USS West Elcasco
USS West Elcasco at Philadelphia, March 1919
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History | |
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United States | |
Name | USS West Elcasco |
Owner |
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Builder | Skinner & Eddy |
Yard number | 38 (USSB #1927) |
Launched | 21 September 1918 |
Acquired | 23 October 1918 |
Commissioned | 23 October 1918 |
Decommissioned | 14 June 1919 |
In service | 23 October 1918 |
Out of service | 23 June 1942 |
Renamed | USAT Major General Henry Gibbins, 1941 |
Homeport | New York (from 1930) |
Fate | Torpedoed and sunk off Key West, Florida , 23 June 1942 |
General characteristics | |
Type | Design #1013 cargo ship |
Tonnage | 5,766 gross, 8,568 dwt |
Displacement | 12,200 tons |
Length |
|
Beam | 54 ft (16 m) |
Draft | 24 ft 2 in (7.37 m) |
Depth of hold | 29 ft 9 in (9.07 m) |
Installed power | 1 × steam turbine |
Propulsion | Single screw |
Speed | 11.25 kn (20.84 km/h) |
Complement | 70 (in Naval service) |
Armament | WWI: none |
USS West Elcasco (ID-3661) was a
West Elcasco was commissioned into the Navy only weeks before the end of World War I, and the war ended before she had time to complete a single Navy mission. She subsequently undertook two relief missions to Europe in the immediate postwar period prior to decommission in 1919. Between the wars she operated as a merchant vessel.
The ship was reacquired for U.S. government service in World War II with the Army Transport Command, when she was renamed USAT Major General Henry Gibbins. Major General Henry Gibbins was torpedoed and sunk off
Design and construction
West Elcasco was built in
Nominally a vessel of 8,800
Service history
West Elcasco was acquired by the Navy on 23 October 1918 on behalf of the
Laden with a cargo of flour, West Elcasco departed Seattle on 31 October, bound for the
After her arrival at Philadelphia on 7 March, West Elcasco shifted to Boston and loaded a cargo of foodstuffs for France. She got underway on 8 April and delivered her cargo after arriving at Le Verdon-sur-Mer. Returning from Europe, via New York, to Boston on 9 June, West Elcasco was decommissioned on 14 June 1919 and transferred to the U.S. Shipping Board the same day.[4]
Mercantile service
Little information is available regarding West Elcasco's movements in the interwar period, but the ship is known to have been active from 1919 through the mid-1920s in transatlantic service, when the ship transported passengers and cargo from various ports in Spain, France and Italy to the United States.[3] West Elcasco was sold in 1930 to the Mississippi Shipping Co. and homeported at New York.[4] With the reduction in international trade brought about by the Great Depression however, West Elcasco like many other U.S. ships of the era was eventually laid up by the Shipping Board for lack of work.
With the outbreak of
Army service
In 1941, the United States Army Quartermaster Corps acquired West Elcasco and renamed her USAT Major General Henry Gibbins, but the US Navy retained the ship on its ship list as Major General Henry Gibbins (AE-7), apparently due to a short-lived dispute over which service would be responsible for ammunition cargo ships.[6] In February 1942, Major General Henry Gibbins, along with the SS Florida, transported 850 troops and their weapons to the oil refinery port of Aruba, Netherlands Antilles, disembarking their cargoes on the 11th. Major General Henry Gibbins was fortunately still safely in port when German submarines attacked shipping in the area on the 16th.[7]
On 23 June 1942, Major General Henry Gibbins, sailing unescorted with a cargo of coffee, was attacked and sunk by U-158 about 375 miles west of Key West, Florida. The ship was hit on the port side by two torpedoes fired about twenty minutes apart, and sank shortly thereafter. The ship's crew of 47 along with her 21 army guards survived the attack, and were rescued within a day or two and taken to Pensacola, Florida.[8]
References
- ^ "General Cargo Ships Built in Pacific Coast Shipyards" Archived 2009-04-22 at the Wayback Machine, shipbuildinghistory.com.
- ^ Jordan, p. 433.
- ^ a b "West Elcasco", Ellis Island Foundation, Inc.
- ^ DANFS.
- New York Times, 1940-07-09 (subscription required).
- ^ a b "WEST ELCASCO (AK-33)".
- ^ Burson, Ray H., "When Lago was Luck", lagocolony.com, citing from William H. Hochstuhl's German U-boat 156 Brought War to Aruba Feb. 16th, 1942, Aruba Scholarship Foundation, 2001.
- ^ "Major General Henry Gibbins", uboat.net.
Bibliography
- Jordan, Roger H. (2006): The World's Merchant Fleets, 1939: The Particulars And Wartime Fates of 6,000 Ships, Naval Institute Press, ISBN 978-1-59114-959-0.
- This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. The entry can be found here.