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West Mount (Id. No. 3202)

1918-1919

The Navy retained the name carried by this ship at the time she was acquired.

(Id. No. 3202: disp.lacement 12,175; length 423'9"; beam 54'0"; depth of hold 29'9"; draft 23'11"; speed 9.5 knots; complement 75; armament 1 3-inch)

West Mount, sometimes referred to as Westmount, was a steel-hulled, single-screw cargo ship built under a United States Shipping Board contract for the Compagnie Generale of France. Constructed at Seattle, Wash., by the Ames Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Co. and launched on 16 April 1918, West Mount was taken over by the United States Navy for operation by the Naval Overseas Transportation Service (NOTS), assigned identification number (Id. No.) 3202, and commissioned at Seattle on 21 May 1918, Lt. Cmdr. Clyde E. Parker, USNRF, in command.

West Mount, with a cargo of flour in her holds, departed Seattle on 23 May 1918, bound for the east coast through the Panama Canal. After arriving at New York on 2 July, the freighter underwent repairs and sailed for France on the 13th. She made port at Bordeaux on the 29th, discharged her cargo, and sailed homeward with 1,000 tons of iron ore. She arrived at New York on 9 October.

The cargo vessel commenced her second wartime voyage for NOTS on 24 October 1918 and made port at Brest, France, on 8 November. Three days later, the Armistice that stilled the guns on the Western Front was signed. West Mount subsequently departed Brest on 12 December, spent Christmas at sea, and arrived at New York on New Year's Day 1919.

West Mount remained there long enough to load a cargo of flour and milk consigned to the Food Administration and got underway on 22 January 1919, bound via Gibraltar, for the Near East. After reaching Turkey, West Mount delivered her foodstuffs at Constantinople and eventually returned home with 2,785 tons of return cargo for the Shipping Board. She arrived at Phildelphia on 1 May.

Decommissioned there on 23 May 1918 West Mount was simultaneously stricken from the Navy Register and turned over to the Shipping Board. Subsequently referred to in mercantile lists as Westmount, the ship remained under government ownership into the late 1920's, after which time her name disappears from contemporary merchant ship registers.

Updated, Robert J. Cressman

12 February 2024

Published: Mon Feb 12 11:47:48 EST 2024