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West Bridge (Id. No. 2888)

1918-1919

The Navy retained the name carried by this ship at the time of her acquisition.

(Id. No. 2888: displacement 12,200; length 423'9"; beam 54'0"; depth of hold 29'9"; draft 24'1" (mean); speed 10.5 knots; complement 88; armament 1 4-inch, 1 3-inch)

West Bridge, a single-screw, steel-hulled cargo vessel built under a United States Shipping Board (USSB) contract at Seattle, Wash., by J. F. Duthie & Co., was launched on 24 April 1918; acquired by the Navy on 26 May 1918; given the identification number (Id. No. 2888); and commissioned at the Puget Sound Navy Yard, Bremerton, Wash., Lt. Cmdr. Mortimer Hawkins, USNRF, in command.

Assigned to the Naval Overseas Transportation Service (NOTS), West Bridge got underway on 10 June 1918 for the east coast with a cargo of flour. Developing engine trouble as she steamed toward the Panama Canal, the freighter put into Balboa, Canal Zone, for repairs that took until Independence Day (4 July) before she resumed her voyage. The ship reached New York on 16 July, replenished her fuel, and sailed for France with Convoy HB-8 on 1 August.

Escorted by the armed yacht Noma (S. P. 131) and the French cruiser Marseille, the convoy plodded across the Atlantic. By mid-August, the Allied ships entered the danger zone where U-boats had been highly active. In fact, two German submarines were then lurking in the path of the convoy: U-90 (Oberleutnant zur See Helmut Patzig) and U-107 (Kapitänleutnant Kurt Siewert).

At 5:40 p.m. on the 15th, West Bridge's turbine broke down and defied all attempts at repair. As the ship dropped back within the convoy, Lt. Cmdr. Hawkins notified the convoy commodore of West Bridge's plight. He also signalled Marseille that his ship needed a tow.

Meanwhile, the convoy continued on its way, when suddenly, shortly before 6:00 p.m. and four miles ahead of the now drifting West Bridge, German submarine U-90 torpedoed  the U.S. Army Cargo Trtansport Montanan.

At this juncture, Hawkins ordered general quarters and directed all hands to keep a sharp lookout, while also reducing the crew in the engine spaces to a minimum. Noma closed West Bridge and stood by the disabled freighter. On Noma's orders, West Bridge darkened ship and prepared for the worst.

Meanwhile, U-107 approached unseen and launched two torpedoes. One hit West Bridge forward near number 3 hold and the other amidships abreast of the engine room. A warning about torpedo tracks, shouted from the pilot house, was too late; and, almost simultaneously with the general alarm, the deadly "fish" struck their mark. The stricken freighter immediately took on water and commenced to sink, initially listing to starboard. Hawkins ordered "abandon ship," and the crew took to the boats. Hawkins and two crewmen remained behind until they felt sure that all the survivors were off and then joined the rest of the men in the water as waves began lapping over the gunwales onto the well deck.

Noma sped off in the direction from which the torpedoes had come and subjected the U-boat to a heavy depth charge barrage. The doughty patrol craft also sent out an "SOS" for West Bridge, since the shock of the initial explosion had disabled the freighter's wireless. In the interim, West Bridge's boats pulled about one mile away from the sinking ship, where the survivors watched the vessel slowly settle.

West Bridge remained afloat for the rest of the night, and the dawn revealed the cargo vessel extremely low in the water but on an even keel. Noma returned from her submarine hunt and signalled that help was on the way. She herself had just rescued the survivors of the torpedoed Montanan.

One hour later, Burrows (Destroyer No. 29) appeared on the scene and picked up West Bridge's crew. A head count showed that four men were missing but turned up two women stowaways. A final muster showed that Machinist Walter Antosch, F2c Robert J. McConkey, F3c Jens P. G. Nielsen, and F2c William I. Porter had died in the torpedoing.

After boarding Burrows, Cmdr. Hawkins consulted with the destroyer's commanding officer and requested that he and his executive officer be allowed to return to West Bridge to determine whether or not the ship could be saved. Accordingly, they were boated back to the freighter and boarded her. They found that both her well decks were awash, her engineering spaces were flooded, and at least three holds were totally inundated. Deeming the situation hopeless, Hawkins advised Burrows' commander that to stand by the drifting hulk would only endanger the lives of Burrows' crew and of West Bridge's survivors. Accordingly, Burrows proceeded for Brest, leaving Smith (Destroyer No. 17) to stand by the still floating Montanan (which soon sank) and West Bridge.

A volunteer work-and-salvage party from Smith, led by Lt. Richard L. Conolly, boarded West Bridge, while four tugs (two French, one British, and one American) set out from the French coast to assist. Soon thereafter, the destroyer Isabel (S. P.  521) joined the convoy which arrived at Brest on 22 August. After being towed 400 miles in this condition, West Bridge had made it to port with only one-percent bouyancy remaining!

After extensive repairs which were completed in March 1919, West Bridge served with NOTS until 1 December when the cargo vessel was decommissioned and returned to the USSB. She remained in the custody of that agency until abandoned due to age and deterioration in 1928.

Re-engined, however,  by Hooven, Owens, Renschler Co., of Hamilton, Ohio, in 1929, West Bridge was acquired by the Christensen Steamship Co., San Francisco, Calif., in 1933 and re-named Barbara Cates. The Waterman Steamship Co. of Mobile, Alabama, purchased the ship in 1939, and re-named her Pan Gulf, and ownership passed to the Pan-Atlantic Steamship Co. of Wilmington, Del., the following year. A month after Pearl Harbor [7 December 1941], Waterman took over the vessel under a term charter agreement at 10:00 a.m. on 7 January 1942, retaining the name.

Pan Gulf, with a cargo of Bauxite, was one of the 37 merchantmen in convoy TAG-18 (Trinidad to Guantánamo) escorted by the destroyer Lea (DD-118) and four submarine chasers (2-8 November 1942), joined later by three Coast Guard cutters, that were stalked by two German U-boats: U-160 (Kapitänleutnant Georg Lassen) (1-4 November) joined by U-129 (Kapitänleutnant Hans-Ludwig Witt) on 5 November. Lassen’s boat sank four merchantmen on 3 November, Witt’s sank two on 5 November; all told, 40,477 tons of Allied shipping went to the bottom. Pan Gulf’s Armed Guard received a battle star for the period 1-6 November 1942.

Maritime Commission records indicate a trade-in took place by the Pan-Atlantic Steamship Co., (which had acquired the ship in 1940) on 16 September 1943. Waterman took over the ship under a general agency agreement, at 5:00 p.m. on 30 October 1943 at Charlestown, Massachusetts.

Eventually, Pan Gulf was transferred under Lend Lease to the Soviet Union on 4 May 1945, four days before V-E Day. The transaction took place at 2:00 p.m. at Portland, Oregon, and the new operators renamed the vessel Lermontov. She steamed under Soviet colors in the Far East State Sea Shipping Co., then the Black Sea State Shipping Co. Ultimately, the well-traveled merchantman that survived a U-boat torpedo in the Great War with the U.S. Naval Overseas Transportation Service, and served under the Stars and Stripes as well as the Hammer and Sickle, was broken up for scrap at Split, Croatia, on 1 December 1966.

Robert J. Cressman

Updated, 22 January 2024

Published: Mon Jan 22 16:32:19 EST 2024