Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, a great organization had been created under the able direction of Rear-Admiral Albert Gleaves for maintaining and administering the fleet of transports and their ocean escorts. Also, as soon as war was declared the work was begun of converting into transports those German merchant ships which had been interned in American ports. The successful completion of this work was, in itself, a great triumph for the American navy. Of the vessels which the Germans had left in our hands, seventeen at New York, Boston, Norfolk, and Philadelphia, seemed to be adapted for transport purposes, but the Germans had not intended that we should make any such use of them. The condition of these ships, after their German custodians had left, was something indescribable; they reflected great discredit upon German seamanship, for it would have been impossible for any people which really loved ships to permit them to deteriorate as had these vessels and to become such cesspools of filth. For three years the Germans had evidently made no attempt to clean them; the sanitary conditions were so bad that our workmen could not sleep on board, but had to have sleeping quarters near the docks; they spent weeks scrubbing, scraping, and disinfecting, in a finally successful effort to make the ships suitable habitations for human beings. Not only had the Germans permitted such liners as the _Vaterland_ and the _Kronprinzessin Cecilie_ to go neglected, but, on their departure, they had attempted to injure them in all conceivable ways. The cylinders had been broken, engines had been smashed, vital parts of the machinery had been removed and thrown into the sea, ground glass had been placed in the oil cups, gunpowder had been placed in the coal--evidently in the hope of causing explosions when the vessels were at sea--and other damage of a more subtle nature had been done, it evidently being the expectation that the ships would break down when on the ocean and beyond the possibility of repair. Although our navy yards had no copies of the plans of these vessels or their machinery--the Germans having destroyed them all--and although the missing parts were of peculiarly German design, they succeeded, in an incredibly short time, in making them even better and speedier vessels than they had ever been before.