USS Chaumont, one of twelve 13,400-ton (displacement) Hog Island Type B (Design 1024) transports laid down in November 1918 as SS Shope for the U.S.

Shipping Board, launched in March 1920[citation needed] at Hog Island, Pennsylvania by the American International Shipbuilding Corporation.

From her home port at San Francisco, she commenced a career of trans-Pacific troop service that initially consisted of voyages between California and Manila via Honolulu.

She also carried military supplies, Marine expeditionary forces, sailors and their dependents, and occasionally members of congressional committees on inspection tours, calling at ports from Shanghai to Bermuda.

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.

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.

Chaumont suffered two mishaps during her China service in 1936–37, a week-long period aground at Qinhuangdao and a collision at Shanghai with the Italian cruiser Raimondo Montecuccoli.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Chaumont was on one of her regular voyages from Hawaii to Manila, carrying sailors, civilian workmen, and cargo that included munitions.

[3] After two runs to Pearl Harbor, the now elderly transport was assigned to service between Seattle and Alaska, bringing men and supplies to assist in the defense of the Aleutians.