SS Cynthia Olson  SS "Cynthia Olson" was a cargo ship originally built in Wisconsin in 1918 as the SS "Coquina". Renamed in 1940, in August 1941 she was chartered by the US Army to transport supplies to Hawaii. While in passage between Tacoma, Washington and Honolulu on December 7, she was intercepted by the , which sank her with gunfire. Although the commander of the submarine ensured that all of the crew had escaped into boats, none of them was ever found. "Cynthia Olson" was the first United States Merchant Marine vessel to be sunk after the entry of the United States into World War II. SS "Coquina" was ordered by the United States Shipping Board during World War I. She was laid down in the late summer of 1918 and being built in prefabricated steel sections, was able to be launched on November 30. The ship was one of nine Emergency Fleet Corporation Design 1044 hulls known as "Laker, Manitowoc Type" ordered from the Manitowoc Shipbuilding Company in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. The yard is known to have completed six hulls with "Coquina", yard hull number 100, being completed in April 1919 assigned official number 217871 and signal letters LQRK. Ship's characteristics were , changed in the 1920 register to , registered length, beam with a depth of . Hostilities having ended with the Armistice of 11 November 1918, she was surplus to requirements and on completion, was laid up on Lake Michigan. In December 1919, "Coquina" was chartered to help export stocks of whisky which had been made unsaleable by the Volstead Act that had introduced prohibition in the United States. There followed another period of lying idle, this time in New York, until she was purchased in 1925 by Pillsbury and Curtis for the West Coast lumber trade. After a conversion and refit, she arrived in San Pedro Bay, California but was again laid up. In 1931, she was sold on again for the sum of $10 to the Los Angeles Steamship Company, which like Pillsbury was a subsidiary of Matson Navigation. In 1933 she was sold on to another Matson subsidiary, the California Steamship Company, and in 1936, was transferred to the parent company and finally began to work on chartered voyages along the West Coast carrying lumber. On January 1, 1940, the "Coquina" was put up for sale and was purchased by Olson Brothers of San Francisco for $85,000, who renamed her "Cynthia Olson".