West Mahomet was built as part of the United States Shipping Board's World War I emergency wartime shipbuilding program.

[4] On 29 November, West Mahomet departed Seattle with a cargo of 7,886 tons of flour on a postwar Eastern European famine relief mission.

Subsequent records of the ship's movements are scarce, but it appears she remained active through the 1920s, operating from various ports in the United States to destinations as diverse as Brest, St. Nazaire and Le Havre, France;[7] Liverpool, England;[8] Kobe, Japan[9] and Singapore.

[10] West Mahomet made headlines in January 1924 when an unidentified murder victim found in the Fourth Avenue subway station at Twenty-fifth Street, Brooklyn turned out to be a member of the ship's crew.

[11] By 1930, the Great Depression was having an effect on international trade, and hundreds of ships, including West Mahomet, were laid up in ports around the United States with no work in this period.