its crew. Two high

cage mast Lattice masts, or cage masts, or basket masts, are a type of observation mast common on United States Navy major warships in the early 20th century. They are a type of hyperboloid structure, whose weight-saving design was invented by the Russian ...

s, a conning tower, and a single dummy smokestack matched ''Recruit''s silhouette to the layout of seagoing U.S. battleships of the time. Three twin turrets contained a total of six wooden versions of guns, providing the ship's 'main battery'. Ten wooden guns in

casemate A casemate is a fortified gun emplacement or armored structure from which artillery, guns are fired, in a fortification, warship, or armoured fighting vehicle.Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary When referring to Ancient history, antiquity, th ...

s represented the secondary anti-

torpedo-boat A torpedo boat is a relatively small and fast naval ship designed to carry torpedoes into battle. The first designs were steam-powered craft dedicated to ramming enemy ships with explosive spar torpedoes. Later evolutions launched variants of se ...

weaponry of a battleship, while two replicas of one-pounder saluting guns completed the ship's 'armament'.

Events

Following its completion and commissioning, the Landship ''Recruit'' hosted a variety of different events and receptions intended to bring civilians aboard the ship, the first of which took place on the afternoon of 8 September 1917."A Reception on Landship Recruit"
''The New York Times'', 8 September 1917. Retrieved 29 April 2010. Some events were of a patriotic nature in keeping with the wartime spirit, including the presentation and unfurling of a recreated Betsy Ross American flag,"Betsy Ross Sewing Party"
''The New York Times'' 8 March 1918. Retrieved 29 April 2010. while others were purely social events, including dances for New York's socialites.Shorpy
Shorpy.com presentation of period photograph with caption describing activities on board ship.

Fate

After spending over two years in Union Square, the Landship ''Recruit'' was decommissioned and dismantled, the Navy intending to move it to Coney Island's Luna Park, where it would be maintained as a recruiting depot following its success at its Union Square location; ''Recruit'' struck its colors on 16 March 1920; ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' reported that the "Landship" had helped the U.S. Navy recruit 25,000 men into the service"Landship Recruit sails"
''

'', 17 March 1920. Retrieved 29 April 2010.—625 times the size of her own crew, and enough to crew twenty-eight battleships. However, the cost of a move to Coney Island proved to exceed the value of the materials used in the vessel, so following its dismantling it was never reassembled, the materials being most likely reused in local projects.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Recruit Landlocked ships Training ships of the United States Navy 1917 ships Military recruitment Buildings and structures in Manhattan Union Square, Manhattan Closed installations of the United States Navy Installations of the United States Navy in New York City

Description

Events

Fate

See also

References

External links