SS Monte Carlo

The SS Monte Carlo was a concrete ship launched in 1921 as the oil tanker SS McKittrick. In 1936 she became a gambling and prostitution ship operating in international waters off the coast of Coronado, California.

To reduce the utilization of steel during World War I, on 12 April 1918, President Woodrow Wilson approved the construction of concrete ships, overseen by the Emergency Fleet Corporation . In total, 24 ships were approved for construction. Only 12 ships were completed by the 1918 armistice. Although the remaining unbuilt ships were cancelled, a 13th and final ship was under construction at the Newport Shipbuilding Company yard in Wilmington, North Carolina. This third Design No. 1070 concrete oil tanker sister ship to the previously completed Sapona and Cape Fear became known as Old North State. Author Norman Lang McKellar believed construction was completed in 1921 under the temporary name of Tanker No. 1, probably heavily modified from its original EFC design. Tanker No. 1 was used by the U.S. Quartermaster Corps until 1923, when the vessel was purchased by the Associated Oil Company of San Francisco and re-purposed as the commercial oil tanker McKittrick. McKittrick was powered by a single Nordberg triple expansion steam engine which was the same unit for other EFC concrete vessels.

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