From WWII tug to fish habitat
Recently, BCT, CCA South Carolina and the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources completed the first of three projects aimed at expanding and enhancing offshore reef habitat in the Palmetto State. The decommissioned tugboat General Oglethorpe was deployed some 30 miles off the coast of Charleston in approximately 100 feet of water, “creating vital new fisheries habitat and establishing additional recreational angling opportunities for fishermen.”
Oglethorpe was a WWII vet, built in 1943, by Ira S. Bushey and Son Inc. of Brooklyn, New York (hull #529) as USCGC Ojibwa (WYT-97) for the U.S. Coast Guard, going on to serve on escort and search and rescue duty in the North Atlantic Area until the end of the war.
After 1954, she served in the 9th USCG District on the Great Lakes for most of her Coast Guard career, stationed in Buffalo.
As noted by CG-Tugs: “These were the Apalachee-class which added additional ice resistance and ice-breaking features (for their intended duty in the Greenland Theater) as well as firefighting monitors, to the earlier designs. Thus there were 17 of these hearty 110-footers, the last of which served until 1989, a span of half a century.”
Decommissioned in 1980 after 37 years in federal service, she worked commercially until the state of South Carolina inherited her last year.
According to the below from CCA, she is back on the job in a different sense.