Snohomish, 1944
WYT / WYTM-98
A Native American tribe located in and around current-day Edmonds, Washington.
Builder: Ira S. Bushey & Sons, Brooklyn, New York
Length: 110'
Beam: 26' 5"
Draft: 11' 6"
Displacement: 384 tons (fl)
Cost: $622,677
Commissioned: 2 May 1944
Decommissioned: 4 April 1986
Disposition:
Machinery: 1 x electric motor driven by 2 Elliot Electric Company generators driven by 2 Ingersoll Rand 8-cylinder diesels; single propeller.
Electronics: SO-2 radar (1945)
Firefighting Equipment: 2 fire monitors (1,500 gpm pumping capacity); P250 pumps
Complement: 16
Armament: 2 x 20mm/80 (single-mount; 1944)
Class History:
These 110-foot tugs were contracted for on 8 June 1941. Their design was based on an earlier 110-foot Calumet-class design which had entered commissioned service beginning in 1934. The newer design simply incorporated changes needed for operations in Greenland waters, including light icebreaking, as well as better fire-fighting capabilities.
Cutter History:
The Snohomish was launched on 10 September 1943 and was placed in commission on 2 May 1944 under the command of LTJG Samuel K. Gamache. She was initially assigned to the First District and was stationed at Boston, Massachusetts. Her missions included search and rescue, firefighting, towing assistance, light ice breaking, and law enforcement, including customs' boardings of merchant vessels and fisheries patrols.
In 1947 she was transferred to Rockland, Maine. From the months of mid-December to March, she spent approximately 70-percent "of all daylight hours underway keeping the Penobscot River ice-free for oil transport to Bangor, Maine." She also spent many years representing the United States at the International Boat Races at Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. On 4 October 1950, along with the cutters Acushnet and Cowslip, she succeeded in freeing the M/V Berwindale which had run aground in the Kennebec River. In mid-July 1965 she assisted in the unsuccessful search 85 miles east of Nantucket, Massachusetts, for a ditched USAF C-121. On 24 October 1967 she helped fight a fire on the Indian M/V Vishva Mangal near Searsport, Maine. On 8 October 1968 she towed the disabled F/V Halhawk 25 miles east-southeast of Matinicus Island to Rockland, Maine. In late June and early July of 1971, while under the command of CWO William F. Young, Snohomish was ordered to conduct a fisheries management patrol in the waters south of Cape Cod and west of 69-degrees west. During June of 1979, while under the command of CWO Robert L. Joubert she steamed to the waters of New York harbor to relieve three cutters that had been hauling garbage barges between New York City and land fills in Staten Island. Here, along with the CGC Chinook, she carried on their task of moving garbage scows from a Staten Island landfill site to refuse pick-up points in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. She and her crew were awarded commendation ribbons for this effort.
She was damaged when she struck a submerged object while breaking ice on the Penobscot River on 13 January 1984. Her hull was patched and she returned to service. She was decommissioned while under the command of CWO3 Dana Lewis on 4 April 1986.
Sources:
Cutter History File. USCG Historian's Office, USCG HQ, Washington, D.C.
Robert Scheina. U.S. Coast Guard Cutters & Craft of World War II. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1982.
Robert Scheina. U.S. Coast Guard Cutters & Craft, 1946-1990. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1990.