West Eldara (Id. No. 3704)
1918-1919
The Navy retained the name carried by this ship at the time she was acquired,
(Id. No. 3704: displacement 12,200; length 423'9"; beam 54'0"; depth of hold 29'9"; draft 24'0" (mean); speed 11.5 knots; complement. 84; armament none)
West Eldara, a steel-hulled, single-screw cargo vessel built under a United States Shipping Board contract in 1918 at Seattle, Wash., by the Skinner and Eddy Corp., was taken over by the Navy for use by the Naval Overseas Transportation Service (NOTS)- and given the identification number (Id. No.) 3704. On 23 November 1918, 12 days after the Armistice ended the Great War [World War I], was commissioned at the Puget Sound Navy Yard, Bremerton, Wash., Lt. Cmdr. John P. Tibbetts, USNRF, in command.
West Eldara sailed on 8 December 1918 for San Francisco, Calif., and entered the Mare Island Navy Yard, Vallejo, Calif.,six days later for repairs to her steering gear. Four days after Christmas, the cargo vessel got underway from the west coast, bound, via the Panama Canal, for the east coast and, on 14 January 1919, arrived at New York. Laden with flour and lard, West Eldara got underway for Europe on the 24th. Upon her arrival at Gibraltar, the cargo ship was routed on to the Near East. On 12 February, she headed for Constantinople and on the 22nd, Washington's Birthday, arrived at that fabled city which sits astride the strategic Bosporus.
After off-loading her foodstuffs, West Eldara returned via Gibraltar to the United States and arrived in New York on 7 April 1919. The ship loaded Army supplies and sailed on 16 April for a European voyage which would take her to the Hook of Holland and to Antwerp before she reached Plymouth, England. She discharged the last of her cargo there before departing the British Isles on 12 May 1919. Arriving at New York on the 29th, West Eldara was decommissioned and stricken from the Navy Register on 4 June 1919. She was returned to the United States Shipping Board on the same day.
Sold to the A. H. Bull Steamship Co., Inc., in 1937 and renamed Mae, the freighter operated in merchant service out of New York. The onset of war in 1939 brought the specter of war again close to American shores; and, by late 1941, the United States was fully involved. Through these troubled years, Mae continued to ply the freight trade.
On her last voyage, steaming unescorted some 41 miles north of Georgetown, British Guiana, her path crossed that of German submarine U-515 (Kapitanleutnant Werner Henke, commanding). On 16 September 1942, Mae lurched and lost way under the impact of straight-running torpedoes from U-515. As the freighter took on water and settled, U-515 surfaced and finished off the damaged merchantman with gunfire, the shelling killing one sailor.
The Norwegian merchantman Sorvangen rescued the 40 survivors, transferring them to the Canadian steamer Gypsum King that transported them to Georgetown.
Updated, Robert J. Cressman
2 February 2024
