U.S. Navy service, 1918–1919 West Eldara was launched on 14 October 1918, Through the mid-1920s,
West Eldara seems to have been engaged mostly in transporting cargo and sometimes passengers between the United States and various European destinations. Repeat ports of call for the ship in this period included
Bordeaux,
Le Havre and
Dunkirk, France;
Rotterdam in the Netherlands and
Liverpool, England. The ship also made several voyages to
Seattle on the west coast of the U.S. and at least one voyage to the
Philippines. In 1926, customs officials in the United States searching
West Eldara for contraband made the unlikely discovery in the ship's
icebox of an
arctic owl. By 1928, the ship was sailing under the flag of the
American Diamond Lines In July of that year,
West Eldaras Second Assistant Engineer was arrested in the United States in connection with the shooting death aboard ship of another crew member at
Antwerp. The accused pleaded self-defence and was later cleared by a
Grand Jury. In 1933,
West Eldara participated in two rescue missions at sea. In February, she was the first ship to come to the aid of the
fishing trawler Newton, which had been gutted by a fire at sea off the coast of
Boston.
West Eldara stood by until a
Coast Guard cutter,
Mojave, arrived on the scene to tow the stricken vessel to safety. Most of
Newtons crew of fourteen were rescued, but a search for two crew members who had earlier taken to one of the lifeboats was later called off. The second incident occurred in November, when the British freighter
Saxilby foundered off the coast of Ireland during a storm.
West Eldara was one of five vessels which raced to the scene, but a search in stormy seas the following day failed to find any trace of
Saxilbys 27 crew. In 1936,
West Eldara was sold to
A. H. Bull & Company, who renamed the ship '
SS Mae''''' and homeported her in New York. The ship was still operating under that name when the U.S. entered World War II in December 1941.
Loss After America's entry into the war, SS
Mae continued to operate independently. On 17 September 1942,
Mae was proceeding unescorted from
Trinidad to
Georgetown, British Guiana when at 06:25 she was struck by a
torpedo from about 45 miles north of the Georgetown Beacon. The crew abandoned ship in three lifeboats over the next ten minutes, but
Mae remained afloat so
U-515 surfaced and sank the ship at 07:50 with 16 shells fired from a distance of 200 yards, killing one of the ship's crew in the process. A ship portrait of
West Eldara was painted in 1924 by Victor Edouard Charles Adam ("V. Adam 1924") for the ship's then-master, William A. Reed. Her funnel is shown in the colors of the
Cosmopolitan Shipping Company of Brooklyn, N.Y., which was at that time leasing her from the USSB. The portrait is currently (2023) owned by a resident of Kings County, New Brunswick, Canada. ==References==