USS Alkaid
1943 Crater-class cargo ship
USS Alkaid (AK-114) was a Crater-class cargo ship, converted from a Liberty Ship, commissioned by the US Navy for service in World War II. She was first named after William G. Sumner, a classical liberal American social scientist. She was renamed and commissioned after Alkaid, a star in the Big Dipper asterism or constellation Ursa Major. She was responsible for delivering troops, goods and equipment to locations in the war zone.
Construction
William G. Sumner was laid down on 13 September 1943, under a Maritime Commission (MARCOM) contract, MC hull 1211, by the St. Johns River Shipbuilding Company, Jacksonville, Florida; she was sponsored by Mrs. William R. McQuaid, a prominent citizen of Jacksonville, and launched on 8 November 1943. She was acquired by the US Navy, under a bareboat charter on 19 November 1943, and renamed Alkaid. She was converted for naval service by the Gibbs Gas Engine Co., Jacksonville, and commissioned in Jacksonville, on 27 March 1944.
Service history
Following a period of shakedown training off the US East Coast, Alkaid sailed on 6 May 1944, for the Pacific Ocean, via Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the Panama Canal. On 14 June, the ship touched at Espiritu Santo and reported to Service Squadron 8 for duty.
“USS Alkaid” enters the record as 1943 Crater-class cargo ship. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Alkaid, Crater-class and cargo can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 6, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7867211. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1943, 1211 and 1944.
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This entry incorporates text from “USS Alkaid” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.