Operational Service
After fitting-out, William Ward Burrows sailed from Norfolk on her maiden voyage on 6 July and proceeded to Weehawken, New Jersey, to take on a cargo of structural steel. Departing that port on the 15th, the transport embarked a company of marines as well as a group of women and children - naval dependents - for transportation to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. After delivering her passengers, she touched at San Juan, Puerto Rico; Cristóbal, Canal Zone; transited the Panama Canal; visited Balboa, Canal Zone and the California ports of San Diego, San Pedro, Vallejo (the Mare Island Navy Yard); and the Naval Air Station at Alameda, before she proceeded on to her ultimate destination of Midway Island, where she dropped anchor on 2 October.
William Ward Burrows began, consequently, what would become a series of voyages that formed part of the belated American attempt to fortify her outposts in the Pacific - islands such as Wake, Midway, and Johnston. William Ward Burrows carried the pioneer construction unit - 80 men and 2,000 tons of equipment - to Wake Island in January 1941, departing Honolulu the day before Christmas of 1940 and arriving at destination late in the afternoon of 9 January 1941. William Ward Burrows would conduct eight more voyages prior to the outbreak of war in the Pacific, carrying construction employees, sailors, and marines, and the miscellaneous cargo necessary to sustain the outposts of the American defense system in the Pacific.
On what proved to be her last pre-war voyage to Wake, the transport took westward a cargo of dynamite, as well as employees of civilian contractors and a sprinkling of Navy and Marine Corps personnel. In addition she towed Pan American Airways Barge No. 4, laden with general cargo. She arrived at Wake on 11 November, disembarked her passengers, discharged her cargo, and delivered her tow before she headed back to Hawaii on the 13th. Soon after arriving, she shifted to Honolulu and embarked 33 marines, 60 sailors, and 55 civilian contractor's employees for transport to Wake on the 28th.
Read more about this topic: USS William Ward Burrows (AP-6)
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