Peder and Lincoln

1. The Lincoln

May, 1918. Brest, France.

The USS President Lincoln, once a luxury ocean liner, now sails as a U.S. military transport—refitted for war. She had departed Hoboken, New Jersey, on May 11^th, and made port in Brest twelve days later, bringing 14,000 troops and materiel to the front.

Now, on the evening of May 29^th, she turns westward again—bound for home. Aboard are 715 souls: crewmen, wounded soldiers, medical staff, and troops rotating out.

After thirty-six hours of steady zigzagging through the open sea, and two nights under muted gibbous moonlight, the ship slides into a gray and windless morning. The destroyer escort has turned back; very few U-boats hunt this far from shore or the major shipping lanes.
Still, the war — and the danger — is far from over.

2. Morsø: The Fertile Island
   

   Lovely fertile Morsø

Morsø sits in Denmark’s Limfjord—a brackish waterway threading through the Jutland Peninsula. Its rich soil, shaped by glacial deposits and tidal flows, made the island ideal for farming. Long summer days of extended sunlight brought forth fruitful fields of crops like wheat and barley. The blend of mild coastal climate, ample rain, and mineral-rich earth created a landscape where generations of families could make a living.

3. Peder Miltersen

It was in Karby, Thisted County, along the southwest coast of Morsø Island, that the first Peder Andreas was born to Poul and Kirsten (Pedersen) Miltersen on November 6, 1892. A sickly child, he didn’t survive the winter, passing away on March 2, 1893.

When Poul and Kirsten’s next child was born—also a son—they gave him the same name: Peder Andreas Miltersen. This practice was common at the time, perhaps a salve to ease their grief.

The second Peder was raised in this fertile agricultural region and came of age among its fields. At sixteen, he was sent about forty miles away to Hvidbjerg Å, off Morsø Island, to live with the Klausens—Kresten and Mariane, about ten years older than his parents. There he worked on their similarly blessed farm (he’s listed as Landbruger: farmer). The 1911 Danish census lists another much older farm laborer at that address as well (Fodmaster – feeds the animals)..

4. The sea craft

DS President Lincoln

The President Lincoln was laid down in 1903 at Harland & Wolff in Belfast, Northern Ireland. This was the same famous shipyard that later built the Titanic and her sister ships, Olympic and Britannic—all destined for fates marked by tragedy. While the Olympic sailed many successful years, the Titanic and Britannic were lost to the sea, reminders of the thin line between luxury and peril.

Launched on July 27, 1904, the Lincoln was built for the Hamburg-Amerikanische Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft (HAPAG), commonly known as the Hamburg America Line. Named to appeal to U.S. passengers, she was among the largest German liners of her time—capable of carrying over 2,800 people, with luxury suites for the elite and steerage bunks for immigrants yearning to breathe free. She sailed the Hamburg–New York route, offering elegant and dependable service across the Atlantic—until war re-directed her mission … and destiny.

U-Boats
Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany built some 380 U-boats during World War I. Many were constructed at the naval shipyard in Danzig (now Gdańsk), though the docks in Kiel were the most prolific builders.

The U-90 of the Imperial German Navy was built in Danzig, at the Kaiserliche Werft. She was commissioned and entered service on January 12, 1917—a hunter is born.

Though worlds apart in design and purpose, the Kronprinzessin Cecilie and the U-90 shared a birthplace in the shrilling shipyards of Imperial Germany. One was built to ferry passengers—the wealthy in luxury, the hopeful poor in steerage—across the Atlantic. The other, sculpted in steel for stealth, would stalk the seas. Soon, their stories would become one.

5. Peder Miltersen – Emigration.

   In March 1912, just shy of his eighteenth birthday, Peder Miltersen left the fertile Danish farmlands. A ferry to England and a train to Liverpool brought him to the RMS Baltic. This grand White Star liner offered accommodations from steerage to first class, carrying thousands of hopeful immigrants across the Atlantic—men and women chasing new chances and fresh starts. Peder, of course, sailed in steerage, surrounded by a crowded mix of rural workers, dreamers, and families.

He arrived in April, stepping onto American soil with little English and heavy boots—but with Scandinavian determination as solid as the Danish soil he left behind. Like many Scandinavians before him, Peder headed north—to Minnesota, where the land was rich, the summers long, and a familiar northern climate awaited.

Here, among fellow Norse descendants and new settlers, he would begin the work of setting down new roots—learning the language, tending the soil, and forging his fortune.

6. The Great War

Within six weeks of Gavrilo Princip’s second chance encounter with Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his young wife Sophia of Hohenberg in Sarajevo on June 24, 1914, the unimaginably bloody Great War broke out.

The U.S. stayed out of the conflict at first, but the Zimmerman cable was too much — the nation was pushed over the edge. In April 1917, the U.S. declared war. Everything changed. Ships once bound for luxury travel were seized and repurposed for battle. The DS President Lincoln, docked in Bar Harbor, Maine, at the war’s outbreak, was impounded by the U.S. When war was declared nearly three years later, she was seized by the U.S. Navy and renamed the USS President Lincoln. Refitted to carry troops instead of travelers, she was transformed from opulence to obligation. From beauty to battle.

That summer the refitted President Lincoln began ferrying thousands of American doughboys across the wide, wind and wave-swept Atlantic.

Peder Miltersen answered the call quickly. In April 1917, he registered for the draft. The wait frustrated him. In June, he enlisted — eager to serve and hasten his path to citizenship.

In the late summer of ’17 the USS President Lincoln began ferrying thousands of American dough-boys across the wide wave-swept Atlantic.

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Accepted, Peder was off to training by mid-summer 1917. Embarking from Duluth, he was sent to Fort Sheridan, along Lake Michigan just north of Chicago. After completing training in early ’18, he was sent east to the military port in Hoboken, New Jersey. Bound for Europe and off to war, his Atlantic crossing was aboard the transport ship USS President Lincoln — once a symbol of peaceful  passage — now carrying him to  battle.

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7. The U-boat

Service aboard an Imperial U-boat in World War I was anything but pleasant. Thirty-five seamen and five officers crammed into a tight tube — outside dimensions just 200 feet long and 20 feet wide. Inside it was smaller, and much of that space was taken up by fuel tanks, twin diesel engines, and torpedo tubes. There was no personal space. One toilet. It often overflowed. The food sucked. The din was constant and numbing. Lights were dim. Mildew clung to everything. The air reeked of oil, sweat, and … something worse.

The U-90, under the command of Walter Remy, was known for bold, calculated strikes. “U” stood for untersee, or undersea, but that was a bit of a misnomer. Submarines of the time had to spend 90 to 95 percent of their time on the surface—burning diesel, charging their batteries, and refreshing their air supply. Only when prey was sighted—or suspected—did they dive.

Then came the wait. Submerged, running on low-capacity batteries, they lurked at periscope depth, edging toward their target at 5 knots. The sweet spot: about one kilometer. Close enough for a torpedo to hit, far enough to avoid a collision.

By the spring of 1918, with waves of American troops crossing the Atlantic, U-90 began prowling farther—and wider.

8. The encounter

600 miles west of Brest, France, in the brightening skies of a North Atlantic morning, Remy’s officers spied a large ship. Headed west. Unescorted.

Submerge.

Periscope up.

Now on battery power, the U-90 crept forward at just five knots. Slow. Quiet. Careful.

It was big.

Really big.

A juicy target.

Speed and direction determined. Line up the sub’s axis with the computed trajectory based on target speed and charted sea currents.

Torpedoes launched.  60 seconds to impact. They followed their path, initially along the U-90’s axis, speeding toward the portside of the President Lincoln at 40 miles per hour. The path was coldly and precisely calculated, accounting for Lincoln’s velocity and charted currents. The first two torpedoes struck broadside at 9 AM. A minute later… a third direct hit.

The doomed Lincoln immediately began listing. Thirty minutes later, the President Lincoln sank stern-first into the cold Atlantic.

Of the 715 men aboard, 25 were killed in the explosions or lost below decks. One more—a Navy lieutenant named Edouard Izac—was taken aboard the U-90 as a prisoner. The rest, over 680 men, drifted in lifeboats or clung to wreckage until American destroyers reached them the following morning. The sea had spared most of them.

And Peder Andreas Miltersen had barely escaped tragedy as well.

The war at sea took a staggering, mind-numbing toll. Even before the U.S. entered the conflict, it had seized nearly a hundred German vessels in its harbors—among them other luxury liners like the Lincoln and the Kronprinzessin Cecilie, soon refitted as the troop carrier USS Mount Vernon.

But Germany’s undersea fleet struck far harder. By war’s end, U-boats had sunk more than 5,000 vessels—over 13 million gross tons—threatening to choke off Allied supply lines entirely, and causing the loss of 15,000 troops.

Over the war Remy and the U-90 tallied 30 vessels sunk—74,000 gross tons—in only seven patrols. The Lincoln was their greatest score.

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9. Epilogue

Peder Miltersen went on to fight in the muddy hills, vales and trenches of Flanders. Serving with Battery D of the 17th Field Artillery, 2nd Division, he survived artillery, disease, gas, and the grim, grinding arithmetic of ground war. He fought in the battles of Aisne, Aisne-Marne, St. Mihiel, Meuse-Argonne and general defense. He earned corporal’s stripes, for bravery and valor: a Gold Star, the French Croix de Guerre and the French Medal of Honor with five battle stars.

After the Armistice of November 1918, demobilization was chaotic. He wasn’t discharged until August of 1919. The war itself did not technically end until the Treaty of Paris in 1921, which imposed such punishing terms on Germany in about a decade it seemed that a second world war was not just, but likely.

Peder returned to Minnesota, settling in Pine County near the village of Askov. Then its population was a mere 250: rural, tight-knit, and wholly agricultural. Even today it hosts only about 330 souls, nearly a fifth still of Danish or Scandinavian descent.

Upon returning home he went directly to his girlfriend, Martha Marie Johnsen, another immigrant from Denmark. And proposed. In June of 1920 they were wed. They raised four children—Hazel Jeanette (b. 1921), Violet Mariem (b. 1924), Norma Jean (b 1926) and Darwin Poul. Peder was active locally, serving for years on the Partridge Township  Board (which lies in Pine County and contains Askov). They otherwise tended to a quiet, dignified and steady life. ^[1]

Peder lived and died as he began: among farms in fertile fields, keeping alive the memory of his native Denmark. He lived to be 86 and is buried in Bethlehem Lutheran Cemetery, in Askov, MN.

Joe Girard © 2025

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Footnotes:

[1] A birth announcement for a baby girl born to Mr and Mrs Peder Miltersen appears in the Askov American, April 7, 1921.
Apparently they lost a daughter in infancy, not shown in ancestral records.  Askov American, November 22, 1923.  “Mr and Mrs Peter(sic) Miltersen mourn the loss of their infant baby who was laid to rest in the local cemetery Sunday afternoon.”  And: “Mr and Mrs Johnso of Starbuck came here to attend the funeral of their grandchild, the infant daughter of Mr and Mrs Peder Milterson.” The child was born on November 15. It also reported that the child was “very ill.”

Other Notes

• The “U” in U-boat stands for Untersee, the German word for “undersea.” To German speakers, Boot simply means “boat” (not “boot” as in footwear). So U-Boot translates literally as “undersea boat,” referring to what English speakers call a submarine. Der See (masculine) is a lake; Die See (feminine) is the sea or ocean. (“oo” just like the “oa” in boat.)
  A German steam ship is a Dampfschiff – hence the DS, which Germans would use. It was marketed to Americans as a steam ship, so literature on the west side of the Atlantic would call it the SS President Lincoln.
• This story is probably partly fiction. Sitting in a brew pub several weeks ago a fellow named Darrel (or Daren) about my age was sitting next to me. We talked of many things and ended up on history.  I shared my interest in learning and writing about interesting but mostly forgotten people and historic details.  He then told me the “story” of his grandfather’s brother (Great Uncle).  His name?  Peder Miltersen.
  According to him Peder emigrated to the US on the SS Baltic.  He settled in Minnesota and enlisted in the Army for WW2 earning the French Medal of Honor (perhaps also inducted into the Légion d’honneur). So far so good.  Many Americans who submitted paperwork were eligible for this.
  The tap room story fails when he said that Peder also went over to Europe on the same ship, the Baltic, which was torpedoed and sunk on its return trip to the US.  That is false.  The Baltic was once attacked by a sub – carrying the first wave of US soldiers to Europe, along with General John “Black Jack” Pershing – Commander of the American Expeditionary Forces  It was not struck by the torpedoes.
  So I “invented” Peder going over there on the Lincoln. As it was indeed torpedoed and sunk, as described here, on its final return trip.
  I also “synthesized” his emigration journey.  The dates are correct, but I could only make an educated guess as to how he travelled to Liverpool.  He indeed was registered on the Baltic’s voyage to New York. I don’t know if he actually went directly to Minnesota.
  Everything else is factual.  It’s feasible that he was on the Lincoln, as his arrival in France was in mid-May, 1918 and the third battle of Aisne was May 27 – June 6 — although it would be quite a train ride to get there from the wonderful natural harbor at Brest.
  I didn’t find any record of him even returning to Morso, or Denmark for the rest of his life. No manifest. One would think at least once or twice, say, to attend a parent’s funeral. His father was born in Morso in 1861, and confirmed there in 1876. His father was Milter Andersen, so Peder became a Miltersen.

 

https://uk.forceswarrecords.com/memorial/626755423/peder-miltersen-1894

https://uk.forceswarrecords.com/image/420194065/article2jpg

https://uk.forceswarrecords.com/image/420194440/marie-petejpg

1911 Census