Wikipedia:Today's featured article/November 20, 2010

SS Dakotan was a cargo ship built in 1912 by the Maryland Steel Company as one of eight sister ships for the American-Hawaiian Steamship Company. The ship was employed in inter-coastal service via the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and the Panama Canal after it opened, and then served as a transport ship under the United States Army during World War I. As USAT Dakotan, she carried cargo and animals to France. She was in the first American convoy to sail to France after the United States entered the war in April 1917. Near the end of the war, she was transferred to the United States Navy and commissioned as USS Dakotan. The ship continued to carry cargo to France, and returned over 8,800 American troops after the Armistice. After her Navy service ended in 1919, she was returned to her original owners and resumed relatively uneventful cargo service over the next twenty years. Dakotan ran aground off the coast of Mexico in 1923 but was freed and towed to port for repairs. Early in World War II, the ship was requisitioned by the War Shipping Administration and transferred to the Soviet Union under the terms of Lend-Lease in December 1942. Sailing as SS Zyrianin, the ship remained a part of the Soviet merchant fleet before being scrapped in the late 1960s. (more...)

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