The Daily Alaska Empire

NEW YORK. Feb. 4. - Storm-tossed and tired, but radiant with anticipation, the first group of "British brides" - English women who married American soldiers during the war - reached New York today on the Army transport Argentina, after a nine-day nightmare voyage across the North Atlantic.

A total of 451 women and 175 children were aboard the ship which docked shortly before 7 a.m.

The wives ranged in age from Mrs. Ben F. Butler, 16, to Mrs. Harold N. Cooper, 44.

With her 13-months-old daughter, Mrs. Butler is enroute to Roanoke Rapids, N. C. Mrs. Cooper and her daughter, 17, by a previous marriage, and son, 15 months by the present one, is rejoining her husband in Manhattan Beach, Calif.

Thirty of the women are expectant mothers.

Three literally risked their lives to make the voyage. They were in advanced stages of pregnancy, and when the Argentina encountered the first of several record-breaking storms, they were confined to the ship's hospital under constant observation by Army doctors and nurses.

"First Bride's Ship"
The brides came from England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Malta. They were destined for homes in 44 different states.

It was the first "brides' ship" in more than 200 years to bring British girls to American husbands. Not since the days when sailing ships brought wives to the American colonists on the shores of New England has there been such a voyage.

It was a strange, pathetic and even a terrible voyage.

As the Argentina slipped past the docks in Southampton, the women, lined on the decks, began singing "There'll Always Be An England." Tears streamed down their cheeks.

That was Saturday, Jan. 26.

Get Seasick
On Sunday morning, as the ship passed land's end and headed northward into the open Atlantic, she began to roll in a long ground-swell. Before noon, four-fifths of the women were violently seasick.

They collapsed on the decks, fell in the passageways, and sat on the staircases, with faces averted, limp and miserable.

Doctors, nurses, WACs, Red Cross personnel and the ship's crew worked frantically to get them to their cabins. Children were abandoned in the cabins, or left alone, screaming, by mothers who were too weak and sick to reach them.

A little boy, climbing on the deck-rail, almost fell overboard before the horrified eyes of his mother who struggled, half-crawling, across the pitching deck toward him.

Emergency Inspection
Crewmen worked throughout the afternoon, swabbing the decks and corridors. By nightfall, the ship was so dirty that Army doctors, Capt. L. E. Reynolds, of Denver, Colo., and Capt. Peter Bisconti, of Sea-ford, N. Y., were worried about an outbreak of disease. Through Lt. Col. Floyd Lyle, Transport Commander, they announced an emergency inspection of the entire ship.

The doctors attributed the high incidence of seasickness to nervous strain, reaction to the emotions of fear, apprehension and high excitement that beset women who were leaving their homes to go to a new and unfamiliar country.