Eurana was a steam cargo ship built on speculation in 1915 by Union Iron Works of San Francisco. While under construction, the ship was acquired by Frank Duncan McPherson Strachan to operate in the Atlantic trade for his family's Strachan Shipping Company. The vessel made several trips between the Southeast of the United States and Europe before being sold to the Nafra Steamship Company in 1917. The freighter then entered the Mediterranean trade where she remained until September 1918 when she was requisitioned by the Emergency Fleet Corporation and transferred to the United States Navy to transport military supplies prior to the end of World War I, and as a troop transport after the war's end. In October 1919, the ship was returned to Nafra, which was then being reorganized to become the Green Star Steamship Company. In 1923, Eurana and twelve other ships passed to the Planet Steamship Company, newly formed to receive them from Green Star's bankruptcy. The ship remained principally engaged in the West Coast to East Coast trade for the next seven years. In 1930, together with several other vessels, Eurana was purchased by the Calmar Steamship Corporation, and renamed Alamar. The ship continued carrying various cargo between the East and West Coasts of the United States through 1941. On 27 May 1942, while en route from Hvalfjord to Murmansk carrying lend-lease war materiel to the Soviet Union during World War II as part of Arctic convoy PQ-16, she was fatally damaged by German aircraft bombs and was consequently scuttled by a British submarine to prevent her from becoming a menace to navigation.
Design and construction Early in 1915 James Rolph Jr., mayor of San Francisco and owner of the two shipping companies Rolph, Hind & Company and Rolph Coal and Navigation Company, placed an order with Union Iron Works to build a new vessel of approximately 9,000 tons. With Germany conducting unrestricted submarine warfare in early parts of 1915, European ship-owners suffered considerable shipping losses. As a result, the prices for new and existing ships and freight fees skyrocketed, prompting some entrepreneurs to enter the highly speculative shipbuilding business. In anticipation of increasing demand for vessels, Union Iron Works decided to build two ships of the same design and size instead of one.
On 1 June 1915, with much fanfare, Rolph himself drove the first rivet fastening the keel of his vessel, to be named Annette Rolph. A few days later Union Iron Works laid the keel for her yet unnamed sister ship. On 11 September 1915, Eurana Schwab, wife of Charles M. Schwab, pressed a button in her house in Bethlehem and the electrically operated guillotine cut the cord releasing the vessel into the water. Mrs. John McGregor, the wife of the president of the Union Iron Works, served as a local sponsor. As the ship slipped into the water, she was christened Eurana in honor of Mrs. Schwab. A few months later, in November 1915, while the new vessel was still under construction, she was purchased for $ by shipping magnate Frank Duncan McPherson Strachan of Savannah for use in the cotton trade between the southeastern United States and Europe.
Eurana was built on the three-island principle with fairly short well decks both fore and aft. The ship had two main decks and was built using the Isherwood principle of longitudinal framing, strengthening the body of the vessel. Her machinery was situated amidships and she also possessed all the modern cranes for quick loading and unloading of cargo. The vessel was equipped with a de Forest-type radio and had electric lights installed along the decks.
As built, the ship was long (between perpendiculars) and abeam, and had a depth of . Eurana was assessed at and and had deadweight tonnage of approximately 9,450. The vessel had a steel hull and a single steam turbine rated at , double-reduction geared to a single screw propeller that moved the ship at up to . The steam for the engine was supplied by three Scotch marine boilers fitted for oil fuel.
Sea trials were held on 16 January 1916 in the San Francisco Bay, just off California City in Paradise Cove. The vessel made several runs on a measured mile reaching an average speed of . Following successful completion of the trials, the vessel returned to Union Iron Works and her title was conveyed to her new owners, Walker Armstrong & Company.
Operational history In December 1915, when nearing completion, Eurana was chartered by the Sperry Flour Company to transport a large cargo of flour to Europe. After being transferred to her owners, the ship loaded part of her cargo and sailed out from San Francisco on 20 January bound for Tacoma to load the remainder of her cargo. On her way north, Eurana tried to aid the schooner Centralia which was embattled by storms, but in the dark and foggy weather, Eurana crew were unable to find the distressed vessel. Upon arrival in Tacoma, Eurana loaded 8,850 long tons of flour bound for France, the largest cargo to be sent there that year. The steamer finished loading on 3 February, and departed for France the same day, reaching Bordeaux on 21 April. Eurana returned to Newport News on 31 May, successfully concluding her maiden voyage. The freighter was then transferred to the control of a subsidiary of Walker Armstrong, the Southland Steamship Corporation, and proceeded to Jacksonville and then Savannah where she embarked a large cargo of various southern goods, such as rosin, turpentine, pig iron, tobacco, lumber and cotton, and departed for Liverpool. On her return voyage, she was stopped by a German submarine for inspection, but was released after examination. Eurana made three more trips to Europe, first with 8,200 tons of grain to Rotterdam, then one to France with record cargo of cotton and other southern goods, and finally one to England in January 1917 also with cargo loaded at Jacksonville and Savannah. Upon return to the United States, Eurana was sold by her owners on 26 April 1917 to the Nafra Company for about .
Nafra had recently entered into a contract with the Italian Government to transport 60,000 tons of metal from the United States to Italy. As the company could not charter vessels at reasonable rates it decided to buy three steamers, including Eurana, to fulfill the contract. Eurana managed to make two trips to Italy between May and October 1917, but on 12 October 1917, the United States Shipping Board (USSB) sent out a letter to all ship-owners advising them of imminent requisition of all vessels above 2,500 gross register tons for war purposes. Following a lengthy dispute, the requisition agreement was signed on 13 April 1918, and Eurana was placed under Shipping Board control on a bareboat basis. On 2 July 1918 the Shipping Board transferred Eurana to the War Department and her trips to the Mediterranean ended.
U.S. Navy service, World War I
Following her transfer to the War Department, Eurana was acquired by the U.S. Navy on 13 September 1918 and officially commissioned on 21 September. The freighter was put under control of Naval Overseas Transportation Service (NOTS), renamed USS Eurana and assigned identification number SP-1594. She was also defensively armed with two naval guns. Her first trip under Navy control was as part of convoy HN-86 carrying tanks and military supplies. After returning to New York on 24 February 1919, she was transferred to the Cruiser and Transport Force on 2 March 1919 and was thereafter used as a troop transport. On her next trip she returned home carrying 1,737 men of 326th Infantry and several "casuals", soldiers temporarily separated from their units, including Percy L. Jones, commander of the American ambulance service with the French Army. Eurana sailed once more to France, returning to New York on 14 September, following which she proceeded to Norfolk where she was decommissioned from the US Navy on 9 October 1919. Two weeks later, the Baltimore Dry Dock & Shipbuilding Company was awarded a contract for extensive repairs to Eurana following her naval service.
Return to commercial service While Eurana was undergoing repairs, the Nafra Company was reorganized and incorporated, together with all its assets, into the newly formed Green Star Steamship Corporation. After completion of repairs, Eurana was returned to her owners and sailed from Baltimore on 10 December 1919 for New York to load cargo bound for Italy. After returning from Italy in February 1920, Eurana was reassigned to the Far East trade and proceeded to Baltimore and Savannah. She embarked a full cargo of phosphates and cotton and departed from Savannah on 9 March bound for Kobe. While underway, she experienced problems with her turbines, and had to put in into Honolulu for repairs. After quickly finishing the repairs, Eurana continued to her destination, reaching Kobe on 3 May. The ship returned uneventfully to New York, arriving on 5 August. Upon discharging her cargo, the steamer continued to Baltimore where she loaded 8,000 tons of steel and departed for Singapore on 21 September. While on this trip, she again developed problems with her turbines and boilers and was forced to call at Honolulu on 30 October. This time the repairs took more than seven weeks and the ship eventually left on 23 December. However, about 120 miles out of Honolulu, she developed further problems with her turbines and had to turn back. It took more than a month to finish this third round of repairs and the freighter left port again on 4 February 1921. Before departure she went on an extended trial run to ensure all problems were resolved. On returning to harbor from the trial run, Eurana struck a pier, damaging her bow just above the waterline. The ensuing repairs took several more days, and the ship was finally able to depart on 10 February. The vessel reached Singapore on 3 July after stopovers in Shanghai and Hong Kong. She then continued on to Sourabaja and from there to Colombo where she developed more problems, this time with leaking condenser tubes and her feed pumps out of order. Nevertheless, the vessel was able to proceed slowly to Aden where she was repaired and from there continue on to Europe via the Suez Canal. Eurana finally returned to New York on 14 May 1922, finishing a nearly 20-month, trouble-filled, round-the-world journey.
By the time Eurana returned to the East Coast, her owners, the Green Star Steamship Corporation, were financially strained, and feeling the effects of a shipping crisis that had begun the prior year. The company had attempted a rapid expansion, acquiring close to forty vessels and incurring large debts. As business dried up and many ships were forced to be either laid up or sit idle in ports, the company defaulted on its debts and after a two-year-long struggle to get help from USSB, it was forced into receivership and sold its assets. Many vessels remained idle during this time, but in June 1922, Steele Steamship Company announced their intention to acquire seven of the ships for the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean to Pacific trade. That plan failed to materialize, as a subsequent rate war made profits from that route unlikely.
Planet Steamship Corporation In February 1923, the newly formed Planet Steamship Corporation took over the remaining assets of the Green Star Line. The new company acquired seven vessels including Eurana at two US Marshal's auctions with an intent to put them into West Coast to East Coast trade.
Eurana remained idle until late July when she was finally put into action and departed New York with almost 8,500 tons of general cargo and steel bound for Seattle. After stopovers at San Pedro and San Francisco, the vessel reached her destination on 13 September, and upon discharging the cargo proceeded to Tacoma, Everett and Portland to load more than 5,000,000 feet of lumber.