USS West Bridge (ID-2888) - Interwar Years

Interwar Years

Little is known about West Bridge's activities after her return to the in 1919, but in June 1922 she was laid up in Philadelphia, where she would remain for almost seven years. In March 1929, the approved the sale of West Bridge for $57,000 to the Sudden and Christenson Steamship Company of San Francisco. By May, the ship had been renamed Barbara Cates and was slated for service on the intercoastal freight service of their Arrow Line, which sailed to the Pacific coast from Baltimore; Norfolk, Virginia; Savannah, Georgia; and Jacksonville, Florida. The addition of Barbara Cates and other ships purchased around the same time allowed the Arrow Line to increase its sailings from fortnightly to once every ten days. Barbara Cates' nine years with the Arrow Line were uneventful.

By October 1938, the ship had been renamed Pan Gulf to reflect the naming style of her new owners, the Pan-Atlantic Steamship Company, a subsidiary of Waterman Steamship Company. The Pan-Atlantic Line sailed in coastal service along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, and it is likely that Pan Gulf called at typical Pan-Atlantic ports such as Baltimore, Miami, Tampa, New Orleans, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston during this time.

In October 1941, The Christian Science Monitor reported that Pan Gulf had become stuck in the mud off Governors Island after her crew misjudged how far to back out of her berth at the Army base there. The first, unsuccessful attempt to free Pan Gulf from her predicament involved eight tugs, but the ship did not budge. The newspaper, which had also reported that there was no apparent damage to Pan Gulf in the grounding, carried no further reports on the ship.