Talk:SS Monterey

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I've been condensing and rewriting other SS Monterey webpages to make this article happen but I ran out of time today. I'll return to continue rewriting; in the meantime there is simple copy and paste text filling much of the article. Binksternet (talk) 00:00, 4 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Rewrite complete. Ready for others to dig in... Binksternet (talk) 18:33, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

The book "Troopship Monterey"
This book is listed twice; once as a reference and once as further reading. There's no need for a further link to it on bookfinder or yahoo or whatever. Wikipedia isn't to be used to augment sales. Binksternet (talk) 21:02, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Ship hit sand bar off Miami
In July 1984 the ship hit a sandbar off of Government Cut while returning to port. The rudder and one of the propellers was bent which caused the rear of the ship to vibrate strongly at cruise speeds. The ships movie theater was located low in the stern of the ship, right above the propellers. At cruise speeds it had to be closed as the vibrations there were strong enough to shake people out of their chairs. On the pool deck drinks vibrated off the tables if left unattended too long. In September after the summer cruise season was over the ship went into drydock for repairs, but the damage areas could not be totally straightened out. The vibrations were reduced to slight at cruise speeds, and remained with the ship until the end.

I sailed on her in August 1984 and this was what the crew was telling the passengers. The report of the damage not being totally repaired came from retired crew members who worked on the ship. The ship was under the command of Captain Mazarakis during that period24.86.166.62 (talk) 04:17, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Confusing names and dates
Matson had a practice of recycling company ship names with this ship later named Matsonia and Lurline and thus causing confusion with contemporaries with similar wartime service: SS Matsonia (1926) and SS Lurline (1932). This ship was operated by Matson as agent for the War Shipping Administration with very close Army association and is often seen in casual use as USAT Monterey though the ship was never either owned or bareboat chartered by Army with Transportation Corps employees as operating crew. To really confuse things, particularly with the U.S. Army associations, both MARAD vessel status and Lloyd's show this Monterey (Official Number 231480) and another ship named Monterey (Official Number 232021) with 1932 dates. The smaller ship,  with dimensions of 385' X 57' 6" X 23' 8", was acquired by WSA on 26 September 1942, allocated to and operated by the U.S. Army under bareboat charter as USAT Monterey and as a troopship (Grover in U.S. Army Ships and Watercraft of World War II lists the ship on page 10 under "Troopships" with a photo on page 15). The smaller ship was built at Newport News Shipbuilding in 1932. The MARAD information shows names and dates as:


 * 1932 - 1938: Haiti
 * 1938 - 1939: Puerto Rico
 * 1939 - 1948: Monterey
 * 1948 - 1968: Adana (after 1947 sale to Turkey)

The actual USAT Monterey is fairly obscure and the Matson liner often called USAT Monterey, particularly in personal accounts (lots of Google hits on that), so great care must be used to separate the two. Palmeira (talk) 14:17, 18 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Wow, what a confusion! Thanks for uncovering the existence of the smaller vessel. Having just one reference gives a false sense of assurance; having two or three or four references in contradiction introduces a realistic doubt. Binksternet (talk) 15:58, 18 June 2014 (UTC)


 * One of the things one has to look for in Lloyd's is that long dash under ship names indicating another ship of the same name. I once spent a couple of hours swirling researching a ship that "did not appear in Lloyd's" until I realized I was looking at a messy reproduction with that long dash a bit obscured. This case is particularly messy because we have two ships of the same name with the same "birth" date in both Lloyd's and the MARAD data base. Those Matson names themselves are maddening. If I were really doing detailed work on Matson and maybe APL I think I'd build a table of ON#/DATE/NAME to keep track! At least within the companies they avoided two ships of the same name at the same time. Elsewhere, not so much. It gets really tricky when various accounts just give a name. For a time both SS Bantam (1930) and MS Bantam (1939) operated in Australian waters and just Bantam is sometimes found in both official histories and accounts. Sometime the best way to untangle them is to know their "habitat" and "territory"—the 1930 ship almost exclusively on Australia's east coast and New Guinea after war came to the Pacific. The few solid official notes on the USAT Monterey indicate an Atlantic habitat. At a guess, I'd say the names are also of Pacific and Atlantic origin with the big ship maybe for the California connection and the smaller one, originally with the Colombian Mail Steamship Company, a one "r" variant for either Monterrey, Columbia or the better known Monterrey, Mexico. Palmeira (talk) 18:31, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

The other troopship, USAT Monterey
For the other Monterey a new, so far stub page, on the Army troopship USAT Monterey operating in the western Atlantic between New York and Brazil during WW II. Palmeira (talk) 03:33, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

Not the prospective USS Alameda (AP-68)
The error is understandable as the Matson liner was very prominent in commercial and wartime service while the smaller vessel of the same name and launched in the same year was somewhat obscure in its New York, West Indies, Colombia and Panama operations for two less prominent companies. DANFS compounds the problem with a snippet of text about a ship never actually acquired or commissioned mentioning the larger vessel's owners:

"The name Alameda and the classification AP-68 was approved for assignment to the Oceanic Steamship Company SS Monterey on 22 August 1942, in light of the recent acquisition of the ship for use as a transport. The ship, however, was returned to the War Shipping Administration on 25 September 1942 and thus never served under that name."

A look at Lloyd's (1942—43) also illustrates how easily it can be to "grab" a prominent ship instead of one with the same name—and here we have the same year—something I have seen in several other cases of published material, where the ship of the same name is represented by "—" under the first ship. Pure speculation, but some Navy writer assigned to mention a ship never actually Navy quite likely with the glamorous big ship in mind may have even checked Lloyd's and just seen the name, not the — underneath.

The key lies in the MARAD vessel status cards for Puerto Rico, the previous name of the smaller Monterey and the cards for the Matson liner. The smaller ship's history shows a break in WSA AGWI Lines operation on "8-6-42 12:01AM EWT" for "Navy Dept. (Repairing)" coincident with the period in which all the ships being acquired as combat loaders for North Africa were being converted. The Matson liner's MARAD file contains an extract showing the ships operations with no break for any contemplated conversion to a combat loader and operations between New York and Halifax, Scotland just prior to that ship's Casablanca appearance operated—not by Navy—by Oceanic Steamship Company. The details are in documents referenced but not shown by Stephen Roberts' ShipScribe page. Palmeira (talk) 14:16, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

War Voyages
The last entry states, '16 February 1946 took Australian war brides from Sydney to San Francisco, stopping along the way at Suva, Fiji and Honolulu, Hawaii.' The next paragraph says, 'On 26 September 1946 the Monterey arrived at Bethlehem-Alameda Shipyard in Alameda, California for refitting and return to passenger service with Matson. Money ran out on the project after 30% of the work had been completed. For five years she sat idle in Alameda.'

My mother was on the SS Monterey in November 1946 sailing from Sydney, Australia to San Francisco. She arrived on 17 or 18 November 1946. I have two copies of menus from that voyage, one dated Tuesday, November 12, 1946.

Unless I'm misunderstanding the entries, I believe the date it arrived at Bethlehem-Alameda Shipyard is incorrect - how else could Mum have sailed on it almost two months later? Happy to provide a copy of a menu. 60.242.75.38 (talk) 07:53, 19 November 2021 (UTC) Cherie Bombell