George Clymer was born in Philadelphia on 16 March 1739. He was a merchant who took the patriot side. He sat on the Pennsylvania Committee of Correspondence in 1774. From July 1775 to August 1776 he was one of the two treasurers of the Continental Congress, and he signed the Declaration of Independence on 2 August 1776. He was in the fighting at Princeton. In 1780 he joined Robert Morris and others in founding the Bank of Pennsylvania, and he was back in Congress from 1780 to 1783. He sat in the Pennsylvania Assembly from 1785 to 1789, in the Constitutional Convention in 1787, and in the First Congress from 1789 to 1791. In 1791 Washington made him supervisor of internal revenue for Pennsylvania. He resigned after the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794. In 1796 he served on a commission that treated with the Creek and the Cherokee in Georgia. He died at Morrisville, Pennsylvania, on 23 January 1813.
Ingalls Shipbuilding, at Pascagoula, laid her down on 28 October 1940 as African Planet. African Comet became Arthur Middleton, and African Meteor became Samuel Chase. The sister's account calls the three hulls C3-P and C. The line in this ship's Navy history prints the type as T. C3-P. She was launched on 27 September 1941. Mrs. Kathryn Stapleton sponsored her. She was renamed on 9 January 1942. The Navy acquired her and commissioned her on the same day, 15 June 1942. Captain Arthur Thomas Moen had her. On 1 February 1943 she was reclassified an attack transport. One account calls her Lucky George, and Greasy George. One cruise book gives her about 163,000 engine miles in the war and calls her the first United States Navy attack transport to serve in both the Mediterranean and the Pacific. The Navy history says she was one of the first transports to serve in both.
She sailed on 21 June 1942 by way of Charleston and reached Norfolk on 30 July. She trained in Chesapeake Bay. On 23 October she sailed with 1,400 men of the 9th Infantry Division, bound for French Morocco. On 7 November she joined Rear Admiral Monroe Kelley's Northern Attack Group. At midnight on 8 November she put assault troops into the boats for net-cutting and scouting against Mehedia and the fortress at Kasba. Before dawn the first wave hit the beach and met Vichy French resistance. Shore batteries fired on the transports and straddled her before she opened the range. The fighting ashore went on until 11 November. She finished debarking, unloading, and treating casualties on 15 November, completed the cargo at Casablanca, and sailed on 17 November. She was back at Norfolk on 30 November.
On 17 December she sailed with more than 1,300 Seabees. She reached Noumea on 18 January 1943, sailed on 23 January for Fiji, and reached Espiritu Santo on 30 January. The reclassification fell on 1 February, while she was in those waters. On 5 February she sailed in convoy and reached Guadalcanal on 7 February, put reinforcements ashore, and took casualties and Japanese prisoners aboard. For nearly the next nine months she ran cargo and troops from New Zealand, New Caledonia, the New Hebrides, and Fiji back to Guadalcanal. On 19 April she evacuated 38 Chinese and Fijian women and children who had been hidden on Guadalcanal for more than a year, and she took them to Noumea. Moen still had her for that evacuation.
Captain Frank Russell Talbot, Navy, Naval Academy class of 1921, relieved Moen on 12 September 1943. She was flagship for Rear Admiral T. S. Wilkinson and the 3d Amphibious Force. She left Guadalcanal on 30 October. Off Cape Torokina on 1 November she put the 2d Marine Raider Battalion ashore, then joined the other transports in a bombardment of the positions on the cape. She was at Port Purvis, on Florida Island, on 3 November. Over the next two months she made three runs to Bougainville with reinforcements and cargo from Fiji and Guadalcanal.
Captain Murvale Talcott Farrar, Navy, Naval Academy class of 1923, relieved Talbot on 1 January 1944. She kept up the troop and supply runs until 4 June, then staged at Guadalcanal for the Marianas and went by way of Kwajalein. She was off Saipan from 17 to 30 June as flagship of Rear Admiral L. R. Reifsnider's Southern Attack Group. She reached Eniwetok on 4 July. A photograph taken from Ringgold (DD-500) on 16 July shows her underway. She sailed the next day for Guam and was off Agat on 21 July. After the landing she served the Southern Transport Group as receiving ship, boat-pool tender, and medical station. She stayed at Guam until 20 August and reached Pearl Harbor, by way of Saipan, on 31 August.
Captain John Arthur Snackenberg, Navy, Naval Academy class of 1921, relieved Farrar on 5 September 1944. She got underway on 15 September by way of Eniwetok and Manus. On 21 October she put nearly 1,000 troops ashore at Dulag, on Leyte. She was at Manus on 28 October. A troop and cargo run to New Britain and back followed. On 11 November she sailed for the United States and reached San Francisco on 3 December for overhaul. Snackenberg was relieved on 25 January 1945. She sailed the next day.
Captain William Howard Benson, Navy, Naval Academy class of 1925, had her from 25 January 1945. The command list gives the end of his tour only as 1946, so the weeks at Bikini the next summer are not fixed to him or to the captain who followed. She reached Guadalcanal on 11 February 1945 and spent more than a month training for Okinawa. She left Ulithi in convoy on 27 March. Off Hagushi on 1 April she put troops and cargo ashore and sailed on 5 April. One cruise-book account puts her in Transport Division 35 with 51 officers and 1,251 troops of the 2d Battalion, 29th Marines. She went by way of Saipan and Pearl Harbor and reached San Francisco on 9 May.
After a conversion to a transport-squadron flagship, and a relief flagship for an amphibious force, she took 1,200 Seabees to Pearl Harbor from 21 to 27 July. She was back at San Francisco on 5 August with wounded. She sailed on 12 August for the Philippines and reached Manila on 7 September. On 25 September she put nearly 1,000 occupation troops of the 33d Infantry Division ashore at Wakayama. From 3 to 21 October she made a similar voyage from Leyte to Japan. From 31 October to 14 November, bringing men home, she carried more than 1,200 veterans from Saipan to San Francisco. From 27 November to 28 December she called at Guam and Saipan and then reached San Pedro with homebound troops. A direction dated March 1946 kept her on active duty with the Pacific Fleet.
From 1 June to 20 August 1946 she was at Bikini as flagship of Transport Division 11 for the atomic tests. She trained on the West Coast and in Hawaii until 15 December 1947, then sailed from San Pedro for the Far East. She reached Tsingtao on 20 January 1948 and spent more than six months on the China coast in support of Nationalist troops. She left Tsingtao on 5 August, landed troops at Guam, and went by way of Panama to Morehead City, North Carolina, on 17 September. She was at San Diego on 4 October. For the next nineteen months she worked off Alaska, the West Coast, and Hawaii. After the invasion of South Korea she left San Diego on 14 July 1950 with units of the 5th Provisional Marine Brigade and reached Pusan on 2 August, the landing being made at Masan. She was at Yokosuka on 7 August. At Kobe she embarked the 1st Marine Division for the landing at Inchon on 15 September. She served as control ship for the amphibious force and as a hospital ship, then reached Sasebo on 29 September with casualties. On 8 October she was back at Inchon to embark Marines. She sailed on 17 October for Wonsan and landed the troops on the 25th. She left Wonsan on 30 October, called at Yokosuka, and reached San Diego on 24 November.
She left San Diego on 4 June 1951, embarked at San Francisco, sailed on 6 June, and reached Yokosuka on 20 June. For the next ten months she worked landings on the Korean coast, rotated troops between Japan and Korea, and cruised from the Sea of Japan to the South China Sea. On 15 October she took nearly 500 survivors off the Japanese merchant ship Kongo Maru, which a typhoon had caught at Uku Shima. She left Yokosuka on 1 April 1952. Seven months in the United States followed. On 12 November she sailed from San Diego on a third deployment to Korea and reached Yokosuka on 29 November. She rotated troops among Korea, Japan, Okinawa, and the Philippines. On 27 July 1953, the day the armistice was signed at Panmunjom, she left Yokosuka. She reached San Diego on 22 August. After Korea she went out again and again with the Seventh Fleet. In August 1964 she was in the South China Sea after the Gulf of Tonkin incident. In the summer of 1965 she was at the landings at Da Nang and Chu Lai. One cruise book says that in August 1965 Captain John M. Thomas relieved Captain Whitman at San Diego, and that in February 1966 she went west for Vietnam. The Navy history, written while she was still there, leaves her in Vietnam. She was decommissioned on 31 October 1967. Her name was struck on 1 November 1968. She was scrapped in 1968. The Navy history gives her five battle stars for the Second World War and seven for Korea. One ribbon list breaks the wartime awards into one star on the Europe-Africa-Middle East ribbon and four on the Asiatic-Pacific ribbon. It also names the China Service Medal, the American Campaign Medal, the World War II Victory Medal, the Occupation medal for Asia, the National Defense Service Medal with two stars, the Korean Service Medal with seven, the Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal, the Vietnam Service Medal with three, and the service medals of the Philippines, the United Nations, the Republic of Vietnam, and the Republic of Korea.
