USAT Buford
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USAT Buford was a combination cargo/passenger ship, originally launched in 1890 as the SS Mississippi. She was purchased by the US Army in 1898 for transport duty in the Spanish–American War. In 1919, she was briefly transferred to the US Navy, commissioned as the USS Buford (ID 3818), to repatriate troops home after World War I, and then later that year returned to the Army.
USAT Buford at Galveston harbor in 1915 | |
History | |
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Name |
|
Owner |
|
Builder | Harland and Wolff, Belfast |
Launched | 29 August 1890 |
Commissioned | By the US Navy on 15 January 1919 |
Decommissioned | 2 September 1919 |
Fate | Scrapped in 1929 |
General characteristics | |
Type | Cargo ship |
Displacement | 8,583 tons |
Length | 370 ft 8 in (112.98 m) |
Beam | 44 ft 2 in (13.46 m) |
Draft | 26 ft (7.9 m) |
Depth of hold | 30 ft 6 in (9.30 m) |
Propulsion |
|
Speed | 11 knots (20 km/h) |
Complement | 202 |
Armament | 2 × 3" mounts |
In December 1919, nicknamed the Soviet Ark (or the Red Ark) by the press of the day, the Buford was used by the U.S. Department of Justice and Department of Labor to deport 249 non-citizens to Russia from the United States because of their alleged anarchist or syndicalist political beliefs.
She was sold to private interests in 1923, contracted in mid-1924 to be the set for Buster Keaton's silent film The Navigator, and finally scrapped in 1929.