USS West Corum
Cargo ship in United States Navy
USS West Corum (ID-3982) was a cargo ship for the United States Navy in 1919. The ship was built as SS West Corum and reverted to that name at the end of her Navy service. During World War II, the ship was United States Army transport ship USAT West Corum, later renamed to Will H. Point (sometimes listed as William H. Point).
SS West Corum was a steam-powered ship built for the United States Shipping Board (USSB) as part of the West boats, a series of steel-hulled cargo ships built on the West Coast of the United States for the World War I war effort. She was the 13th ship built by Columbia River Shipbuilding Company in Portland, Oregon. She was commissioned into the Naval Overseas Transportation Service (NOTS) of the United States Navy in January 1919. After one overseas trips for the Navy, she was decommissioned in May 1919 and returned to the USSB.
Early in her civilian career, she sailed between New York City and Bordeaux, but later shifted to sailing to Antwerp. For most of the 1920s, West Corum sailed to Argentine ports. By 1939, West Corum had been laid up in New Orleans. In 1940, she was reconditioned, transferred to the United States Army, and renamed USAT Will H. Point.
The public source identifies “USS West Corum” as cargo ship in United States Navy. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around West, Corum and Cargo.
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This entry incorporates text from “USS West Corum” 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.