US Army Transport Service Ships

[Brian James]

USAT Logan pictured departing Mare Island Navy Yard on April 8th 1902....Laid down, date unknown, as SS Manitoba by Harland and Wolff, Belfast, Northern Ireland...Launched, January 28th 1892 and purchased by the Quartermaster Department, July 20th 1898, from the Atlantic Transport Line and assigned to the U.S. Army Transport Service..Renamed USAT Logan in February 1899 in honour of Maj. Gen. John A. Logan, commander of the XV Corps, Army of the Tennessee during the Civil War She transported elements of the US Army Siberian Expedition to Vladivostok, Russia in December 1918 and transported reinforcements of the 27th Infantry from Vladivostok to San Francisco in August-September 1919, she evacuated elements of the Czech Legion at Vladivostok in January 1920 and disembarked them at Fiume, Croatia. She performed her final voyage for the U.S. Army Transport Service in October 1922 and was sold on November 9th 1922, to Asa Candler of Atlanta to be used as a floating school for young men..She was scrapped in 1925 at Baltimore.

[Brian James]

USAT Mount Vernon pictured moored outboard of Hospital Ship USS Comfort at Mare Island on January 2nd 1920.....USAT Mount Vernon was built in 1906 as the North German Lloyd liner Kronprinzessin Cecilie at Actien Gesellschaft Shipyards, Stettin, Germany and launched December 1st 1906. She was engaged in transatlantic service between her homeport of Bremen and New York until the outbreak of World War I....On August 4th 1914, at sea after departing New York, she turned around and put into Bar Harbor, Maine, where she later was interned by the neutral United States. After that country entered the war in April 1917, the ship was seized and turned over to the United States Navy, and renamed USS Mount Vernon (ID-4508). While serving as a Troop Transport, Mount Vernon was torpedoed in September 1918, though damaged, she was able to make port for repairs and returned to service. In October 1919 Mount Vernon was turned over for operation by the Army Transport Service in its Pacific fleet based at Fort Mason in San Francisco. USAT Mount Vernon was sent to Vladivostok, Russia to transport elements of the Czechoslovak Legion to Trieste, Italy and German prisoners of war to Hamburg, Germany. On return from that voyage, lasting from March through July 1920, the ship was turned over to the United States Shipping Board and laid up at Solomons Island, Maryland until September 1940 when she was scrapped at Boston, Massachusetts.......Comfort was built as SS Havana at William Cramp & Sons Shipyard, Philadelphia in 1906 for the the Ward Line on the New York–Havana route from 1907 to 1917. Before being purchased by the Navy, she briefly served as United States Army transport ship USAT Havana and was in the first U.S. convoy of ships to sail for France during World War I. In her Navy career, Comfort made three transatlantic voyages, bringing home over 1,100 men from European ports. Comfort was placed in reserve in September 1919, decommissioned in 1921, and sold in April 1925.