Built as a passenger-cargo vessel under yard No 407 by Wm Cramp & Sons, Philadelphia for the Great Northern Pacific SS Co., Astoria, USA.
07 July 1914 launched as the GREAT NORTHERN, one sister NORTHERN PACIFIC.
Tonnage 8,255 gross, dim. 155.3 (bpp) x 19.23 x 6.4m. (draught)
Powered by 8 steam turbines manufactured by the builder, 25,000 hp, three shafts, speed 23 knots.
Accommodation for 648 first class passengers when she was sailing under the name H.F. ALEXANDER .
January 1915 completed.
She were built for the express service between Portland-Astoria and San Francisco and it was given that she were faster in this service than the Southern Pacific’s express trains connection between this ports.
During the winter season of 1915 till 1916 the two ships sailed also to Hawaii.
Financially the service was not a success and when World War I began the two ships were put up for sale.
17 September 1917 she was bought by the USA Navy and the GREAT NORTHERN was converted in a transport by the Puget Sound Navy Yard.
01 November 1917 commissioned as USS GREAT NORTHERN under command of Captain W. W. Phelps.
Embarking nearly 1,400 passengers at Puget Sound, including 500 "enemy aliens," women and children as well as men, GREAT NORTHERN sailed for the U.S. East Coast on 21 January 1918, reaching New York on 9 February via the Panama Canal and Charleston, South Carolina. On 7 March, she sailed from Hoboken, New Jersey, for Brest, France with 1,500 members of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF). GREAT NORTHERN returned to Hoboken on 30 March with wounded veterans. From then until August 1919, she made a total of 18 transatlantic voyages, first carrying troops to the fighting zones and then bringing home the victorious "doughboys". GREAT NORTHERN decommissioned at New York on 15 August 1919 and was transferred to the U.S. Army Transportation Service the same day.
While in the USATS, GREAT NORTHERN was based mainly in the Pacific Ocean. In late 1919 and early 1920, she made two long trips from Honolulu to Vladivostok to pick up approximately 3,000 American officers and men returning from the Allies' campaign against the Russian Communists. GREAT NORTHERN also took a Congressional party on a long Pacific inspection, touching at Hong Kong, Honolulu, Cavite, and then returning to San Francisco, California in the summer of 1920.
On 19 November 1921, GREAT NORTHERN’s name was changed by Presidential order to COLUMBIA to honor a name long famous in Navy annals. She remained in New York harbor, functioning as a floating command post, through the rest of 1921. COLUMBIA sailed for the Caribbean to join the annual Atlantic Fleet winter exercises on 7 January 1922, reaching Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, via Charleston and Key West, Florida on 18 January. Three days later she joined the battleships WYOMING, ARKANSAS, NORTH DAKOTA and DELAWARE at Guantanamo Bay.
COLUMBIA sailed north on 24 February, reaching New York on 27 February. That same day, Admiral Jones shifted his flag to MARYLAND, and COLUMBIA sailed for Chester, Pennsylvania. She decommissioned there on 4 March 1922 and was transferred to the U.S. Shipping Board. 1922 Returning to merchant service, she was renamed H. F. ALEXANDER with Pacific Steamship Co. / Admiral Lines. Who bought her for US$ 1 million. She was then used in the USA coastal lines mostly between Seattle-San Francisco and Los Angles but also sometimes used in the service between New York and Miami, until 1942, when she was taken over by the War Shipping Administration for use as a troop transport. Crew 559 and with a armament of 4 – 6 inch guns
Early 1942 taken over by the British Government and renamed as GEORGE S.SIMONDS and used for a short time as a transport, before she came again under the USA flag the same year
Renamed GEORGE S. SIMONDS, she served through World War II, was laid up in the Maritime Commission reserve fleet for a time, renamed as H.F.ALEXANDER and then scrapped.
1948 scrapped at Baltimore by Boston Metals Co.
USA Cinderella
Wikipedia.