turbines. Her piston engines ran at 115 RPM and her turbines (when in use) ran at 350 RPM. Nine boilers supplied steam at 200 lbf/in2 to her piston engines. Chantiers de l'Atlantique designed Rochambeau to achieve a speed of . Rochambeau was designed with berths for 420 first & second class passengers and 1,450 steerage class. Rochambeau left Le Havre on her maiden voyage to New York on either 30 August or 16 September 1911. CGT was satisfied with its choice of four screws instead of three. On CGT's advice, Swan, Hunter and Wigham Richardson adopted the same arrangement when it built the liner for Compañía Transatlántica Española in 1912–13. Experience with Rochambeau also influenced the design of CGT's launched in 1913 and Lafayette launched in 1914. By 1914 Rochambeau was equipped for wireless telegraphy. She operated on the standard 300 and 600 metre wavelengths. Her call sign was FTR. First World War After the outbreak of the First World War the US Ambassador in Paris, Myron T. Herrick, chartered Rochambeau and another CGT liner, , to repatriate US citizens from Europe. Rochambeau was booked to leave Le Havre on 28 August 1914 carrying 1,200 US citizens. When Herrick retired as US Ambassador in November 1914, he too returned to New York on Rochambeau. CGT kept Rochambeau on the same route until March 1915, despite the extra pressure on Le Havre as a port supplying the British Expeditionary Force and the danger from German Navy U-boats operating in the English Channel. CGT transferred Rochambeaus sailings to Bordeaux in April 1915. In the war the Entente Allies defensively armed their merchant ships, generally with a single naval gun on the stern. The USA was neutral until April 1917, but from September 1914 its Department of State allowed an armed merchant ship of a belligerent country to use US ports on condition that she was armed with no more than two guns, they were not more than calibre, no guns were mounted on the forward part of the ship, her cargo excluded war materiél, and her passengers as a whole were not suitable for military service. On 8 November 1915 en route from New York to Bordeaux a fire broke out aboard Rochambeau. Her officers held an investigation but failed to determine the cause. In February 1916, 11 people in Bordeaux were convicted of either stealing valuables from CGT passengers' luggage or