So a new forum member wrote about his father's service on USS Rapidan. So many of the members here had fathers who served on Axiliaries because there were a lot of those and they were on the front lines.
Rapidan is one I have little to relay, A 1919 ship that was recommissioned several times. She was a Patoka class a very large shio at 15,000 tons.years before all seven were taken into the navy. The last to be delivered, the Tippecanoe, was not officially transferred to the navy until 1922. No longer needed for active service, she was laid up "in ordinary" where she remained until 1940 when the threat of war and the urgent need for more oilers led the navy to place her in service for the first time, twenty years after being laid down!
Postwar Acquisitions
Not all the tankers assigned to NOTS were as lucky as the George G. Henry. In May, one of the largest ships in the NOTS fleet, the 15,000-ton oil tanker William D. Rockefeller, was torpedoed and sunk. Owned by the Standard Oil Company, she had been taken into the navy on 8 October 1917 and was one of the first vessels given over to the new command.
When contracts were issued in the early fall of 1918 for the twelve new tankers ordered by the U.S. Shipping Board for the U.S. Navy, it still looked as if the war would continue for another year. Orders for eight of the ships were placed with Newport News, although fabrication did not begin until mid-December 1918 when the keel for the first vessel, hull number 248, was laid.14 Despite the heavy volume of other work in the yard, Patoka, the lead ship, was launched on 26 July 1919. Displacing 16,500 tons on an overall length of 477 feet, she was typical of the commercial tankers then being built in the United States. Like the majority of these ships, the Patoka was a single-screw vessel powered by a reciprocating steam engine of the quadruple expansion type. Rated at 2,900 s.h.p., this machinery enabled the ship to cruise at 10.5 knots, a respectable speed for a commercial vessel of her day, but significantly less than that of the Kanawha-class oilers built and building (three more were under construction at the Boston Navy Yard).15 After completion and trials, the Patoka was delivered to the shipping board on 3 September and transferred to the navy the very same day. She was commissioned in October and immediately placed into service with NOTS.
Within the year, seven more Patoka-class tankers were launched at the Newport News yard (see appendix B), though it would be many
years before all seven were taken into the navy. The last to be delivered, the Tippecanoe, was not officially transferred to the navy until 1922. No longer needed for active service, she was laid up "in ordinary" where she remained until 1940 when the threat of war and the urgent need for more oilers led the navy to place her in service for the first time, twenty years after being laid down!.