MAINE MARITIME MUSEUM 243 Washington Street • Bath, Maine • 207-443-1316 www.MaineMaritimeMuseum.org Courtesy of Naval History and Heritage Command Pull Together: Maritime Maine in the 1914-1918 Great War On view: October 7, 2017 through May 6, 2018 O c t o b e r 2 0 1 7 4 7 cialite shipping heiress Andrea “Bubbles” Luckenbach. The heiress sent Vanda to a Tampa shipyard to be converted into a “ba- nana boat,” the first in a fleet of refrigerated vessels for her shipping company, the An- des Line, that would work the fruit trade be- tween Central America and Florida. But like most things in Miss Luckenbach’s life, from her tumultuous relationship with her father to her marriages (including being shot four times by her former husband, Frederick Hammer), the proposed steamship compa- ny was off to a rocky start. Before the Vanda could touch the water, the Andes Line was being sued, and Miss Luckenbach counter- sued. The fleet of “banana boats” never ma- terialized, and no record remains of when or where the Vanda was scrapped. Hiram Edward Manville’s Hi-Es- maro was purchased by the Na- vy in June 1940 and convert- ed into a coastal minelayer named the USS Niagara. Out at sea while the Japanese at- tacked Pearl Harbor, she served in the Pa- cific and became the Navy’s first motor- topped boat tender. The ship once called “the most beautiful yacht in the world” was attacked by Japanese Kamikaze in deep wa- ters of New Guinea. None of her 136 crew was killed or seriously injured, but the Hi- Esmaro was lost forever. The Caroline transformed into a mo- tor torpedo boat tender responsible for pro- viding logistics to torpedo boats in remote areas of the Pacific. Named the USS Hi- lo, the one-time luxury yacht saw a good (Continued on page 76) Hi-Esmaro was Bath IronWorks’s second commission.She was dubbed “the most beautiful boat on the seas.”