USS Leedstown (AP-73)
U.S. Navy amphibious assault ship
USS Leedstown (AP-73), built as the Grace Line passenger and cargo ocean liner SS Santa Lucia, served as a United States Navy amphibious assault ship in World War II. The ship had first been turned over to the War Shipping Administration (WSA) and operated by Grace Line as the WSA agent from February to August 1942 in the Pacific. In August the ship, at New York, was turned over to the Navy under sub-bareboat charter from WSA. She was sunk 9 November 1942 off the Algerian coast by a German submarine after German bombers caused damage the day before.
Santa Lucia was the third of four sister ships sometimes dubbed "The Four Sisters" or "Big Four" ordered in 1930 by Grace Line for its Panama Mail Service from the Federal Shipbuilding and Drydock Company of Kearny, New Jersey. All four ships were launched in 1932. The other ships in order of launch were Santa Rosa, Santa Paula and, after Santa Lucia, Santa Elena.
Construction
Design
Grace ordered four new ships to comply with its mail contracts. The design of the four ships was by Gibbs & Cox, Inc., founded by William Francis Gibbs, with consultants for joiner work John Russell Pope and interior design by Dorothy Marckwald who formed the firm Elsie Cobb Wilson. At the time women taking a lead in interior design for ships was "unheard of" and U.S. ship interiors were based on 18th century English styles with many Americans dubious about "modern" styles.
Service history
Grace liner Santa Lucia
The ship was registered with U.S. Official Number 232101, signal WKER, at 9,135 GRT, 3,839 NRT, 484.4 ft (147.6 m) registry length, 72.2 ft (22.0 m) beam and 25.8 ft (7.9 m) depth and a registry crew of 180 and having 12,000 horsepower. The ship's owner is listed as Grace Steam Ship Co.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “USS Leedstown (AP-73)” as u.S. Navy amphibious assault ship. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3372599. Authority coordinates are 36.820, 3.165. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1942, 1930 and 1932.
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This entry incorporates text from “USS Leedstown (AP-73)” 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.