1973 Sea Horse

If you saw the 2015 tugboat race, you may have glimpsed this vessel . . .

She’s the current vessel of Ship 243 of Sea Scouts.  Here’s what her current mate says about her:  “Sea Horse was built in 1973 by Swiftships in Morgan City La.

Designed as  for Vietnam, she was never was deployed.  For some time she was used in the San Francisco Bay area as a training ship for Navy Special Forces.  Then she was used by the CIA for what,  who knows. She was covered in radar absorbing tiles.  There was afire in the engine room and then mothballed before we got her.”

Click here for details of what Sea Scouts do.

 

 

Sea Horse has been hauled out and for regular maintenance, which always costs.  Click here for details about how you can help.  Given how difficult most of us know it is to find a work niche for our lives, Sea Horse is a valuable driver in that search;  I wish there’d been Sea Scouts around where I grew up.   If you do FB, check out Sea Scout Ship 243.  Click here and here for two posts about another community on the water program.

The first two photos are by Will Van Dorp.  The others are all used thanks to Robert Meseck, currently Mate and soon to be Skipper of the unit.

Click here for a previous swiftship post on this blog.

Government Boats 18

Know the boat behind this cutting edge?  Doesn’t this frontal view look like a human face with seriously trimmed upper lip whiskers a la cervantes?

Remember a vessel name that turned into a slur meaning “besmirch?”

It’s a swiftboat.  Until I saw a “swiftboat,” I hadn’t realized how much swiftboats look like the crewboats that run up and down the KVK.  Click here to read the origins of the design at Sewart Seacraft.  Looks like the company has evolved into swiftships, producing military and commercial vessels.  Now that I savor the new company name, it occurs to me that I saw a swiftships vessel (called Fort Jefferson) on Dry Tortugas.  I love it when connections happen where they’re not expected.

Here’s the encyclopedia of

info on swiftboats.

SS-285 Balao –cousin of ballyhoo –underwent the last overhaul of her career in  . . . Staten Island.  Read more on what once was attached to this conning tower and now lies on the bottom off north Florida here.

Here’s a foto of Barry I’d intended to include yesterday.  I certainly need to get back to the Navy museum, which

I now realize is easier to get to than I’d previously thought.  This is panel 2 . . . yesterday you may have seen panel 1.  What edifice is this?  Seriously, who wrote the text carved into this limestone?

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

Unrelated:  Silver worth $200 million lies unclaimed in one bottom location?