USS Chaumont (AP-5)
Ports of Call July 1937 through June 1941

Ports of Call

I had contacted the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) for detailed information about the movements of the Chaumont during the time Roland served on board. All we knew was quite vague, something like "across the Pacific and to some port in China at least once."

The short answer is that U.S. Navy records are kept in three different locations:

Records up into mid-1941 are kept at the facility along the National Mall in downtown Washington DC.

1941 through 1967 are kept at the National Archives facility in College Park, Maryland.

1967 to the present at kept at the Navy Yard on the south side of Washington DC.

I had asked about the logs themselves, as that seemed like the obvious place to start. The problem is that the logs would add up to about 1,000 pages per year! The helpful staff at NARA suggested that I instead look for summaries of vessel movements derived from the detailed logs.

What I was looking for would be contained in: Record Group 45, Navy Records Collection of the Office of Naval Records and Library (Registers of Movements of Naval Vessels January 1900 through June 30, 1941).

They offered to make digital reproductions, although at a rather hefty per-page cost. But since I get to Washington on business a few times a year, I decided to do the research myself.

Doing the Research

Here you see the NARA building, at 700 Pennsylvania Avenue on the north side of the National Mall. This is the south side of the building, facing the mall. The entrance for the public exhibits is here.

For research, you need to go around to the north side, on Pennsylvania Avenue.

You first must pass through physical security. X-ray of everything you carry, and you must go through a magnetometer.

Then you sign in, and you must fill in a form listing descriptions and serial numbers of any laptop computer, digital camera, mobile phone, etc. You get a visitor's badge, and in you go.

NARA building in Washington DC
NARA ID card

The first stop once you have your badge is to get a researcher's pass.

You have to go through a PowerPoint presentation made with The World's Worst Font, and then show a government picture ID.

They take your picture, and you get an ID good for one year.

Once badged and IDed, you can go talk to a researcher specializing in the area of interest (for this case, maritime history) and fill in a material request. I had already exchanged letters with a researcher and so this was very simple.

They pull material off the shelves at specific times, three or four times a day. If the pull is scheduled for 11 AM, you will be lucky if the material shows up at the research room upstairs by noon.

You can go ahead upstairs and settle into the research room. First, however, you have to put pretty much everything you have with you in a coin-operated locker. $0.25, you get the quarter back when you unlock it.

You can take a laptop computer and its power supply, and a digital camera. You can not take them in their cases, you have to carry it all loose.

NARA research room
NARA research library and old records

No pencils, certainly no pens, no note paper, and so on.

If you want to take old-school hand-written notes, you must use the pencils and paper that they provide.

Non-flash digital photography seems to generally be just fine.

Eventually your requested volumes arrive on carts.

Now you can get to work.

Even with your laptop it's still pretty traditional. Here you vaguely see the KDE desktop environment running on OpenBSD, and /bin/vim is fired up and ready to transcribe.

Large desks and old-timey lamps.

The lamps are fastened to the desks.

Hope that's where you want it placed and how you want it aligned....

NARA research desk
One volume of naval records

The good news is that the records are carefully cared for.

The bad news is that penmanship was not a strong requirement when the records were created, so the records may be rather difficult to decipher.

One page of naval records

These volumes of "Movements of Vessels" were created back in Washington after the logs had been turned in. They are extremely terse records compared to the logs.

You see that different people did different parts of the work. The record for one ship will be harder and easier to read in various places.

Below are my transcriptions. Notice that the full-sized images (approximately 1 MB each) are also available. Contact me if you see any errors in my transcriptions!

Due to a mix-up by NARA staff, I was also given Quarterly Cruising Reports with even better information (also including times of arrival and departure, and time and distance covered en route) for July 1922 through June 1923. Here are images of those pages:

Movements of USS Chaumont

To make the most sense of these, see "Air Target Maps and Photos, China Coast, Ningpo to Canton. U.S. Pacific Command, 15 October 1944".

Washington DC, NARA

Record Group 45, Navy Records Collection of the Office of Naval Records and Library

Registers of Movements of Naval Vessels January 1900 through June 30, 1941

RG45: Vessel Movements (CHAUMONT / AP-5): 11W4 Row 8

Volumes 39, 40, 41

My comments are in square brackets, [....]

Image: top half of volume 39, page 129 Image: bottom half of volume 39, page 129

Volume 39
Page 129

Arrived		Date	Sailed From		For
		1937

Woosung		July 1

		July 1	Woosnung 		Chinwangtao
Chinwangtao	July 3

		July 5	Chinwangtao		Chefoo
Chefoo		July 5

		July 7	Chefoo			Tsingtao
Tsingtao 	July 8

		July 10	Tsingtao 		Shanghai
Shanghai 	July 11

		July 14	Shanghai 		Manila
Manila		July 22

		July 24	Manila			Guam
Guam		July 29

		July 30	Guam			Honolulu
Honolulu 	Aug 10

		Aug 13	Honolulu 		San Francisco
San Francisco	Aug 19

		Aug 21	San Francisco		Mare Island Yard
Mare Island Yard Aug 21

		Aug 25	Mare Island Yard 	San Diego
San Diego	Aug 27

		Aug 29	San Diego		Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor	Sep 5

		Sep 5	Pearl Harbor		Shanghai
						[written in margin:
						 "Fairway Burg Sept 19"]
		Sep 18	Yangtze Entr.		Shanghai
Shanghai 	Sep 19

		Sep 22	Shanghai 		Chefoo
Chefoo		Sep 24

		Sep 26	Chefoo			Tsingtao
Tsingtao 	Sep 27

		Sep 28	Tsingtao 		Shanghai
						[written in margin:
						 "Fairway Bring abt Sept 30"]
Shanghai 	Sep 30

		Oct 1	Shanghai 		Hong Kong
Hong Kong	Oct 4

		Oct 4	Hong Kong		Manila
Manila		Oct 6

		Oct 12	Manila			Shanghai
		Oct 17	Fairway Bnay		Shanghai
Shanghai 	Oct 17

		Oct 20	Shanghai 		Tsingtao
Tsingtao 	Oct 21

		Oct 22	Tsingtao 		Chefoo
Chefoo		Oct 23

		Oct 23	Chefoo			Yokohama [arrived Oct 27]

Image: top half of volume 39, page 130 Image: bottom half of volume 39, page 130

Volume 39
Page 130

Arrived		Date	Sailed From		For
		1937

Yokohama	Oct 27

		Nov 2	Yokohama 		Chefoo
Chefoo		Nov 6

		Nov 6	Chefoo			Tsingtao
Tsingtao 	Nov 7

		Nov 7	Tsingtao 		Woosung
S.E. Knoll Bnay	Nov 10

		Nov 10	S.E. Knall Bnay		Hong Kong
Hong Kong	Nov 12

		Nov 13	Hong Kong		Manila
Manila		Nov 14

		Nov 24	Manila			Off Northern Luzon
						Mue Honolulu
Honolulu 	Dec 7

		Dec 8	Honolulu 		San Francisco
San Francisco	Dec 15

		Dec 16	San Francisco		Mare Island Yard
Mare Island	Dec 17

		Dec 31	Mare Island		San Francisco
San Francisco	Dec 13

		1938

		Jan 5	San Francisco		San Pedro
San Pedro	Jan 6

		Jan 7	San Pedro		San Diego
San Diego	Jan 8

		Jan 8	San Diego		Honolulu
Honolulu 	Jan 16

		Jan 17	Honolulu 		Guam
Guam		Jan 19

		Jan 31	Guam			Manila
Manila		Feb 5

		Feb 7	Manila			Shanghai
Shanghai 	Feb 11

		Feb 18	Shanghai 		Manila
Manila		Feb 22

		Feb 25	Manila			Guam
Guam		Mar 2

		Mar 3	Guam			Honolulu
Honolulu 	Mar 14

		Apr 4	Honolulu 		San Francisco
San Francisco	Apr 10

		Apr 18	San Francisco		San Pedro
San Pedro	Apr 20

		Apr 21	San Pedro		San Diego
San Diego	Apr 22

Image: volume 39, page 161

Volume 39
Page 161

Arrived		Date	Sailed From		For
		1938

		Apr 26	San Diego		Canal Zone
Canal Zone	May 6

		May 9	Canal Zone		Guantanamo
Guantanamo	May 12

		May 12	Guantanamo		N.O.B Norfolk
N.O.B. Norfolk	May 16

		May 18	NOB Norfolk		Nyd Norfolk
Nyd Norfolk	May 18

Image: volume 40, page 129

Volume 40
Page 129

Arrived		Date	Sailed From		For
		1938

		Aug 19	NOB Norfolk		Guantanamo
Guantanamo	Aug 23

		Aug 23	Guantanamo		Canal Zone
Canal Zone	Aug 26

		Aug 29	Canal Zone		San Diego
San Diego	Sept 8

		Sept 10	San Diego		San Pedro
San Pedro	Sept 11

		Sept 13	San Pedro		San Francisco
San Francisco	Sept 15

		Sept 27	San Francisco		Honolulu
Honolulu 	Oct 4

		Oct 6	Honolulu 		Guam
Guam		Oct 18

		Oct 20	Guam			Manila
Manila		Oct 25

		Oct 27	Manila			Hong Kong
Hong Kong	Oct 29

		Oct 31	Hong Kong		Woosung
Woosung		Nov 3

		Nov 3	Woosung			Chinwangtao
Chinwangtao	Nov 5

		Nov 7	Chinwangtao		Shanghai
Shanghai 	Nov 11	(via Chefoo & Tsingtao)

		Nov 19	Shanghai 		Manila
Manila		Nov 23

		Nov 26	Manila			Guam
Guam		Dec 1

		Dec 2	Guam			Honolulu
Honolulu 	Dec 13

		Dec 15	Honolulu 		San Francisco
San Francisco	Dec 21

		Dec 22	San Francisco		Mare Island Yard
Mare Island Yard Dec 22

		1939

		Jan 9	San Francisco		San Pedro
San Pedro	Jan 11

		Jan 13	San Pedro		San Diego
San Diego	Jan 14

		Jan 17	San Diego		Canal Zone
Canal Zone	Jan 27

Image: volume 40, page 130

Volume 40
Page 130

		Jan 30	Canal Zone		Guantanamo
Guantanamo	Feb 2

		Feb 2	Guantanamo		N.O.B. Norfolk
NOB Norfolk	Feb 6

		Feb 23	N.O.B. Norfolk		Chulelra [?]
Chulelra [?]	Feb 28

		Mar 3	Chulelra [?]		Guantanamo
Guantanamo	Mar 5

		Mar 5	Guantanamo		Canal Zone
Canal Zone	Mar 8

		Mar 11	Canal Zone		San Diego
San Diego	Mar 21

		Mar 23	San Diego		San Pedro
San Pedro	Mar 24

		Mar 25	San Pedro		San Francisco
San Francisco	Mar 27	(Mare Island March 28-31)

		Apr 11	San Francisco		Honolulu
Honolulu 	Apr 18

		Apr 20	Honolulu 		Guam
Guam		May 2

		May 3	Guam			Manila
Manila		May 8

		May 11	Manila			Shanghai
Shanghai 	May 15

		May 15	Shanghai 		Chinwangtao
Chinwangtao	May 18

		May 19	Chinwangtao		Tsingtao
Tsingtao 	May 21

		May 23	Tsingtao 		Shanghai
Shanghai 	May 23

		June 2	Shanghai 		Hong Kong
Hong Kong	June 5

		June 6	Hong Kong		Manila
Manila		June 8

		June 10	Manila			Guam
Guam		June 15

		June 16	Guam			Honolulu
Honolulu 	June 27

		June 29	Honolulu 		San Francisco [arrived July 6]

Image: volume 41, page 129

Volume 41
Page 129

Arrived		Date	Sailed From		For
		1939

San Francisco	July 6

		July 20	San Francisco		Honolulu
Honolulu 	July 27

		July 29	Honolulu 		Guam
Guam		Aug 10

		Aug 11	Guam			Manila
Manila		Aug 16

		Aug 18	Manila			Shanghai
Shanghai 	Aug 22

		Aug 22	Shanghai 		Chinwangtao
Chinwangtao	Aug 25

		Aug 26	Chinwangtao		Taku Bar
				[Inku Bar?  No, the first letter looks like
				 most of this writer's T's, second letter is
				 probably "a" but possibly "u", next two
				 letters are definitely "ku".]
Taku Bar	Aug 26

		Aug 27	Taku Bar 		Chinwangtao
Chinwangtao	Aug 27

		Aug 30	Chinwangtao		Taku Bar
Taku Bar	Aug 30

		Aug 30	Taku Bar 		Chefoo
Chefoo		Sep 1

		Sep 1	Chefoo			Tsingtao
Tsingtao 	Sep 2

		Sep 2	Tsingtao 		Shanghai
Shanghai 	Sep 4

		Sep 12	Shanghai 		Hong Kong
Hong Kong	Sep 15

		Sep 16	Hong Kong		Manila
Manila		Sep 18

		Sep 20	Manila			Guam
Guam		Sep 25

		Sep 26	Guam			Honolulu
Honolulu 	Oct 9

		Oct 9	Honolulu 		San Francisco
San Francisco Area  Oct 14

		Oct 30	San Francisco		San Pedro
San Pedro	Nov 1

		Nov 2	San Pedro		San Diego
San Diego	Nov 3

		Nov 6	San Diego		Canal Zone
Canal Zone	Nov 16

		Nov 20	Canal Zone		Guantanamo
Guantanamo	Nov 23

		Nov 24	Guantanamo		NOB Norfolk
NOB Norfolk	Nov 28	[remained in Norfolk until following April]

Image: volume 41, page 130

Volume 41
Page 130

Arrived		Date	Sailed From		For
		1940

		Apr 3	NOB Norfolk		Charleston [after 4 months at Norfolk]
Charleston	Apr 4

		Apr 5	Charleston		Guantanamo
Guantanamo	Apr 8

		Apr 9	Guantanamo		Canal Zone
Canal Zone	Apr 12

		Apr 15	Canal Zone		San Diego
San Diego	Apr 24

		Apr 29	San Diego		Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor	May 7

		May 14	Pearl Harbor		San Pedro
San Pedro	May 22

		June 5	San Pedro		San Francisco
San Francisco	June 6

		June 21	San Francisco		Honolulu
Honolulu 	June 28

Image: volume 42, page 159

Volume 42
Page 159

Arrived		Date	Sailed From		For
		1940

		July 1	Honolulu 		Guam
Guam		July 13

		July 15	Guam			Manila
Manila		July 20

		July 22	Manila			Shanghai
Shanghai 	July 27

		July 28	Shanghai 		Chinwangtao
Chinwangtao	July 31

		July 31	Chinwangtao		Chefoo
Chefoo		Aug 1

		Aug 1	Chefoo			Tsingtao
Tsingtao 	Aug 5

		Aug 5	Tsingtao 		Shanghai
Shanghai 	Aug 7

		Aug 8	Shanghai 		Hong Kong
Hong Kong	Aug 11

		Aug 11	Hong Kong		Manila
Manila		Aug 13

		Aug 14	Manila			Guam
Guam		Aug 19

		Aug 19	Guam			Honolulu
Honolulu 	Aug 28

		Aug 29	Pearl Harbor (Hon.)	San Francisco
San Francisco	Sep 5

		Sep 16	San Francisco		Honolulu
Honolulu 	Sep 22

		Sep 23	Honolulu 		San Pedro
San Pedro	Sep 29

		Sep 30	San Pedro		San Francisco
San Francisco	Oct 1

		Oct 12	San Francisco		Honolulu
Honolulu 	Oct 18

		Oct 19	Honolulu 		Midway
Midway		Oct 25

		Oct 25	Midway			Guam
Guam		Oct 31

		Oct 31	Guam			Manila
Manila		Nov 5

		Nov 6	Manila			Chinwangtao
Chinwangtao	Nov 12

Image: volume 42, page 160

Volume 42
Page 160

Arrived		Date	Sailed From		For
		1940

		Nov 12	Chinwangtao		Shanghai
Shanghai 	Nov 14

		Nov 19	Shanghai 		Hong Kong
Hong Kong	Nov 21

		Nov 23	Hong Kong		Manila
Manila		Nov 25

		Nov 27	Manila			Guam
Guam		Dec 1

		Dec 2	Guam			Wake Island
Wake Island	Dec 6

		Dec 6	Wake Island		Honolulu
Honolulu 	Dec 11

		Dec 12	Honolulu 		San Francisco
San Francisco	Dec 18

		1941

		Jan 10	San Francisco		San Pedro
San Pedro	Jan 11

		Jan 13	San Pedro		San Diego
San Diego	Jan 13

		Jan 15	San Deigo		Honolulu
Honolulu 	Jan 21

		Jan 23	Honolulu 		Wake Island
Wake Island	Jan 30

		Jan 30	Wake Island		Guam
Guam		Feb 5

		Feb 6	Guam			Manila
Manila		Feb 10

		Feb 11	Manila			Chinwangtao
Chinwangtao	Feb 16

		Feb 17	Chinwangtao		Shanghai
Shanghai 	Feb 19

		Feb 20	Shanghai 		Hong Kong
Hong Kong	Feb 22

		Feb 24	Hong Kong		Manila
Manila		Feb 26

		Mar 10	Manila			Guam
Guam		Mar 14

		Mar 15	Guam			Wake Is.
Wake Is.	Mar 19

Cont'd on page 162

Image: volume 42, page 162

Volume 42
Page 162

Arrived		Date	Sailed From		For
		1940				[Erroneous header!  Pretty
						 obviously should be 1941!]

		Mar 19	Wake Island		Honolulu
Honolulu 	Mar 24

		Mar 25	Honolulu 		San Francisco
San Francisco	Mar 31

		Apr 15	San Francisco		San Pedro
San Pedro	Apr 16

		Apr 17	San Pedro		San Diego
San Diego	Apr 17

		Apr 19	San Diego		Canal Zone
Canal Zone	Apr 28

		May 1	Canal Zone		Guantanomo
Guantanamo	May 3

		May 3	Guantanamo		NOB Norfolk
NOB Norfolk	May 7

		June 5	Norfolk			Bermuda
Bermuda		June 7

		June 9	Bermuda			St Thomas
St Thomas	June 12

		June 12	St Thomas		San Juan
San Juan	June 12

		June 14	San Juan 		Guantanamo
Guantanamo	June 16

		June 18	Guantanamo		Kingston, Jamaica
Kingston, Jamaica	June 19

		June 19	Kingston, Jamaica	Colon, C.Z.
Colon, C.Z.	June 21

		June 23	Colon, C.Z.		Guantanamo
Guantanamo	June 25

		June 25	Guantanamo		Norfolk
Norfolk		June 29

Cont'd in Volume 43 page 225

Volume 43 is not at the downtown Washington NARA facility. These records starting with 1941 must be at the NARA College Park, Maryland facility.

Further Pages

Back to the overview History of the ship Photos from history.navy.mil Photos from navsource.org Photos from the Panama Canal and Shanghai Photos of envelopes and letters sent from on board, pennants, etc