Mono was a “Hough” type built vessel, differing from the majority of “Ferris” type vessels that were built for the war effort. Edward S. Hough, a San Francisco naval architect devised a vessel design that was intended to be a maximum cargo carrier of simplest construction and was far more adaptable to use of young, yellow pine lumber than was the “Ferris” ship. Due to resource constraints, no fewer than eight basic wooden vessel types and one composite vessel type were utilized to produce the wooden emergency fleet vessels.