USS Artemis (SP-593), launched as the steam yacht Cristina then upon sale the yacht was renamed Artemis. The yacht was purchased by the United States Navy during World War I and the name was retained. Artemis was armed with guns and depth charges and sent to Europe as a patrol craft to protect Allied ships from German submarines and other dangers. The patrol yacht was renamed Arcturus in 1918. Post-war, she was returned to the United States and turned over to the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey. Later, again Artemis, the vessel was in civilian operation until burning and sinking in 1927.
Yachts Cristina Cristina was a steel-hulled steam yacht designed by naval architects Gielow and Orr and built at Wilmington, Delaware by Pusey and Jones Co. for Frederick C. Fletcher of Boston, Massachusetts.The steam yacht Cristina was preceded by a motor yacht named Cristina. That motor yacht became 18 May 1917. The yacht was launched in 1911 and completed in 1912. Cristina, with Fletcher aboard, left Wilmington for Philadelphia and Boston on 16 May 1912.
The yacht was registered with registry length of and a depth of under U.S. Official Number 209890 and signal LCJW.
Artemis In 1916 the Cleveland philanthropist John Long Severance, who had chartered Christina early in 1916, purchased the yacht and renamed her Artemis. In the brief time before the war and Navy purchase Artemis was listed at the New York Yacht Club with the same signal of LCJW.See previous reference's illustrations of private signals for the yacht's flag.
Navy World War I service
Conversion to a warship After the U.S. entered World War I in the spring of 1917, the Navy, in its wide-ranging search for ships suitable to serve as patrol craft, purchased Artemis early that summer for $181,300. Delivered on 4 July 1917, the yacht was earmarked for "distant service" 10 days later and assigned the identification number "SP-593".
The Navy's Construction and Repair Bureau information for the vessel in 1918 shows the vessel as being , 272 net tons, length overall, length between perpendiculars, beam, with a mean draft of with one funnel and two masts. Speed is , cruising with a bunker capacity of 90 tons for a cruising range of . Propulsion is shown as 2 Almay boilers providing steam to 2 triple expansion steam engines driving two propellers with 1,400 indicated horsepower. A 15-kilowatt 110-volt generator and a 7.5-kilowatt 125-volt generator supplied electrical power. There was a 0.5 kilowatt wireless installed.
On 9 October 1917, Captain Newton A. McCully assumed command of Squadron 5, Patrol Force, and, over the ensuing days, inspected the vessels tentatively assigned to his command. After visiting Artemis at Shewan's Shipyard, Brooklyn, New York, he reported her to be a "good, well-built, apparently seaworthy boat ..." and recommended that her conversion work be expedited. Accordingly, on 17 October 1917, Artemis (SP-593) was placed in commission.
Over the next week, Artemis remained at the Shewan yard, undergoing the modifications necessary to convert her from a peacetime cruising yacht to a diminutive man-of-war – such alterations as the installation of gun mounts and magazines, the fitting-out quarters for officers and men, and the overhauling of her boilers and machinery. During that time, Capt. McCully twice visited the ship (on 18 and 24 October) to check the work's progress. On 1 November, Artemis shifted to the New York Navy Yard where she received her main battery of two guns. Two days later, she stood out of New York Harbor with the French subchaser SC-S5 in tow, bound for Bermuda.
Proceeding to Europe Artemis initial mission was a part in the operation of towing ten subchasers – built in American boatyards for the French government – from New York City to Leixoes, Portugal. Each chaser was assigned to a converted yacht which would tow and maintain her. Artemis towed her charge – SC-65 – to Bermuda where she arrived on 9 November to coal ship and provision.
Artemis stood out of Grassy Bay on 18 November and, three hours out, picked up a towline from Hannibal that would pull her for over three days. The plans had called for the chasers to depart after the converted yachts had left, overhauling the latter at their best economical speed. After effecting a rendezvous, the yachts were to tow the chasers as far as the Azores. Unfortunately, bad weather interfered.
Encountering bad weather and Wenonah left the column on 21 November to search for and the French subchasers; and, the following day, Artemis cast off from Hannibal and took under tow her former charge, SC-65. A week later, after standing by as SC-65 provisioned at sea from Hannibal, she cast off the one chaser and picked up another, SC-66.
Hannibal undertook to tow a veritable train of ships and craft on 1 December, as she took Artemis in tow for the second time, the yacht towing, in turn, SC-315 and SC-65. Upon arrival off the port of Fayal, Horta, in the Azores, on 7 December, Artemis proceeded under her own power, releasing SC-315 but retaining SC-65 – the latter disabled by a defective fuel pump – and took her into Fayal.
Artemis got underway once more on the morning of the 9th with SC-65 tethered astern. Hannibal, , and also accompanied her – with the latter two each towing a subchaser, SC-315 and SC-347, respectively. These vessels, like SC-65, had been disabled by defective fuel pumps.
Arrival in the Azores After reaching Ponta Delgada, Azores, the next day, Artemis served as guardship for the harbor on 14 December and conducted target practice beyond the limit on the 17th-18th before leaving the Azores on the final leg of the voyage to Leixoes, with SC-65 astern once more.
During the passage, the ship ran into foul weather on the 21st. Artemis rolled deeply in the heavy seas; and the towline parted, leaving SC-65 to her own devices. Fortunately, repairs enabled her to resume the voyage under her own power. Two days later, Capt. McCully, the squadron commander, embarked in May and directed Artemis – battered by the storm – to put into Gibraltar for repairs, and she arrived there on 26 December 1917.
Rescuing survivors of a U-boat attack Over the next month, Artemis underwent voyage repairs before she again stood out to sea on 28 January 1918 to serve as part of the escort for a convoy then forming up for Bizerte, Tunisia. The next day at 14:50, while Artemis was steaming on the left wing of the formation, an enemy submarine torpedoed the convoy guide, SS Maizar, striking the merchantman's port side, forward of her bridge. Artemis and the other escorts immediately went to general quarters. As the hunt proceeded fruitlessly, Maizar settled forward, and her crew abandoned her. Artemis took on board 16 of the ship's survivors, and at 15:50, the convoy's screen gave up the hunt and secured from general quarters.
The convoy arrived at Bizerte on 3 February without further mishap. The following day, after coaling at Sidi Abdullah, Artemis stood out of Bizerte harbor with the Gibraltar-bound convoy, GB-12. No enemy submarines molested the Allied ships during the passage, and they all reached "Gib" safely during the predawn darkness of 9 February.
Another U-boat alarm However, for Artemis, there was no resting from her labors. Underway again for Bizerte on 14 February, the yacht saw an explosion on board SS Vidar and called all hands to stations. Still, even as she surged forward, she determined the explosion to be internal – not caused by a submarine torpedo – and stood down from battle stations. The next afternoon, another merchantman, SS Tenterton, sounded the submarine alarm, and Artemis spent almost an hour at general quarters, searching for the supposed submersible before securing it at 15:10, empty-handed. Two hours later, fired one shell, which sent Artemis to battle stations again and put her on a zig-zag course off the port quarter of the formation. When her lookouts sighted no sign of an enemy, the ship stood down again.
Artemis continued to escort convoys between Gibraltar and North Africa into mid-March: convoys BG-12 (20–24 February), GB-16 (2–6 March), and BG-17 (12–17 March) before Lt. Comdr. Hazard – relieved by 1st Lt. C. F. Howell, USCG, on 29 March – left the ship for duty in Birmingham. Artemis soon went to sea under her new commanding officer with a convoy to Bizerte (3–7 April) and commenced the return voyage with a Gibraltar-bound convoy on 8 April. However, fresh westerly breezes soon began breaking up the "good formation" enjoyed since the voyage had begun. Artemis, playing a shepherd to her straying flock, managed to prod SS North Pacific and SS Jason back in line before the yacht's engineers noted a recurrence of her chronic condenser trouble.
Ship repairs in Algiers At 20:20 on 10 April, Artemis received permission from the escort commander to leave the convoy and headed toward Algiers for repairs. At 09:52 on the 11th, her engines ceased throbbing, the steam exhausted. The tug Alger arrived on the scene shortly before noon and, together with a French tug, towed the ailing yacht into Algiers harbor. After a brief drydocking (13–17 April), the converted yacht got underway on 23 April to return to Gibraltar and arrived there on the 25th.
Continued convoy operations Five days later, she sailed to carry out a special escort mission. On 1 May, as Artemis was proceeding toward rendezvous with an American merchantman off Cartagena, Spain, she spotted two suspicious-looking submarines—escorted by a torpedo boat—operating on the surface within Spanish territorial waters. The former yacht went to general quarters. She arrived at her designated rendezvous point off Escombrera Island at 15:20 and then stood in towards the coast, carefully plotting her course so that it did not take her within the limit. Soon thereafter, the torpedo boat commenced making "an immense smoke screen" that effectively concealed the entrance into Cartagena of the strange submersibles.
About three hours later, SS Don Neal – Artemis''' assigned charge – stood out of Cartagena Harbor. The yacht took her into convoy at 18:50 and set a course for Oran, French Morocco. As Don Neal plodded along at , her escort zig-zagged watchfully on each side of the base course and made a complete circle of her consort every half-hour. Twice, the latter appeared to have been somewhat casual about "darkening ship." Fortunately, enemy submarines were not afoot, and the little convoy reached Oran safely on 2 May.
Dropping depth charges on a U-boat As before, though, the respite afforded the yacht was slight. She weighed anchor again on 3 May, bound for Gibraltar. Daybreak the following day found the ship steaming on the right wing of the formation, gun watches and lookouts posted as usual. At 07:25, Artemis sighted "what was undoubtedly the wake of a submerged submarine" and went to general quarters. Two minutes later, the convoy guide sounded the alarm by whistle and flag hoist. Then, six minutes after the initial sighting, Artemis dropped a depth charge to port over bubbles and the slick water that marked the submarine's path beneath the waves. After the resultant explosion, Artemis cautiously claimed possible destruction of the undersea craft, but postwar accounting revealed the loss of no submarine on that day.
She subsequently sighted the wreckage of a large schooner (possibly an earlier submarine victim) "evidently damaged by gunfire" lying on her beam ends. Several ships of the convoy, apparently thinking that the low shape of the wreck might be a surfaced submarine, fired at it.
Soon after the hunt, Artemis rejoined the convoy and shepherded it into Gibraltar's harbor on 5 May. The next day, the ship received on board and fitted two racks for her depth charges and nine American Mark II, mod. 1 charges to go with them.