The USS Bellingham (ID-3552) was a United States Navy cargo ship that served briefly during the final months of World War I. Originally laid down as the commercial steel-hulled, single-screw steam cargo ship SS War Herald by the Todd Dry Dock and Construction Company in Tacoma, Washington, she was completed in August 1918. The ship was subsequently renamed SS Bellingham and transferred to the U.S. Shipping Board before being commissioned into the Navy on October 30, 1918, at the Puget Sound Navy Yard in Bremerton, Washington. The vessel was assigned to the Naval Overseas Transportation Service, operating under a U.S. Army account. Its wartime service was limited, as it departed for San Diego shortly after commissioning, just days before the armistice. Bellingham then loaded nitrate cargo in Chile, making stops in Arica and Iquique before transiting to the Panama Canal, and ultimately arriving in Jacksonville, Florida, in December 1918. In early 1919, she transported steel and cotton from Charleston to France, arriving at Le Havre and Cherbourg amid port congestion. She then returned to the United States, arriving in New York in April 1919, where she transferred passengers and was prepared for decommissioning. Bellingham was decommissioned on May 10, 1919, and returned to the U.S. Shipping Board. She resumed commercial service until being laid up in 1923. Between 1929 and 1932, she was sold to the Soviet government and renamed Nevastroi. Based initially in Leningrad and later in Vladivostok, Nevastroi became known as one of Stalin’s "slave ships," transporting political prisoners to the Kolyma Gulag in Siberia during the late 1930s. During World War II, she served in the Pacific under Lend-Lease arrangements and underwent an overhaul in the United States. Her final fate remains uncertain; she was damaged and likely sunk after hitting a naval mine on August 16, 1945, and her name disappeared from Lloyd’s Register by 1960.

This description has been generated using GPT-4.1-NANO based on the Vessel's wikidata information and then modified by ShipIndex.org staff.