View source for USS West Elcasco

{{Short description|Naval cargo ship}}
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|Ship image= File:USS West Elcasco (ID-3661).jpg 
|Ship caption= USS ''West Elcasco'' at Philadelphia, March 1919 
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|Ship country=United States
|Ship flag={{USN flag|1942}}
|Ship name= '''USS ''West Elcasco'''''
|Ship namesake=
|Ship owner=*[[U.S. Shipping Board]] 18
*Mississippi Shipping Co. 30
*U.S. Army 41
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|Ship builder= [[Skinner & Eddy]]
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|Ship yard number= 38 (USSB #1927)
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|Ship launched= 21 September 1918
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|Ship acquired= 23 October 1918
|Ship commissioned= 23 October 1918
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|Ship decommissioned=14 June 1919
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|Ship in service= 23 October 1918
|Ship out of service=23 June 1942
|Ship renamed= USAT ''Major General Henry Gibbins'', 1941
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|Ship homeport= [[New York City|New York]] (from 1930)
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|Ship fate= Torpedoed and sunk off [[Key West, Florida]], 23 June 1942
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{{Infobox ship characteristics
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|Ship type= [[Design 1013 ship|Design #1013]] [[cargo ship]]
|Ship tonnage= 5,766 [[gross register tons|gross]], 8,568 [[deadweight tonnage|dwt]]
|Ship displacement= 12,200 tons
|Ship length=*{{convert|423|ft|9|in|m|abbr=on}}
*{{convert|410|ft|5|in|m|abbr=on}} [[length between perpendiculars|bp]]
|Ship beam= {{convert|54|ft|m|abbr=on}}
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|Ship draft= {{convert|24|ft|2|in|m|abbr=on}}
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|Ship hold depth= {{convert|29|ft|9|in|m|abbr=on}}
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|Ship power= 1 × [[steam turbine]]
|Ship propulsion= Single screw
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|Ship speed= {{convert|11.25|kn|km/h|abbr=on}}
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|Ship complement= 70 (in Naval service)
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|Ship armament= WWI: none
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'''USS ''West Elcasco'' (ID-3661)''' was a [[steel]]-[[hull (watercraft)|hulled]] [[cargo ship]] which saw service as an [[auxiliary ship|auxiliary]] with the [[U.S. Navy]] in [[World War I]] and as an Army transport in [[World War II]].

''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 [[Key West, Florida]] by {{GS|U-158|1941|6}} on 23 June 1942.

==Design and construction==
[[File:SS West Elcasco after launch.jpg|thumb|left|''West Elcasco'' just after launch, before the completion of her superstructure]]
''West Elcasco'' was built in [[Seattle, Washington]] in 1918 at the No. 2 Plant of the [[Skinner & Eddy Corporation]]—the second last in a series of 24 [[steel]]-[[hull (watercraft)|hulled]] Design #1013 [[cargo ship]]s built by Skinner & Eddy for the [[United States Shipping Board]]'s emergency wartime shipbuilding program.<ref name=sbh2>[http://shipbuildinghistory.com/history/merchantships/wwi/pacific.htm "General Cargo Ships Built in Pacific Coast Shipyards"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090422125305/http://shipbuildinghistory.com/history/merchantships/wwi/pacific.htm |date=2009-04-22 }}, ''shipbuildinghistory.com''.</ref>

Nominally a vessel of 8,800 [[deadweight ton]]s, ''West Elcasco'' is listed in mercantile records as having a deadweight tonnage of 8,568 tons and a [[gross register tonnage]] of 5,766.<ref name=jordan>Jordan, p. 433.</ref> The ship had an overall length of 423 feet 9&nbsp;inches, a beam of 54 feet and a draft of about 24 feet. ''West Elcasco'' was powered by a  [[steam turbine]] driving a single screw propeller, delivering a service speed of between 10.5 and 11.25 knots.<ref name=elliselcasco>[http://www.ellisisland.org/shipping/Formatship.asp?shipid=2699 "West Elcasco"], Ellis Island Foundation, Inc.</ref><ref name=danfselcasco>[http://www.history.navy.mil/research/histories/ship-histories/danfs/enwiki/w/west-elcasco.html "West Elcasco"], [[DANFS]].</ref>

==Service history==

===Naval service===

''West Elcasco'' was acquired by the Navy on 23 October 1918 on behalf of the [[Naval Overseas Transportation Service]] (NOTS), and commissioned the same day as USS ''West Elcasco'' (ID-3661).<ref name=danfselcasco/>

Laden with a cargo of flour, ''West Elcasco'' departed Seattle on 31 October, bound for the [[East Coast of the United States|east coast]].  After stopping briefly at [[San Pedro, California]], she transited the [[Panama Canal]] and arrived at [[New York City|New York]] on 2 December. With her cargo consigned to European food relief, she got underway for Europe on 8 December and arrived at [[Gibraltar]] on the last day of 1918. From the strait, she proceeded to the [[Adriatic Sea]] and arrived at [[Trieste, Italy]] on 11 January 1919. After discharging part of her cargo there, ''West Elcasco'' shifted to [[Gallipoli]], on the [[Dardanelles]], where she delivered the remainder of her cargo. She then took on a cargo of [[depth charge]]s and headed home on 15 February.<ref name=danfselcasco/>

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.<ref name=danfselcasco/>

===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 crossing|transatlantic]] service, when the ship transported passengers and cargo from various ports in [[Spain]], [[France]] and [[Italy]] to the United States.<ref name=elliselcasco/> ''West Elcasco'' was sold in 1930 to the Mississippi Shipping Co. and homeported at New York.<ref name=danfselcasco/> 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.

===Return to Navy service===
With the outbreak of [[World War II]] in 1939, shipping losses caused by [[U-boat]]s created an increased demand for tonnage. To help meet this demand, the U.S. [[Maritime Commission]] (successor to the Shipping Board), in addition to its orders for new tonnage, decided to recondition and return to service a number of old Shipping Board vessels laid up between the wars. In July 1940, it was announced that ''West Elcasco'' would be reconditioned and placed back into service along with nine other ships, including four more Skinner & Eddy-built ships, ''Eldena'', ''Polybius'' and ''West Elcasco''{{'}}s sister ships {{SS|West Cressey||2}} and {{SS|West Maximus||2}}, all of which had spent the latter part of the 1930s laid up at [[New Orleans]].<ref name=nyt_9jul40>[https://www.nytimes.com/1940/07/09/archives/10-more-ships-end-layup-maritime-board-reconditioning-program.html "10 More Ships End Lay-Up: Maritime Reconditioning Program Extended to 20"], ''[[New York Times]]'', 1940-07-09 (subscription required).</ref> ''West Elcasco'' was assigned the [[hull classification symbol]] AK-33, but may not have been commissioned.<ref name=shipscribe_AK33>[https://shipscribe.com/usnaux/AK/AK33.html "WEST ELCASCO (AK-33)"].</ref>

===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.<ref name=shipscribe_AK33></ref> 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 [[Attack on Aruba|attacked]] shipping in the area on the 16th.<ref>Burson, Ray H., [http://www.lago-colony.com/BURSON_LUCKY_LAGO/introduction.htm "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.</ref>

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]].<ref>[http://uboat.net/allies/merchants/1841.html "Major General Henry Gibbins"], uboat.net.</ref>

==References==
{{reflist|2}}

==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}}.
*{{DANFS|http://www.history.navy.mil/research/histories/ship-histories/danfs/enwiki/w/west-elcasco.html}}

{{Design 1013 ships}}
{{June 1942 shipwrecks}}
{{coord missing|Gulf of Mexico}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:West Elcasco (Id-3661)}}
[[Category:1918 ships]]
[[Category:Design 1013 ships]]
[[Category:Ships built by Skinner & Eddy]]
[[Category:World War I auxiliary ships of the United States]]
[[Category:Merchant ships of the United States]]
[[Category:World War II shipwrecks in the Gulf of Mexico|USS West Elasco]]
[[Category:Maritime incidents in June 1942]]
[[Category:Ships sunk by German submarines in World War II]]