WEST ELCASCO ID 3661

Ship Name and Designation History

This section lists the names and designations that the ship had during its lifetime. The list is in chronological order.

Freighter Keel Laid 8 July 1918 by the Skinner and Eddy Corp., Seattle, WA for the United States Shipping Board (USSB) Launched 21 September 1918 Acquired by the Navy 23 October 1918 USS WEST ELCASCO ID-3661 Commissioned 23 October 1918 Assigned to the Naval Overseas Transportation Service (NOTS) Decommissioned 14 June 1919 and returned to the United States Shipping Board WEST ELCASCO (Commercial Service) Ownership retained by USSB. No references as to which company operated the ship under contract. Official Number: 217128 Reported as sold in 1930 to the Mississippi Shipping Co. but Lloyd's Register of Shipping still showed owner as USSB in 1941 edition USAT MAJOR GENERAL HENRY GIBBINS Acquired by the Army 24 July 1941 and renamed Torpedoed and sunk 23 June 1942 by the German submarine U-158 about 375 miles west of Key West, Florida

 

Naval Covers

This section lists active links to the pages displaying covers associated with the ship. There should be a separate set of pages for each name of the ship (for example, Bushnell AG-32 / Sumner AGS-5 are different names for the same ship so there should be one set of pages for Bushnell and one set for Sumner). Covers should be presented in chronological order (or as best as can be determined).

Since a ship may have many covers, they may be split among many pages so it doesn't take forever for the pages to load. Each page link should be accompanied by a date range for covers on that page.

1. Covers Page 1     (DATE RANGE)

 

Postmarks

This section lists examples of the postmarks used by the ship. There should be a separate set of postmarks for each name and/or commissioning period. Within each set, the postmarks should be listed in order of their classification type. If more than one postmark has the same classification, then they should be further sorted by date of earliest known usage.

A postmark should not be included unless accompanied by a close-up image and/or an image of a cover showing that postmark. Date ranges MUST be based ONLY ON COVERS IN THE MUSEUM and are expected to change as more covers are added.
 
>>> If you have a better example for any of the postmarks, please feel free to replace the existing example.

 

Postmark Type --- Killer Bar Text	Postmark Date	Thumbnail Link To Postmark Image	Thumbnail Link To Cover Image

 

RECD. FROM ARMY Postmark Bordeaux (France)

1919-05-03

The ship had no postal facilities.

 

Other Information

This section lists any other information that might be relevant to this ship.

 

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