, to , and depth of hold from to . Registered crew size went from 60 to 107 Commercial service Along with her sister ships, Bunker Hill and , Massachusetts provided overnight coastal cargo steamer service through the Cape Cod Canal and Long Island Sound between New York City, Boston, and Portland, Maine. In 1911, Massachusetts and Bunker Hill returned to the Cramp & Sons shipyard for conversion to passenger service and from coal to fuel oil in 1912 with the ship being sold to the Eastern Steamship Corporation. Financial difficulties forced Eastern Steamship Corporation into receivership in 1914, and it emerged three years later as the Eastern Steamship Lines. Service history World War I In April 1917, the Allies formulated a plan to lay minefields in the North Sea to counter German U-boat attacks on their shipping in the Atlantic. Known as the North Sea Mine Barrage, or Northern Barrage, these mines laid between Scotland and Norway would, they thought, limit German submarine access to the Atlantic from the North Sea. This plan involved the creation of a new generation of minelayers of which Massachusetts was included. On 2 November 1917, Massachusetts and Bunker Hill were purchased by the US Navy for $1,350,000 each and sent to the Boston Navy Yard for conversion to minelayers. Sister ship Old Colony was purchased for $1,150,000. Before Massachusetts completed her conversion she was renamed Shawmut after the Shawmut Peninsula on the Charles River that flows through Boston. She was the second ship in the Navy to carry the name and was commissioned as USS Massachusetts (ID 1255) on 7 December 1917, with Captain Wat T. Cluverius in command. After her extensive conversion from a passenger steamer to a minelayer, Massachusetts was renamed USS Shawmut (ID 1255) on 7 January 1918 and departed the Navy Yard at Boston on 11 June 1918. She completed her sea trials in Presidents Roads, Massachusetts before steaming to Naval Base 17 at Inverness, Scotland, where she anchored on 30 June 1918. The sea trials had revealed that she and Aroostook – the new name for Bunker Hill – consumed fuel at a higher rate than expected, raising concerns that they would be unable to make a non-stop trans-Atlantic voyage. Cluverius and Commander Roscoe Bulmer devised a plan to refuel both ships while underway with hoses from the destroyer tender . Although this technique was uncommon at the