Just days later, in the early morning of 6 April 1917, just moments after the declaration of war against Germany, the regiment boarded Coast Guard cutters and seized German owned freighters, passenger ships and shipping terminals along the Hudson River in Hoboken, New Jersey and in New York Harbor. Theirs was the first American military action to be taken in World War I. The docks and piers seized in Hoboken were the basis of the New York Port of Embarkation from where tens of thousands of troops would depart to France, with the German cruise ships serving as troop transports.