In 2007 the U.S. Naval Historical Center added a new feature to its Online Library of Selected Images, a page with links to images of all of the transport ships that were in temporary or permanent Naval service while the U.S. was a participant in World War I (1917-1919). The links to the images were arranged according to the configuration of the ships, the first group being ships with four smokestacks, the second those with three, etc. The page and its links were thus designed to allow the identification of any photograph of a Navy World War I transport in which certain basic recognition features were discernable. The following link will take you to the Online Library's World War I transport page, although response times may be slow:
World War I Era Transports
The Naval Historical Center intends to extend this feature to cover the other main categories of World War I auxiliaries, and Shipscribe has prepared first drafts of pages on these categories for the Center to use. Currently, however, technical and other problems have delayed their appearance on the Online Library. This Appendix provides links to stripped down versions of the pages for the five main types of auxiliaries in use in World War I. These pages have been modified by the deletion of links to Online Library features not on the Shipscribe web site. (Some such links remain and will not work.) The current plan is to remove these pages from the Shipscribe site when the Online Library is able to add the new content. In the meantime, the user can get here an idea of the wealth of material on World War I ships that has recently become available on the Online Library and can also use this material for ship recognition purposes.
This reference does not include all auxiliary vessels that were in the Navy in 1917-19. Certain types that were used only in the regular Navy (Fleet Train) and not in the Naval Overseas Transportation Service or the Cruiser and Transport force, primarily repair ships and tenders, are not covered. The small number of auxiliaries that joined the Navy between late 1919 and 1922 are also not included.
The transport pages and all of the photographs were copied from the Online Library, the contents of which are in the Public Domain. Nevertheless, they are used here with the encouragement of the Naval Historical Center, whom I sincerely thank.