Bouquet, 1889
A small cluster or arrangement of flowers.
Builder: Frank W. Ofeldt, South Brooklyn, New York
Length: 25'
Beam: 5' 6"
Draft: 3'
Displacement:
Cost: $1,126
Commissioned: 10 August 1889
Decommissioned: N/A
Disposition: Wrecked on 29 August 1893
Machinery: Compound condensing steam engine
Performance & Endurance:
Max:
Cruising:
Deck Gear:
Complement:
Armament: None
Tender History:
The Bouquet was a small steam launch, built with a copper-sheathed oak hull, that entered service in 1889. She was originally powered by naphtha (a petroleum distillate) but was changed to coal burning in 1891. She was based in the 3rd Lighthouse District and served out of Sandy Hook, New Jersey.
She tended a string of experimental electrically lighted buoys in lower New York Bay. The project began in 1888 but was found to be impractical and it was suspended in 1903.
The Bouquet was wrecked at her moorings during a storm on 29 August 1893 and was declared a total loss.
Sources:
Cutter History File. USCG Historian's Office, USCG HQ, Washington, D.C.
Douglas Peterson. United States Lighthouse Service Tenders, 1840-1939. Annapolis: Eastwind Publishing, 2000.