The 205-foot Medium Endurance Cutter TAMAROA, stationed at Governors Island, NY, stands ready for patrol duties. USCG painting by William Sturm.
One of the hardest serving ships in U.S. maritime history was Warship Wednesday alum, the Navajo-class fleet tug turned medium endurance cutter USCGC Tamaroa (WMEC/WATF/WAT-166) nee USS Zuni (AT/ATF-95).
She earned four battle stars for her service during World War II while dodging kamikazes, suicide boats and Japanese subs– picking up wounded cruisers left and right.
In Coast Guard service, the seagoing cop made more than a dozen large drug busts before she was immortalized in the book The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger (turned into a film of the same name) for rescuing three people from the sailboat Satori 75 miles off Nantucket Island in seas that built to 40 feet under 80-knot winds in 1991.
Decommissioned by the Coast Guard, 1 February 1994 after more than 50 years of service, she was the last Iwo Jima veteran to leave active duty and was probably the last ship afloat under a U.S. flag to carry a 3”/50!
Since then she has been a museum ship, resident of a floating junkyard, and a rats’ den, but yesterday was turned into a reef off the Delaware/New Jersey coast.
Where she will still serve, just for another purpose.
