U.S.S. Chaumont A Liberty Pass dated 22 May 1936 RG 2 undersize

U.S.S. Chaumont: U. S. Navy, May 1946. Plate Planche. In exceptionally good condition. Pinted slip of paper measuring 2.5 by 3.5 inches. Please feel free to inquire as to particulars and/or additional photographs. ... USS Chaumont, one of twelve 13,400-ton (displacement) Hog Island Type B (Design 1024) transports built for the U. S. Shipping Board at Hog Island, Pennsylvania, was laid down in November 1918 as the Shipping Board's Shope, launched in March 1920 as the U.S. Army's Chaumont, and completed a few months later. Excess to Army needs, she was transferred to the Navy and commissioned in November 1921. From her home port at San Francisco, Chaumont commenced a career of trans-Pacific troop service that initially consisted of voyages between California and Manila via Honolulu. In early 1924 Wallace Simpson, future mistress of the Prince of Wales, sailed to China aboard the Chaumont. Her husband happened to be stationed there as commander of the USS Pampanga. She entered into the society of Europeans in China and had an affair with Count Galeazzo Ciano, who later became Benito Mussolini's son-in-law and Foreign Minister. She spent over a year in China. Both she and her husband were back in the U.S. by September 1925, although living apart, and their divorce was finalized in December 1927. Two or three voyages in 1925-26 took her to Shanghai instead of Manila, and she continued to stop at Shanghai at least once during most subsequent years. In August 1926 she sailed from San Francisco through the Panama Canal to Annapolis. The return trip took her to Norfolk, where she was drydocked for routine maintenance, and then to Guantanamo. Such voyages between the East and West Coasts also became near-annual events. Chaumont's voyages to Shanghai provided important assistance to U.S. Far Eastern diplomacy during the 1920s and 1930s by supporting the Marine Corps units deployed to the International Settlement in that city to protect U.S. nationals there. At the end of January 1932 Japanese forces in the Settlement attacked nearby Chinese forces, leading to intensive fighting in the city. Chaumont was in Manila at the time, and on 31 January the Navy Department ordered her to embark the 1,000 men of the Army's 31st Infantry Regiment and sail for Shanghai. Responding rapidly, Chaumont cleared Manila with the troops on board on 2 February and arrived at Shanghai on the 5th. Five years later, in mid-September 1937, Chaumont rushed the 6th Marine Regiment to Shanghai to reinforce the 4th Regiment that was protecting the Settlement during the all-out Japanese effort to seize the city from tenacious Chinese defenders. Chaumont suffered two mishaps during her China service in 1936-37, a week-long period aground at Chingwangtao and a collision at Shanghai with the Italian cruiser Raimondo Montecuccoli.