SS Benjamin Contee was an American Liberty Ship type EC2-S-C1 built in 1942 by the Delta Shipbuilding in New Orleans, Louisiana as part of the Emergency Shipbuilding Program for World War II. She was laid down on February 2, 1942, launched on June 15, 1942, and completed on August 7, 1942. She was operated by the Mississippi Shipping Company for the War Shipping Administration as a United States Merchant Marine ship. She was a Maritime Commission design. Like other Liberty ships, she was 441 feet (134 m) long and 56 feet (17 m) wide, carried 9000 tons of cargo and had a top speed of 11 knots (20 km/h). Most Liberty ships were named after prominent deceased Americans. She was converted from a cargo ship to a troop transport ship. She is named after Benjamin Contee, an American Episcopal priest and statesman from Maryland. He was an officer in the American Revolutionary War, a delegate to the Confederation Congress, and a member of the first United States House of Representatives.

The American Ship Building Company was the dominant shipbuilder on the Great Lakes before the Second World War. It started as Cleveland Shipbuilding in Cleveland, Ohio in 1888 and opened the yard in Lorain, Ohio in 1898. It changed its name to the American Ship Building Company in 1900, when it acquired Superior Shipbuilding, in Superior, Wisconsin; Toledo Shipbuilding, in Toledo, Ohio; and West Bay Shipbuilding, in West Bay City, Michigan. With the coming of World War I, the company also acquired Buffalo Dry Dock, in Buffalo, New York; Chicago Shipbuilding, in Chicago, Illinois; and Detroit Shipbuilding, in Wyandotte, Michigan. American Shipbuilding ranked 81st among United States corporations in the value of World War II military production contracts.