USS West Carnifax (ID-3812) - Interwar Years

Interwar Years

Incomplete information is available regarding West Carnifax's activities after her return to the in 1919. One incident of note was reported in The New York Times on February 1922. The news item reported that West Carnifax, while heading from Rotterdam to Galveston, Texas, ran short of provisions and fuel and had to be towed into New York by United States Coast Guard cutter USCGC Tampa (WPG-48). By late 1923, West Carnifax had been laid up at Norfolk, Virginia, but was reactivated and reconditioned in February 1924. In early 1925, West Carnifax had begun sailing for American Republics Lines, a -owned line that sailed in South American service. West Carnifax sailed in this service into 1927 and called at ports like Buenos Aires and Santos.

In early 1928, West Carnifax was sold to the Export Steamship Corporation for operation under their American Export Lines brand. In the first half of that year, West Carnifax was sailing in New York – Mediterranean service. While near the Azores sailing from Alexandria, Egypt, to Boston in October, West Carnifax responded to an SOS from the American tanker David C. Reid which reported being in trouble during a storm. According to a report in the Los Angeles Times, when the cargo ship arrived at the specified location after steaming overnight, no trace of the crew was found; only oil slicks and a floating vegetable box were found on the surface. In October the following year, under her new name of SS Exford, the ship docked at the Soviet Black Sea port of Novorossiysk to deliver a cargo of machinery and became the first American ship to dock at a Soviet port since the end of World War I. Exford remained in Black Sea service into 1931.

In August 1933, the Los Angeles Times reported that the Shepard Line had secured a year-long charter of Exford for their expanded intercoastal service between North Atlantic ports and the Pacific ports of Los Angeles; San Francisco; Portland, Oregon; and Seattle. Later in 1933, the ship was renamed Pan Royal 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 Royal called at typical Pan-Atlantic ports such as Baltimore, Miami, Tampa, New Orleans, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston from this time.

At 03:50 on 24 September 1934, Cunard-White Star ocean liner RMS Laconia collided with Pan Royal in a thick fog off the tip of Cape Cod. Pan Royal developed a leak and had to return to Boston, from which she had left for Galveston, Texas, the previous day. Laconia, leaving Boston after debarking 225 passengers, also had damage but proceeded to her destination of New York under her own power. No one was injured on either ship. Elvar R. Callaway, master of Pan Royal, claimed that Laconia could have avoided the collision by proper steering; Laconia's master, B. B. Orum, contended that the collision was unavoidable because of the "impenetrable haze".

In November 1939, Pan Royal was one of 21 ships that had been idled because of a strike by 5,000 longshoremen in New York. In June the following year, The Christian Science Monitor reported that Pan Royal had been engaged to return "Big Joe" to the Soviet Union. "Big Joe" was a nickname given to the 79-foot tall (24 m) Soviet worker holding a red star in his up-stretched hand. The statue had graced the column in front of the Soviet Socialist Republics Building at the New York World's Fair during the 1939 fair season. The Soviet pavilion was dismantled prior to the 1940 fair season after popular American opinion turned against the Soviet Union because of its November 1939 invasion of Finland. As part of the dismantling, "Big Joe" had been warehoused in Hoboken, New Jersey, but prevented from export by a United States Maritime Commission ruling enforcing a "moral embargo" that prohibited the charter of American ships on behalf of the Soviet Union.