Western Pipe and Steel Company - Individual Ships of Note

Individual Ships of Note

Many of the ships built by Western Pipe & Steel were inevitably destined to relatively uneventful careers. Many of the Type C3 vessels, for example, played a modest role in the Second World War as troopships or transports and subsequently settled down to mundane postwar careers as cargo vessels. Others however had more unusual, more distinguished, or sometimes more tragic destinies. The following list includes a selection of these latter groups.

West Aleta

The WPS vessel with the shortest service history was West Aleta (WPS Hull No. 8). One of the vessels built by the company for the US Shipping Board in World War I, West Aleta was the last such ship to be fitted with the unreliable General Electric turbine motor.

Delivered in August 1919, she made her maiden commercial voyage the same month and was subsequently drydocked for repairs. A second voyage resulted in more repairs, this time to a cracked turbine. The following January she commenced a new voyage, and on 13 February was reported stranded in breakers northwest of Terschelling Island, the Netherlands. She subsequently broke up and was reported a total loss on 19 June 1920, having provided a mere six months of active service.

West Camargo

The WPS ship with the longest service life was probably West Camargo (WPS Hull No. 16), another vessel built under the US Shipping Board's World War I contract. Fitted with the much more reliable Joshua Hendy triple expansion engine, she was launched in 1920 and enjoyed an active service life as a commercial cargo vessel between the wars.

In 1942, the vessel was acquired by the US government and transferred to the USSR under lend-lease, where she was renamed Desna. After the war, Desna remained in service with the Soviet Union as a special cargo vessel for the transport of fish, a role she retained until 1978. In that year she was acquired by Japanese interests and subsequently sold for scrap, bringing to an end a remarkably long career of 58 years.

West Cadron

The worst peacetime disaster to befall a WPS ship occurred to West Cadron (WPS Hull No. 12). Launched in 1920, she was renamed the Iowa in 1928, and foundered and sank near Cape Disappointment at the mouth of the Columbia River (site of the notoriously treacherous Columbia Bar) on 12 January 1936, with the loss of all 34 crew.

American Leader

Another ill-fated crew was that of American Leader (WPS Hull No. 58), who were collectively to endure no less than three ship sinkings during the Second World War.

One of the five Type C1 vessels built by Western Pipe & Steel for its initial Maritime Commission contract, American Leader was delivered in July 1941 but only made a handful of voyages before being sunk by the German auxiliary cruiser Michel off the Cape of Good Hope in September 1942. Eleven crew members were killed in the engagement but the remaining 47 were rescued by Michel, who turned them over to the Japanese as prisoners of war.

In April 1944 eighteen survivors of American Leader were being transported on the Japanese hell ship Tamahoko Maru when the vessel was torpedoed and sunk by the submarine USS Tang. Only five of the eighteen former American Leader crewmen onboard survived the attack. In September of the same year, five of another party of nine former crewmates were killed aboard the Japanese hell ship Junyo Maru when she was torpedoed and sunk by HMS Tradewind.

Other crewmembers died in Japanese captivity. Of the original 58-man crew of American Leader, only 28 returned home from the war.

West Kader

Another of the World War I-era WPS ships, West Kader (WPS Hull No. 11), found a niche in history as part of Britain's disastrous Convoy PQ-17 in 1942.

PQ-17 set out from Iceland for the Russian port of Arkhangelsk in June 1942. When the convoy commander was informed the German battleship Tirpitz was on course to intercept, he decided to split up the convoy with disastrous results. German U-Boats and aircraft were able to easily pick off the isolated merchant vessels, sinking 25 of the convoy's 36 ships and putting PQ-17 into the history books as the greatest Russia-bound convoy loss of the war.

One of the victims of the debacle was West Kader, then operating under the name of Pan Kraft. Pan Kraft was disabled by bombing near-misses and forced to be abandoned, after which she exploded and sank. The PQ-17 disaster proved so costly that the British were subsequently compelled to totally revise their convoy strategy.

Warships

A number of warships built by Western Pipe & Steel distinguished themselves in wartime service. Perhaps the most notable of these was the escort carrier HMS Fencer. One of the four escort carriers built by the company for service with the Royal Navy, Fencer was credited with the sinking of four German U-Boats during the course of the war - U-666 on 10 February 1944, U-277 on 1 May, and U-674 and U-959 on the same day, 2 May 1944. Fencer also participated in Operation Tungsten, the successful attack on the German battleship Tirpitz in April 1944.

Some of the other warships built by Western Pipe & Steel which accumulated distinguished service records were USS Bangust, a destroyer escort which won eleven battle stars during World War II, USS Bayfield, an attack transport which received four battle stars in World War II, four in the Korean War and two in the Vietnam War, and HMS Stalker which received six battle honours for service with the Royal Navy in World War II.

Steel Artisan

One WPS ship with a particularly interesting and varied history was Steel Artisan (WPS Hull No. 62). The first Type C3 ship to be built by the company, she was destined to undergo two major conversions and serve in three different roles during her service life.

Launched in September 1941 under Maritime Commission contract, Steel Artisan had almost been completed as a standard Type C3 cargo ship when word came through that she was to be converted into one of the newly designed Bogue class escort aircraft carriers. The conversion was subsequently carried out and Steel Artisan briefly became USS Barnes before being transferred under lend lease to the Royal Navy who dubbed her HMS Attacker.

Attacker was to serve with distinction during the war, taking part in the invasion of Salerno and subsequently of Southern France. In 1944 she was transferred to the Pacific where she was part of the fleet that witnessed the surrender of the Japanese in August 1945. Shortly thereafter, Attacker sailed into Singapore to take the surrender of the Japanese garrison there.

After the war, Attacker was decommissioned and returned to the United States, where her flight deck was removed. Laid up for some years, she was eventually bought by Russian entrepreneur Alexander Vlasov whose company the Sitmar Line undertook another major conversion of the vessel, this time into an ocean liner.

Renamed Fairsky the ship was assigned to the migrant passenger route between Britain and Australia in 1958, a role she retained until the early 1970s when Sitmar lost the migrant contract. Subsequently, she was operated by Sitmar as a popular cruise ship.

In 1977 the ship was damaged in a collision and sold to a Philippine consortium, who planned yet another major conversion for the vessel, into a casino ship named Philippine Tourist. The plans were dashed when the ship was tragically gutted by fire in 1978, after which the vessel was sold for scrap in 1980.

Sea Wren

Another WPS ship to undergo an interesting conversion was Sea Wren (WPS Hull No. 129). After serving during the war as attack transport USS Goodhue (during which time she sustained casualties and damage from a Japanese kamikaze attack), the ship returned after the war to cargo service with the San Francisco-based Matson Navigation Company, operating under the name Hawaiian Citizen.

In 1959, Hawaiian Citizen underwent a major conversion into a container ship, thus becoming the first all-containerized freighter operating on the West Coast of the United States. She was sold for scrap in 1981.

USS Cascade

One WPS ship, the destroyer tender USS Cascade (WPS Hull No. 63), has a minor connection with American literature and the Hollywood film industry. During the Second World War, Typhoon Cobra devastated an American fleet in the Pacific led by Admiral William Halsey, Jr., killing 793 men and sinking three of the fleet's destroyers. In the aftermath, an inquiry chaired by Halsey heard allegations that the captain of one of the destroyers that sank, USS Hull, had been negligent in his command. The inquiry was held on board Cascade.

American novelist Herman Wouk later used this inquiry as the inspiration for his Pulitzer-prize winning fictional work The Caine Mutiny. The book was later turned into an Oscar-nominated film starring Humphrey Bogart.