Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger
Warship Wednesday Sept. 16, 2015: The little tug that could (and did)
This image of the Coast Guard Cutter Tamaroa was shot one year before it would sail into the vicious Halloween storm to save lives. USCG Photo courtesy Coast Guard Historian.
Here we see the see the Navajo-class fleet tug turned medium endurance cutter USCGC Tamaroa (WMEC/WATF/WAT-166) nee USS Zuni (AT/ATF-95) at sea in 1990. At the time the picture was taken, she was 47 years young and had a hard life already– but was yet to give her finest service. Further, she was probably the last ship afloat under a U.S. flag to carry a 3”/50!
With the immense U.S. Naval build-up planned just before WWII broke out, the Navy knew they needed some legitimate ocean-going rescue tugs to be able to accompany the fleet into rough waters and overseas warzones. This led to the radically different Cherokee/Navajo-class of 205-foot diesel-electric (a first for the Navy) fleet tugs.
These hardy 1250-ton ships could pull a broken down battleship if needed and had the sea legs (10,000 miles) due to their economical engines to be able to roam the world. Armed with a 3″/50 caliber popgun as a hood ornament a matching pair of twin 40mm Bofors and some 20mm Oerlikons they could down an enemy aircraft or poke holes in a gunboat if needed. In all, the Navy commissioned 28 of these tough cookies from 1938 onward, making a splash in Popular Mechanics at the time due to their power plant.
Their war was hard and dangerous with 3 of the ships (Nauset, Navajo and Seminole) meeting their end in combat.
The hero of our story, USS Zuni (AT-85) was laid down at Commercial Iron Works, Portland, Oregon 8 March 1943 and commissioned just seven months and one day later. After a brief time in Alaskan waters, she sailed to warmer parts of the Pacific and by the fall of 1944 was in active combat during the capture and occupation of Saipan and Guam then the Peleliu invasion. There she took the crippled USS Houston (CL-81), a Cleveland-class light cruiser with two torpedoes in her, under tow to Ulithi.
Guess who is on the other side of the rope just off camera to the right? Sigh, ships like the Mighty Z are unsung.
No sooner had this been accomplished then she rushed to the aid of another cruiser.
On the night of 3 November 1944, Atlanta-class light cruiser USS Reno, a part of Admiral Sherman’s TG 38.3 (which in turn was a part of the greater TF 38, the Fast Carrier Task Force), was torpedoed by the Japanese submarine I-41 east of the San Bernardino Strait while escorting USS Lexington. She was hit by two torpedoes; one of which hit her outer hull, didn’t explode, and was later defused. The other one exploded, which led to the death of 2 of her crew. 4 other crewmen were injured.
Looking aft on the starboard side of light cruiser USS Reno, showing her main deck awash. She was torpedoed by submarine I-41
After spending a night dead in the water, the cruiser was attacked by yet another Japanese submarine. Fortunately, for Reno the three torpedoes the submarine fired all missed. USS Zuni came to the rescue and towed Reno (with 1250 tons of seawater inside her and her decks nearly awash) some 1,000 miles to the safety of Ulithi.
Torpedoed light cruiser USS Reno under salvage, fleet tugboat USS Zuni alongside, 5 November 1944
Moving along with the fleet, Zuni was there for the Luzon operations, Formosa and Iwo Jima where she accidentally beached herself 23 March 1945 while attempting to pull USS LST-944 off the sand. In all she earned four battle stars for her service during World War II while dodging kamikazes, suicide boats and Japanese subs.
However, with the inevitable postwar drawdown, the Navy didn’t need over 70 newly built oceangoing tugs on the Navy List and chopped Zuni over to the USCG in a warm transfer on 29 June 1946 in New York harbor.
12 November 1946 , now-Tamorara under refit at USCG Yard, Baltimore Maryland; U.S. Coast Guard Photo.
The Coasties uncharacteristically renamed the ship, giving her the moniker USCGC Tamaroa (WAT-166), a historic Coast Guard name carried by a steam tug in the 1920s and 30s.
Tamaroa went through a number of changes, first of all landing her 20mm and 40mm guns, then swapping out her haze gray for a black and buff, then later all white (with a buff stack) scheme.
Bow view of the USCGC TAMAROA while on her trial run. 1947
Stationed at New York, New York, she served as a rescue and salvage ship for twenty years while conducting weather and oceanography missions, notably going to the rescue of USS Searcher (YAGR-4) in 1955 after that ship suffered a fire at sea, the Andrea Doria/Stockholm collision in 1956 and the yacht Nereid in 1960.
In 1963 she was embarrassingly sunk while in dry-dock in New York harbor when a drunk and disorderly crewmember opened the port side valves of Tamaroa‘s dock. Tamaroa had every seacock cut out of her; the stern tube packing was out at the time so she sank fast.
It took nine months and $3.2 million to rebuild Tamaroa and in 1966 the ship was reclassed (after the addition of an SPN-25 radar, new small arms locker, and new away boats) as a medium endurance cutter tasked primarily with LE missions– but still ready for SAR and support duties as well.
1987. Note the extensive awning over her stern for Haitian and Cuban migrants found at sea.
Over the next 28 years, this seagoing cop made more than a dozen large drug busts with her biggest being on patrol 400 miles east of New York City, on 25 September 1980, she seized the freighter M/V Roondiep carrying 20 tons of marijuana after first firing warning shots across the Panamanian’s bow.
She rounded this off with at least as many large seizures of illegal foreign fishing vessels encroaching on U.S. EEZ waters and U.S.-flagged ships such as the F/V First Light and its cargo of 3,000 pounds of illegal swordfish, impounded for a Hague Line violation. She did all this while still performing Ice Patrols, rescuing lost souls on the sea (she picked up more than 300 Haitian migrants on one 40-day patrol in the Florida Straits alone in the 1980s) and other sundry tasks.
In short, by 1990 when the first image of this post was taken, she was tired.
Nevertheless, when the call went up during the ‘No Name Storm‘ of Halloween weekend 1991, she did as she had for Houston, Reno, Stockholm, Searcher and others.
Immortalized in the book The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger (turned into a film of the same name), Tamaroa rescued three people from the sailboat Satori 75 miles off Nantucket Island in seas that built to 40 feet under 80-knot winds.
“The Coast Guard Cutter Tamaroa’s rigid hull inflatable rescue boat is sent to help the sailing vessel Satori. Satori, with three people on board, needed help about 75 miles south of Nantucket Island after being caught in a northeaster-like storm that raked New England on Halloween week.” Date: 30 October 1991 USCG Photo #: 911030-I-0000A-002
The Coast Guard Cutter Tamaroa’s battles heavy seas during Satori rescue.
Coast Guard rescue swimmer Petty Officer David Moore prepares three Coast Guardsmen from Tamaroa to be hoisted into a helicopter following the Satori rescue. U.S. Coast Guard photo.
The Tamaroa in the Storm USCG painting by Terrence Maley
The ordeal over, taps sounded–with reveille only 10 minutes later.
The Tamaroa was again fighting heavy seas (with 52 degree rolls registered on the old tug) to rescue the crew of a downed New York Air National Guard HH-60 helicopter from the 106th Air Rescue Group that had run out of fuel on a similar rescue mission. Tamaroa rescued four of the five Air National Guard crewmen, a rescue that earned the cutter and crew the Coast Guard Unit Commendation and the prestigious Coast Guard Foundation Award.
Tamaroa rescues helicopter crew USCG painting by William Kusche
Then she went right back to work until just past her 50th birthday, she was put to pasture.
According to the history written by a former crewman, on 3 December 1993, “Coast Guard Headquarters decided that Tamaroa‘s spectacular record of rescues at sea was coming to an end. Facing a $1 million yard overhaul, the Mighty Z, The Tam, the invincible vessel, faced the end of a distinguished career. Heavy cuts in other Coast Guard mission funding forced the end.”
Via Shipspotting
The 205-foot Medium Endurance Cutter TAMAROA, stationed at Governors Island, NY, stands ready for patrol duties. USCG painting by William Sturm.
Decommissioned by Coast Guard, 1 February 1994, she was the last Iwo Jima veteran to leave active duty.
She was given to the Intrepid Air and Space Museum (after all, she had called New York her hometown for most of her career). However with limited dock space, the museum soon transferred her to the Zuni Maritime Foundation, who docked her at Portsmouth, VA for restoration to her historic WWII condition. Tragically, she suffered a catastrophic engine room leak in 2012 that ended those dreams.
The foundation donated historical items from her to a number of museums then sold the hulk to one Timothy Mullane who got in hot water with the Virginia Marine Police and City of Norfolk officials over his “floating junkyard” of ships sitting on the Elizabeth River bottom. Mullane planned in 2013 to sink the ship as a reef, but I cannot find if and when that actually occurred and she was still seen in Mullane’s collection as late as June 2015.
Regina Gomez calls all the ships floating in the Elizabeth River close to her family’s property a floating junkyard. Notice the grey hull in the background– that’s Zuni! (David B. Hollingsworth | The Virginian-Pilot)
In the end, the Zuni/Tamaroa, with a long and distinguished history, may still be among us for some time to come.
Several of Zuni/Tamaroa‘s Navy sisters joined her at one time or another in Coast Guard service including USS/USCGC Chilula (AT-153/WMEC-153), USS/USCGC Cherokee (AT-66/WMEC-66), and USS/USCGC Ute (AT-76/WMEC-76), however Tamaroa outlasted them all.
As for the rest of her sisters, many continued in U.S. Navy service until as late as the 1970s when they were either sunk as targets or scrapped.
A number went as military aid to overseas allies in Mexico, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Indonesia and elsewhere. One sister, USS Apache (ATF-67) who served as the support tender for the bathysphere Trieste, was transferred in 1974 to Taiwan and continues to serve as ROCS Ta Wan (ATF-551), as well as USS Pinto (AT-90) who has been in Peru as BAP Guardian Rios (ARB-123), and USS Sioux (AT-75) who lingers as the Turkish Navy’s Gazal (A-587).
Specs:
Length: 205′ 6″
Beam: 39′ 3-1/4″
Draft: 15 as designed, 18 navigational draft 1994
Displacement: 1,641 tons (full load, 1966); 1,731 tons (full load, 1994)
Propulsion: Diesel-electric: 4 General Motors model 12-278 diesels driving 4 Allis Chalmers generators driving 4 electric motors; 3,010 SHP; single 4-bladed propeller
Performance:
Max: 16.1 knots; 4,055-mile range
Economic: 10.1 knots; 13,097-mile range (1966)
Fuel Oil: 66,363 (1994)
Complement: 5 officers/80 men (1943); 64 (1961); 84 (1994)
Armament: (1943)
1 x 3″/50 dual-purpose gun mount
2 twin 40mm AA gun mounts
2 single 20mm AA gun mounts
(1946)
1 x 3″/50, small arms
Electronics:
Radar: SPN-25 (1966)
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