Ninety-one vessels flying the German flag were in American harbors. Their displacement totalled nearly six hundred thousand tons--the equivalent of a fleet of seventy-five of the cargo carriers on which the United States later began construction to offset the submarine. Months in advance of the severance of diplomatic relations, orders had been issued from the Embassy to the masters of all these vessels in case of war between Germany and the United States to cripple the ships. With the break in relations imminent, German agents slipped aboard the vessels and gave the word: the great majority of the ninety-one ships were then put out of commission by the 368 officers and 826 men aboard. The damage was performed with crowbars and axes. Vital parts had been chalk-marked weeks in advance, so that the destruction might be effected swiftly: delicate mechanisms were mashed beyond recognition, important parts removed and smuggled ashore or dropped overboard, cylinders cracked, emery dust introduced in the bearings of the engines, pistons battered out of shape, and the machinery of the ships generally destroyed as only skilled engineers could have destroyed them. Out of thirty ships in New York harbor, thirty ships were damaged--among them the liners, _Vaterland_, of 54,000 tons, the _George Washington_, of 25,000 tons, the _Kaiser Wilhelm_, the _President Lincoln_, and the _President Grant_, of about 20,000 tons each. In the harbor of Charleston, S. C., lay the _Liebenfels_, of 4,525 tons; her crew, led by Captain Johann Klattenhoff, scuttled her on February 1, in the navigating channel of Charleston Harbor; Klattenhoff, with Paul Wierse, a Charleston newspaper man, and eight of the _Liebenfels'_ crew were tried and convicted of the crime, fined and sentenced to periods averaging a year in Atlanta. The discovery of the damage forced the Government to take over the vessels at once. The Department of Justice hastened on February 2 to notify all of its deputies "to take prompt measures against the attempt at destruction or sinking or escape of such ships by their crews" which those crews had already done; and the customs authorities who boarded the ships in San Francisco, Honolulu, New York, Boston, Manila, and every other American port came ashore with rueful countenances. The combined damage served to tie the vessels up for at least six months more, and to require expensive repair. To return to the comparison: a fleet of seventy-five 8,000 ton cargo vessels, such as have since been built, would have been able to make, during those six months, at least four round trips to France each, or 300 voyages.