Mutiny of the Matoika is the common name for the events in July 1920 involving a large portion of the 1920 United States Olympic team while on board the U.S. Army transport ship , headed to Antwerp for the 1920 Summer Olympics. Princess Matoika was a last-minute substitute for another ship and, according to the athletes, did not have adequate accommodations or training facilities on board. Near the end of the voyage, the athletes published a list of grievances and demands and distributed copies of the document to the United States Secretary of War, the American Olympic Committee (AOC) members, and the press. The incident received wide coverage in American newspapers at the time and was still being discussed in the popular press years later. The event was not an actual mutiny, but has been called that since the mid-1930s.
The conditions on the Princess Matoika were terrible, as the hold reeked of formaldehyde from the dead bodies of the recently deceased American World War I soldiers, and there was no place to train. Furthermore, the athletes were dissatisfied with the quality of food and huge numbers of rats present on the ship. Near the end of the voyage, the athletes published a list of grievances and demands and distributed copies of the document to the United States Secretary of War, the American Olympic Committee members, and the press. Among these were the demands for better accommodations in Antwerp, cabin passage home, and railroad fare from New York to their home cities. The incident received wide coverage in American newspapers at the time.
Background
In 1920, the number of ocean liners carrying passengers on the North Atlantic gradually increased, but was still far below the pre-war years; arrivals at Atlantic ports in the United States were still down some 60% from pre-war numbers. With the fewer ships and sailings available, the AOC made arrangements with both the U.S. Army and the U.S. Navy to transport the United States Olympic team to Antwerp. The Navy agreed to carry team members who were affiliated with their branch of the service, and the Army, to carry civilian and Army-affiliated competitors. The Olympic trip got off to a bad start when the Army's scheduled ship, , was declared unseaworthy, requiring a last-minute substitution. The hurried selection of the Matoika meant the original planned departure date, July 20, had to be pushed back by six days to ready the liner to sail.
The Matoika had been in the service of the U.S. Army as a transport ship since September 1919, and, until the time of her selection, had been returning American soldiers from Europe and repatriating the remains of Americans killed during the war. Before World War I, the Matoika had been a passenger liner for North German Lloyd by the name of Princess Alice. After the United States joined the conflict in 1917, the liner had been pressed into service for the U.S. Navy carrying American troops to Europe; she was renamed Princess Matoika, after one of the given names for Pocahontas, as part of an order to replace Germanic names of seized ships with American names.
Voyage
On the afternoon of July 26, the athletes attended a farewell reception at the Manhattan Opera House presided over by Gustavus T. Kirby, chairman of the American Olympic Committee (AOC), who read congratulatory telegrams to the team from the governors of eleven states. At the end of the reception, the 230 civilian and U.S. Army-affiliated team members marched from the Opera House to the Hudson Pier and ferried to Hoboken, New Jersey, and the waiting Matoika. (The 101 U.S. Navy-affiliated athletes and coaches were carried on cruiser , a frequent convoy escort of Princess Matoika during World War I.)
When female team members, AOC members, and U.S. Army athletes and officials accompanying the team were assigned first-class cabins and the balance of the male athletes were relegated to troop quarters on lower decks, grumbling from team members quartered belowdecks began almost immediately. Before the Matoika even sailed, runner Joie Ray, a competitor in the 1500 meters in 1920, complained about the conditions declaring that "if those in charge had deliberately tried to create a psychology of depression and resentment among the members of the team, they couldn't have done anything more effective". Two days after sailing, some of the first-place winners at the Olympic tryouts were moved to the sick bay to escape the sweltering heat on the lower decks, but the majority remained below. Fencer Joseph B. B. Parker—who, as an Army athlete, was bunked in a cabin—commented that the troop accommodations were all right for troops but "not conducive to bringing men to the games in the pink of condition."