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USS Mount Vernon (AP-22) was a troop transport that served with the United States Navy during World War II. Prior to her military service, she was a luxury ocean liner named SS Washington.
Washington was launched in May 1933 by the New York Shipbuilding Company of Camden, New Jersey, and operated as a passenger liner from New York City to Plymouth, England, and Hamburg, Germany. Renamed Mount Vernon 6 June 1941, the liner was acquired by the Navy 16 June 1941 and commissioned at the Philadelphia Navy Yard the same day, Captain Donald B. Beary in command.
Converted for naval use by Philadelphia Navy Yard, Mount Vernon trained along the east coast while mounting tension in the Far East drew the United States toward participation in World War II. In the fall, the new transport joined a convoy at Halifax, Nova Scotia, and sailed for Cape Town, South Africa. As Mount Vernon steamed toward Cape of Good Hope, word arrived that Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor. A member of the crew reported that the Mount Vernon was at Singapore on December 7, 1941 and ordered out, due to intelligence from the British that an attack was imminent. On that side of the date line December 8, was the day the war began. This was said to be classified "Top Secret" and that the Cape Horn Story was a cover. The Mount Vernon was a fast converted liner and did not travel with convoys, at their slower speeds. The crew feared sub attacks because, they traveled alone and did not zig zag much. A machinist mate on the crew disclosed this in the 1970s.
However several reliable accounts including those of the soldiers on board confirm that the Mount Vernon was indeed part of the convoy known as William Sail 12x which sailed from Halifax, via Trinidad, and put in at Cape Town two days after the Pearl Harbor attack. They had been due to sail up the east coast of Africa headed for the conflict in the Middle East. But when Pearl Harbor happened, they changed plans and headed to Singapore. The William Sail 12x convoy was a response to Churchill's request to Roosevelt for help, and it is interesting that the troop carrying ships that made up the convoy, such as the USS Mount Vernon (AP-22) and USS West Point, were already converted from their civilian roles as passenger liners in advance of the Pearl Harbor attacks.
