Laid down 25 July 1907 Decommissioned 30 September 1924 Launched 16 May 1908 Weight 767.1 tons | Commissioned 4 May 1909 Construction started 25 July 1907 Length 45 m | |
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Name USS Patuxent (Fleet Tug No. 11) Namesake The Patuxent River in Maryland Builder Norfolk Navy Yard, Portsmouth, Virginia | ||
The first USS Patuxent (Fleet Tug No. 11, later AT-11) was a fleet tug in commission in the United States Navy from 1909 to 1924. She served the United States Atlantic Fleet and saw service in World War I. After the end of her Navy career, she was in commission in the United States Bureau of Fisheries from 1926 to 1932 as the fisheries research ship Albatross II.
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Construction and commissioning
Patuxent, the first U.S. Navy ship to bear that name, was a two-masted, steel-hulled, sea-going tug, laid down on 25 July 1907 by the Norfolk Navy Yard at Portsmouth, Virginia, and launched on 16 May 1908. She was commissioned on 4 May 1909 as USS Patuxent (Fleet Tug No. 11).
United States Navy service
Patuxent spent her naval career operating with the U.S. Atlantic Fleet, providing the services of a sea-going tug to diverse elements of the fleet. She served during World War I, and in the aftermath of the war was outfitted as a minesweeper and took part in 1919 in the sweeping of the North Sea Mine Barrage. When the U.S. Navy adopted its modern hull code system on 17 July 1920, she was redesignated USS Patuxent (AT-11).
The Navy decommissioned Patuxent on 30 September 1924.
United States Bureau of Fisheries Service
In January 1926, the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries decommissioned the fisheries research ship Fish Hawk and required a replacement. Accordingly, the United States Department of Commerce acquired Patuxent from the Navy that year and assigned her to the Bureau of Fisheries to replace Fish Hawk. The Bureau of Fisheries commissioned her into service in 1926 as Albatross II for service in the North Atlantic Ocean.
Albatross II served on fisheries research duties for six years. She surveyed the fishing grounds off New England and studied the biology of some of the more commercially valuable marine species of the area. Albatross II's collecting of marine species supported important studies of haddock eggs and larvae by Lionel A. Walford, Atlantic mackerel biology by Oscar Elton Sette, and plankton by Henry Bryant Bigelow and Mary Sears. William C. Herrington experimented aboard Albatross II with "savings gear," large mesh nets designed to permit the escape of undersized fishes through the otter trawls as a way of helping to preserve the fish population. These and later experiments laid the foundation for mesh regulations established later for commercial fishing in the northwestern Atlantic Ocean.
The aging Albatross II required a great deal of maintenance, and by 1932 most of the funds allocated to operating her had to be spent on repairs. The Bureau of Fisheries deemed her no longer economically practical to operate and decommissioned her in 1932. In 1934, the Department of Commerce returned the ship to the U.S. Navy.
Final disposition
The ship was stricken from the Navy List on 29 June 1938. She was sold on 16 March 1939.