Warship Wednesday, Aug. 23, 2023: The Last Violet
Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger
Warship Wednesday, Aug. 23, 2023: The Last Violet
USCG Historian’s Photo 220211-G-G0000-010
Above we see the Department of Commerce’s United States Lighthouse Service’s Violet-class coast-wise tender Lilac standing by the wreck of a derelict sailing ship in New York harbor, circa 1930s, with Lady Liberty in the background, likely during one of the vessel’s regular trips to the Service’s St. George Depot on Staten Island. If you look closely, you’ll note the USLHS’s brass lighthouse emblem bolted to her bow.
Lilac would later go on to serve, including a spell in haze gray, for another 40 years, and continues to clock in today.
The last tenders of the USLHS
The U.S Lighthouse Establishment was founded in 1789 and morphed across several iterations until, as the U.S Lighthouse Board in the 1890s, developed a basic design for its largest steam tenders that would remain little changed for a century. Between 1892 and 1939, no less than 33 such large coast-wise tenders were built, typically ranging in length from 164 to 174 feet and outfitted to carry about two dozen crew to work a series of large steam-powered booms to service a growing array of federally maintained aids to navigation– 11,713 in 1910 when the USLHS was formed swelling to 30,420 by 1939. These included lighted aids (lighthouses, lightships, and buoys), fog signals, radio beacons, unlighted buoys, and daymarks.
The trio of Violet class tenders (joined by the near-sister Arbutus) was led by the Manitowoc-built USLHT Violet, contracted in September 1929, followed by our Pusey & Jones Co. built Lilac and Mistletoe. Modern vessels, they were built almost entirely of riveted steel, including hulls, decks, deckhouses, and masts, edged with wood as a protective against heavy buoys, chains, and cement anchors. They had electric lights throughout and refrigerated storerooms.
Some 173 feet in length (163 feet six inches on the waterline) the class had a molded breadth of 32 feet, and the minimum depth of hull at the side, from the top of the main deck to the top of the keel, of 14 feet 6 inches. At a displacement of approximately 770 tons (799 is full load), the draft is 10 feet seven inches in salt water, essential to being able to tread in hazardous shoals.
Early plans of near-sister Arbutus, which was of the same overall type although slightly deeper of hold and with Foster-Wheeler boilers rather than Babcock & Wilcox as used by the Violets.
Arbutus out of the water before launch at Pusey & Jones. Note the wooden strakes to protect her hull while working buoys and the USLHS lighthouse insignia on her bow. (USCG photo)
The fuel capacity of the class was 29,000 gallons of fuel oil for their pair of Babcock & Wilcox boilers, each driving a triple expansion engine. The designed top speed of the class was approximately 13.7 knots at 1,000 hp– although later maximum speed was in the typically 11.5 knot range. They were not built as racehorses. The range, at 10 knots, was 1,734 nm which allowed them to range along the coast and keep station for weeks if needed.
Lilac, seen here ready for launch at Wilmington Delaware in 1933. She was moved through the water by twin four-bladed propellers 7 feet 5 inches in diameter. Each propeller was driven by a triple expansion, reciprocating steam engine developing 500 indicated horsepower at 160 revolutions per minute. The engines were built by the ship’s builders, Pusey & Jones of Wilmington, Delaware, and had high, intermediate, and low-pressure cylinders 11 1/2, 19, and 32 inches in diameter respectively with a 24-inch stroke. Steam to operate the engines and booms was supplied at 200 pounds per square inch by two Babcock & Wilcox oil-fired watertube boilers. (Hagley Library)
The deck gear included a 20-ton capacity boom with a steam-powered hoist, here seen in action aboard Lilac in 1948. (Philadelphia Inquirer archives)
Besides normal crew berthing of about six officers and 20 crew while on USHLS orders, the class also had spare accommodations to allow ferrying rotating crew members to lightships and keepers to lighthouses as well as providing space for district and national officials on periodic inspection tours.
Meet Lilac
Our subject had been planned to be named Azalea, contracted on 13 April 1931 to Hampton Roads Shipbuilding of Portsmouth, Virginia. However, Pusey & Jones subsequently underbid Hampton Roads, and the former was awarded the contract, after which the USLHS changed the new tender’s name to Lilac.
The name “Lilac” was the second in the USLHS, with the first being a 155-foot tender built in 1892 that served in the Navy during the Great War on patrol off the East Coast and in the Caribbean.
Ordered for $334,900 from Pusey & Jones on 16 August 1932, she was launched on 26 May 1933 and entered service with the service later that same year under the command of Capt. Andrew J. Davidson, a man who began his long career 42 years prior as a ship’s carpenter aboard the lighthouse tender Zizania and would be her skipper for five years.
USLHS Lighthouse Tender Lilac, NARA Identifier 26-LG-69-64
Lilac was assigned to the Fourth Lighthouse District, which covered the Delaware River, from Trenton, New Jersey south to the mouth of the Delaware Bay. She replaced the old (c. 1899) tender Iris and was based in Edgemoor, Delaware, just north of the mouth of the Christina River, where she would spend the next 15 years. Among her more famous charges was the Breakwater Lighthouse, founded in 1885 and now part of the Cape Henlopen State Park.
The Delaware Breakwater Lighthouse. LOC.
Joining the Coast Guard
On 1 July 1939, with the world edging towards war, the USLHS merged with the U.S. Coast Guard, which is still in charge of the maintenance and operation of all U.S. lighthouses, lightships, and aids to navigation. Lilac and her sisters were among 63 existing and building tenders of all sorts transferred to the USCG. With that, the triangular pennant of the Lighthouse Service was lowered for the last time on 7 July and the Coast Guard pennant ran up.
Upon commissioning into the Coast Guard, the vessels were given the WAGL designation meaning “auxiliary vessel, lighthouse tender” with the “W” being the USCG’s service differentiator. Lilac’s pennant number, therefore, became WAGL-227.
Other changes included repainting the all-black stacks to the standard Coast Guard buff with a black cap and removing the brass USHLS lighthouse emblems from the bows. Internally, the complement switched to two officers, two warrant officers, and 34 enlisted. Room for a small arms locker was set aside and plans were made to mount a topside armament drawn up.
When the Coast Guard was transferred to the Navy under Executive Order 8929 of 1 November 1941, out came the guns and thick haze grey paint. The Violets would pick up a single 3″/50 DP mount on the foc’sle, a pair of 20mm/80 Oerlikon single mount amidships behind the wheelhouse, and a pair of depth charge tracks over the stern. They would also, late in the war, pick up an SO-1 (Violet, Lilac, and Arbutus) or SO-8 (Mistletoe) detection radar on the top of their masts and WEA-2 sonars.
Mistletoe seen in 1943 during WWII before she had her SO-8 radar fit.
Lilac seen in late Sept. 1945, with her armament apparently landed but still wearing her “war paint.” 4th Naval District Photographer WC Dendal
Lilac would spend her war in the 5th Naval District on orders in the Delaware River system and would be fitted with a degaussing system for protection against magnetic mines laid off the mouth of the Delaware Bay by German U-boats. She would stand by when they brought in the surrendered U-858 in May 1945 and docked her at Fort Mills.
Mistletoe and Violet, also under 5th District Orders based in Norfolk and Baltimore, respectively, would work in Chesapeake Bay during the war.
Arbutus, assigned to the 1st Naval District, was used as a net tender at Newport RI. Her armament would be much the same with the exception of a smaller 3″/23 rather than a 3″/50 and a BK series radar initially fitted as early as 1943.
The men who tended the lights and buoys were in the war as well, and it should be remembered the USLHS lightship LV-71 was sunk in the Great War by the German submarine U-104 near Diamond Shoals, North Carolina while the unarmed USCG Speedwell-class buoy tender Acacia (which had joined the old USLHS in 1927) was sent to the bottom by gunfire from U-161 in 1942 during WWII. Another tender, the former 173-foot circa 1904 USLHT Magnolia, was lost in USCG/Navy service in 1945 when the American Mail Line freighter SS Marguerite Leland in Mobile Bay ran her down.
Postwar
Postwar, Lilac and her sisters would return to a more typical life, reverting to their peacetime livery. At first this would be a black hull with a white superstructure and bow eyebrow and buff stack with a black cap.
Tender Lilac 5 Sept 1946 near Burlington NJ Photographer McKisky
Tender Lilac 5 Sept 1946 at Harbor of Refuge. Note the radar fit on her mast top. Photographer McKisky
Mistletoe, 1947, note her SO-8 radar on her top mast. USLHS Digital Archive
Then this would change to an all-black hull, losing the eyebrow, and wearing large white hull numbers.
Tender Lilac 5 W227 1950s
Lilac underway circa 1940s (U.S. Coast Guard)
Lilac with unidentified light
In 1948, Lilac was transferred to Gloucester City, New Jersey, where, in addition to her ATON work, would be remarkably busy in a series of SAR cases.
As detailed by the Coast Guard Historian’s Office, here is just a two year-run down:
- On 15 to 17 May 1952, she assisted following the collision between the motor vessels Barbara Lykes and F. L. Hayes in the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal.
- On 22 May 1952, she assisted the tug Pateo and the Atlantic Dealer in the Delaware River.
- On 26 May 1952, she assisted following the collision between the tanker Michael and the motor barge A. C. Dodge near Ready Island.
- On 30 January 1953, she assisted the fishing vessel Benjamin Brothers in the Delaware River.
- From 6 to 12 June 1953, she assisted following the collision between the tankers Pan Massachusetts and the Phoenix in the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal.
- On 24 and 25 June 1953 she fought the fire on board the tanker Pan Georgia and searched for survivors in the Christina River.
- On 30 December 1953, she assisted the motor vessels Atlantic Dealer and Atlantic Engineer in the Delaware River.
- On 13 July 1955, she assisted the yacht Nip and Tuck in the Delaware River.
LILAC underway circa 1950s (U.S. Coast Guard)
Taking buoy on board Lilac (Philadelphia Enquirer)
Bridge, buoy tender LILAC 220211-G-G0000-011
Wheelhouse of Lilac (Philadelphia Enquirer)
In a 1961 refit for a further decade of service, she would be equipped with an SPN-11 radar and UNQ-1 sonar.
By 1965, the USCG switched the WAGL designation to WLM for “‘medium or coastal buoy tender” and Lilac became WLM-227.
She would pick up the now-classic Coast Guard racing stripe after 1967.
With the service having the much-improved all-welded diesel-powered 180-foot buoy tenders on hand in serious numbers, by 1972 the riveted-hulled steam-powered Lilac was seen as incredibly old-fashioned.
She was decommissioned on 3 February 1972, capping just under 40 years with the USLHS/Navy/USCG.
Tender Lilac decommissioning
Her sisters Arbutus, Mistletoe, and Violet had been taken out of service already, decommissioned and disposed of between 1963 and 1969. None are afloat.
Arbutus met her end in Florida in the 1980s after serving as one of treasure hunter Mel Fisher’s “sentry” vessels over the Atocha wreck site.
The Arbutus wreck was celebrated, and she was later used by Jimmy Buffett for a back cover shot for his 1985 album ‘Songs You Should Know By Heart’.”
Switching careers
Just a few months after she was decommissioned, ex-USCGC Lilac was donated to the Harry Lundeberg Seafarers International Union seamanship school in Maryland, where she was used as a stationary pier side training vessel until 1984. In this role, she provided accommodation and class space to mariners upgrading their ratings across both bridge, deck, and engine room departments.
After 1984, she passed hands a few times and was used as a salvage company’s office for a spell, grounded in a dredged berth along the James River outside of Richmond, before she was listed in 1999 for scrap value, still relatively intact but showing her age.
Preservation
The non-profit NYC-based Tug Pegasus Preservation Project became involved in the prospect of saving Lilac and she was refloated on 25 February 2003, then towed to a shipyard in Norfolk where, after a favorable report on the condition of the ship’s hull– she had spent most of her life in freshwater– she was purchased on 11 March 2003, with the intent to return her to operation as a steam vessel based in New York harbor.
After berthing at the Hudson River Park’s Pier 40 and transfered to the newly created non-profit LILAC Preservation Project, she was eventually moved to the newly built Pier 25 in Tribeca in 2011 and has since opened as a museum ship.
The last unaltered American steam-propelled and steam-hoisting lighthouse tender designed for work on the open sea and connecting bays and sounds, Lilac is special and, other than the diesel-powered tender Fir (which was still under construction when the service was absorbed by the USCG was preserved at the Liberty Maritime Museum in Sacramento for a half-decade and is now apparently looking for a new owner) is the only USLHS tender still around– and the only one on display.
She is the oldest Coast Guard “black hull” afloat.
If you have a chance to visit her, please do.
Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.
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