Max Bayer

Cruise ships returning to port with passengers sickened by a “stomach bug” seem to be a frequent occurrence. The pandemic of 2020 had a devastating impact on the cruise industry and deadly consequences around the world, but it was even worse during the 1918 pandemic.

Now imagine being in a war, on a crowded troop ship in the North Atlantic past the point of no return, hunted by German submarines, with more than a thousand fellow passengers and crew members stricken with a contagious virus that some were calling “the purple death.”

That’s what Navy Lieutenant Max Bayer survived during one of his nearly three dozen trans-Atlantic trips during World War I. Serving in the Navy was his life’s work since he first enlisted in 1902.

There’s no record of anyone coming with him when he arrived in New York for the first time in 1896. He was 18 when he left his home in Austria, and he was living by himself at the Brooklyn YMCA when he applied for citizenship in 1906. He was one of those who appears to have “slipped through the cracks” of a documented life, not being found in either the 1900 and 1910 census.

His role while on active duty at the New York Navy Yard for the first 11 years wasn’t identified in his records. But he was called a machinist beginning in 1913 and from there he joined the USS Oklahoma in 1916. The real adventure began when he boarded the newly commissioned USS America a year later.

The original name for that ship was the Amerika, a 1905 passenger liner owned by the Hamburg American Line of Germany. It sat in Boston from 1914-1917 when it was seized and transferred to the U.S. Navy to be used for transporting troops. Max was an ensign while on the maiden voyage to Brest, France, then became a junior grade lieutenant six months later and was promoted to Lieutenant on September 21, 1918. 

What his specific job duties were are unknown, but each of the 940 crew members had an important job of ensuring the safe passage of 5000 or more soldiers. Armed with six-inch guns and escorted by destroyers, they successfully completed each of their missions, but the ninth voyage was the most dangerous.

It began the day before Max’s promotion. During the ten-day trip, the virus spread rapidly among the close quarters as the ship pressed on to France. While at sea, 997 soldiers and 56 crew members came down with influenza. The miraculous efforts of the ship’s doctors, troop medical units, and the crew managed to limit the death toll to 53 soldiers and two crew members.

Bringing the troops back in 1919 meant the ship made eight round trips between February and September so almost 47,000 Americans could return home. Max completed his last trip on May 2, but continued to be employed at the Philadelphia Navy Yard after his commission expired in 1921.

At some point he was married. The 1920 census shows him with a wife, living at 1521 Erie Avenue in the Nicetown section of Philadelphia. Max was 41 and Francis was 27, a native of Virginia.

Whether he was counted in the 1930 census is unknown, but his 1934 application for veterans compensation for the war says he retired in 1932, was widowed, and living in Collingswood, New Jersey. From that residence he died in 1937 from diabetes. The only known relative was a brother named John who was living in New York and applied for the military headstone on his grave.