USS Ramona (IX-76), an unclassified miscellaneous vessel, was the only ship of the United States Navy to be named for a title character in a novel (Ramona by Helen Hunt Jackson). A steel-hulled schooner, her keel was laid down in 1920 by the Herreshoff Manufacturing Company, in Newport, Rhode Island. She was acquired by the Navy under bareboat charter from S. M. Spalding of Los Angeles, California, on 15 July 1942 and was placed in service 5 August 1942.