In 1916, perhaps anticipating the United States' entry into World War I and the coming wartime shipping boom, Tonawanda ship chandler James L. O'Connor ventured into the transportation business. He purchased the Naples and renamed it after his son, Frank.

The Frank O'Connor operated profitably during the war years, but wartime profits came at the expense of human lives. For the O'Connor Transportation Company, the cost included the death of young Frank O'Connor on a German battlefield on May 3, 1918. The young man's namesake met its own demise seventeen months later. On October 2, 1919, the Frank O'Connor caught fire and sank off the coast of Door County.

Read the tale of the O'Connor's final voyage