West View (Cargo Ship)
1918-1919
The Navy retained the name carried by this vessel at the time she was acquired.
(Cargo Ship: tonnage 5,508 (gross register); length 428'0"; beam 54'0"; draft 24'0"; depth of hold 29'9"; speed 10.0 knots; complement 82)
West View, a steel-hulled, single-screw cargo vessel, was laid down on 28 May 1918 at Portland, Oregon, by the Northwest Steel Co,.; launched on 26 August 1918; sponsored by Mrs. L. D. Winters; and delivered on 18 November 1918 [one week after the Armistice was signed ending the Great War (World War I)] to the United States Shipping Board (USSB). The ship was acquired by the Navy for use by the Naval Overseas Transportation Service (NOTS).
Taken over and commissioned at the Puget Sound Navy Yard, Bremerton, Wash., on 21 November 1918, West View conducted only one voyage for NOTS. She carried a cargo of 7,200 tons of flour from the west coast via the Panama Canal to New York City where she arrived on 12 January 1919. Decommissioned there on 20 January 1919, the ship was simultaneously returned to the USSB and stricken from the Navy Register.
She remained in the hands of the USSB and its successor, the U.S. Maritime Commission, and lay in reserve in the James River into the late 1930's. Her name does not appear in any listing of American merchantmen after 1938, suggesting that she was probably broken up due to age and deterioration around that time.
Updated, Robert J. Cressman
8 February 2024
