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AH-3 Comfort

By the advent of World War I, the role of the hospital ship had evolved significantly. No longer hovering at the fringe of battle to attend to stricken seamen after engagements, the hospital ships of that conflict were principally engaged in the transport of wounded and sick combatants from theaters of operations ashore to hospital facilities at home. In 1909, the Solace was recommissioned, and in World War I, two passenger liners were converted into the Mercy and the Comfort.

William Cramp and Sons Ship and Engine Building Company of Philadelphia constructed the first Comfort (AH-3) in 1906. It served initially as the passenger vessel Havana, before being requisitioned by the War Department at the start of World War I for use as an Army transport. On 17 July 1917, the ship was transferred to the Navy for duty as a hospital ship. Outfitted at the New York Navy Yard by John M. Robins Company of Brooklyn, the ship was renamed Comfort (AH-3) on 14 March 1918 and commissioned on 18 March. After spending much of the remainder of World War I as a floating hospital at New York, in October 1918 she began the first of three voyages to bring wounded servicemen home from Europe.

At a very early stage of the war arose the problem of how to return the sick and wounded to America. The ideal solution would have been for the Army to return its casualties in ambulance ships owned, manned, and equipped by its Medical Department and convoyed by the Navy. This was impossible, and the next measure considered was the use of the Navy hospital ship Solace, with its capacity for returning 200 casualties a month, and the use later of two other hospital ships in process of equipment able to bring back 300 sick apiece per month. The Army's estimate of a minimum of 5,000 returnable casualties per month showed these resources to be utterly inadequate even had these three vessels not been required for their original and legitimate purpose of caring for the Navy sick. Out of this situation developed the arrangement by which all Navy transports would, on the westward passage, serve to the limit of capacity for the return of Army sick and wounded, and a schedule of each ship's carrying capacity was forthwith gotten up and generally promulgated for the guidance of all concerned.

The three Navy hospital ships served primarily as trans-Atlantic transports. From 1917 to 1918, these Navy ships returned 151,649 sick and wounded Army troops, 4,395 Navy sailors and 3,626 Marines to the United States. The magnitude of the tasks imposed on the Medical Department during World War I may be appreciated by the fact that the Navy, including the protection of convoy lanes across the Atlantic, by which the American Expeditionary Force was transported to France tougher with net quantities of supplies, antisubmarine warfare, air station in England and France, naval forces with the Grand Fleet and in the Mediterranean, the maintenance of naval patrols in all oceans, and the considerable number of tactical units to serve with Marines fighting on the Western Front with the Army. A part of the task included the operation of three hospital ships, two of which were taken aver in 1917. These were the Contort and Mercy, both 10,000 ton Ward Line ships, which with the Solace did important work with the fleet and in carrying wounded and sick to the United States from the war theaters.

In June 1919 Comfort went to the Pacific and in September of that year was placed "in ordinary" at the Mare Island Navy Yard, California. Formally decommissioned in August 1921, she was sold at the beginning of April 1925. Following reconstruction in 1927-1928 she returned to commercial employment, initially as S.S. Havana and later as S.S. Yucatan and S.S. Agwileon. In 1942-1946 she was the U.S. Army Transport Agwileon and the Army Hospital Ship Shamrock and was sold for scrapping in 1948.

The first USS Comfort (AH-3) and the first USS Mercy (AH-4) joined USS Solace in the Atlantic Fleet. With a combined total of 700 beds, Comfort and Mercy brought back more than 3,000 casualties from Europe from November 1918 to March 1919. The second USS Relief was commissioned Dec. 28, 1920. She was the first U.S. Navy ship designed and built as a hospital ship.