The New York Shipbuilding Corporation of Camden, New Jersey completed the ship in March 1930 and named her the SS Santa Clara.

Santa Clara had six water tube boilers with a combined heating surface of 28,800 square feet (2,680 m2) and a working pressure of 300 lbf/in2.

[1] Santa Clara was turbo-electric: her boilers supplied steam to two turbo generators which fed current to electric motors connected to her twin propeller shafts.

[1] General Electric made her turbo generators and propulsion motors, and her power output was rated at 2,660 NHP[1] Santa Clara gave more than a decade of civilian service.

[7] During this period Santa Clara is shown as being in the Pacific and in at least one large convoy, BT-201, departing New York on 4 March and arriving Brisbane on 6 April 1942.

[9] Over the next seven months Susan B. Anthony made three voyages bringing troops and supplies across the Atlantic to North Africa; the first to Casablanca and the remainder to Oran, Algeria.

[9] After a brief voyage to the Gulf of Arzeu ferrying men and equipment, she returned to Oran on 25 June 1943 to prepare for the Allied invasion of Sicily.

Just after 2200 hrs on the 11th a twin-engine plane commenced an attack run at her, but by the time it had closed within 1,500 yd (1,400 m), her anti-aircraft guns had shot it down in flames.

[9] For the next 10 months Anthony crossed and recrossed the Atlantic moving soldiers and cargo between various ports in the US, England, Iceland, Northern Ireland and Scotland in preparation for Operation Overlord, the cross-channel invasion of Europe at Normandy.

On these voyages she visited ports including Belfast, Northern Ireland; Holy Loch, Gourock, and Glasgow in Scotland; Hvalfjörður and Reykjavík, Iceland; Mumbles and Milford Haven in Wales, and Newport.

[9] Early in the morning of 7 June 1944, while transporting soldiers of the 90th Infantry Division through a swept channel off Normandy en route to Utah Beach, Susan B. Anthony struck a mine that exploded under her number 4 hold.

With Pinto and two destroyers alongside, the troops were evacuated expeditiously, without resorting to lifeboats or rafts, using cargo nets bridged to the adjacent ships.