Built in 1914 by Maryland Steel, she was actually owned by the American Hawaiian Steamship Company for their Panama Canal Line, and licensed through the Far East State Shipping Company. In June of 1942, however, the ship had been re-flagged with the hammer and sickle and turned over to the U.S.S.R. to carry Lend-Lease shipments into Vladivostok. Amazingly, over 8,400,000 tons of food, arms trucks and planes had been delivered through open sea lanes on the Sea of Okhotsk, or flown in from Alaska, as Russia was effectively a “neutral” in the Pacific conflict of WWII. Tashkent was one of the intrepid general cargo ships bringing home the bacon. The ship had borrowed the name from a real Russian transport ship that had been sunk in a German air attack on Fedosia on new year’s day of 1942. Now the resurrected name was quietly passed on to the American owned boat, and no one was the wiser. That day, in September of 1942, the ship also had a curious young seaman aboard, Jimmy Davis. An Able Seaman and cargo handler, he had just finished offloading some containers to the quays of the Golden Horn Harbor, Vladivostok, when he happened to witness a very strange scene.
