West Compo (Id. No. 3912)
1919
The Navy retained the name carried by this vessel at the time she was acquired.
(Id. No. 3912: displacement 12,185; length 429'9"; beam 54'0"; depth of hold- 29'9"; draft 24'0" (mean); speed 10.0 knots; complement 88; armament none)
West Compo, a steel-hulled, single-screw cargo ship built in 1918 under a United States Shipping Board contract at Portland, Oregon, by the Northwest Steel Co., was taken over by the Navy on 3 February 1919 for duty with the Naval Overseas Transportation Service; given the identification number (Id. No.) 3912; and commissioned at Portland on the same day, Lt. Cmdr. Charles A. A. Modeer, USNRF, in command.
West Compo took on board a cargo of flour and sailed for the east coast on 12 February 1919. The cargo vessel transited the Panama Canal on 1 and 2 March and reached Norfolk, Va., on 11 March. Three days later, she got underway for the Mediterranean and arrived at Trieste, on the Adriatic, on 9 April and spent the next ten days discharging her cargo. She then took on sand ballast, got underway, and proceeded via Gibraltar to the east coast of the United States.
She arrived at Philadelphia on 15 May 1919 and was decommissioned and stricken from the Navy Register on 22 May 1919. Returned to the Shipping Board, she remained in the custody of that agency until 1933, when she was abandoned.
Updated, Robert J. Cressman
2 February 2024