Wartime designation: USS Migrant (IX-66)
Sail Number:
Type: schooner
LOA: 223’3″ / 68.05m – LOD: 180’0″/ 54.86m – LWL: 168’0″ / 51.20m – Beam: 34’0″ / 10m – Draft: 14’0″ / 4.3m – Displacement: 661 long tons (672 t) – Ballast: – Original Owner: Carl Tucker, Manhattan, N.Y. – Original Name: – Year Launched: July 1929 – Designed by: Henry J. Gielow – Built by: Geo. Lawley & Sons, Neponset, Massachusetts – Hull Material: Vanadium Steel – Documentation or State Reg. No.:
Auxiliary Schooner Migrant, 1929 (Edwin Levick photograph courtesy of The Mariners’ Museum and Park, Newport News, Virginia)
Historical:
Migrant was designed by Henry Gielow, built at a cost of over 1 mil in 1929 by Geo. Lawley & Sons, Neponset, Massachusetts for Carl Tucker, of Manhattan, N.Y.
Only one month after her launch, the worlds largest schooner was in for repairs after being rammed at mooring near Fire Island, N.Y. Helpless in strong winds a Standard Oil owned barge and tug crashed into the beautiful schooner, tearing off the 42′ pine bowsprit, sails, rigging and damaging a teak launch, causing over $30,000 in damage
WWII service
Migrant was acquired by the US Navy on 21 March 1942, converted by the Sullivan Shipyard, Brooklyn, New York, and commissioned on 19 May 1942, Lt. R. B. Metcalf, USNR, in command. Acquired originally for use in the 3rd Naval District, Migrant was assigned to the Eastern Sea Frontier following her conversion and commissioning. Until the spring of 1944 she conducted anti-submarine patrols from New York, along the southern New England coast. Transferred on 30 April 1944 to the 1st Naval District at Boston, she conducted ASW patrols along the northern New England coast for the remainder of her Navy career.
Migrant, ordered inactivated in June 1945, was decommissioned at East Boston on 3 August. Struck from the Naval Vessel Register ten days later, she remained at East Boston until 6 January 1946 when she was turned over to the War Shipping Administration for disposal.
Provenance (The Wall of Remembrance – The Owners, Notable Guest, and Reunion Information):
Owner: (1929) – Carl Tucker, Manhattan, N.Y.
Captain: Gustave Gautesen