The first USS Patuxent (Fleet Tug No. 11, later AT-11) was a fleet tug in commission in the United States Navy from 1909 to 1924. She served the United States Atlantic Fleet and saw service in World War I. After the end of her Navy career, she was in commission in the United States Bureau of Fisheries from 1926 to 1932 as the fisheries research ship USFS Albatross II.
Construction and commissioning
Patuxent, the first U.S. Navy ship to bear that name, was a two-masted, steel-hulled, sea-going tug, laid down on 25 July 1907 by the Norfolk Navy Yard at Portsmouth, Virginia, and launched on 16 May 1908. She was commissioned on 4 May 1909 as USS Patuxent (Fleet Tug No. 11).
United States Navy service
Patuxent spent her naval career operating with the U.S. Atlantic Fleet, providing the services of a sea-going tug to diverse elements of the fleet. She served during World War I, and in the aftermath of the war was outfitted as a minesweeper and took part in 1919 in the sweeping of the North Sea Mine Barrage. When the U.S. Navy adopted its modern hull code system on 17 July 1920, she was redesignated USS Patuxent (AT-11).
The Navy decommissioned Patuxent on 30 September 1924.
United States Bureau of Fisheries
In January 1926, the United States Bureau of Fisheries (BOF) decommissioned the fisheries research ship and required a replacement. Accordingly, the United States Department of Commerce acquired Patuxent from the Navy that year and assigned her to the BOF to replace Fish Hawk.
Upon taking possession of Patuxent, 'the BOF renamed her Albatross II and described her as a two-masted, 521-gross-ton, steel-hulled steamer with an iron deck overlaid with wood, a length overall of , a beam of , and a mean draft of . She had a radio antenna strung between her masts, a cargo boom attached to her mainmast over her deckhouse, a steam steering engine, a steam windlass, a steam capstan, an evaporator, a distiller, a radio, two electric generators, electric lighting, and two searchlights. Her propulsion plant consisted of two vertical triple-expansion steam engines with a combined output of 1,160 horsepower (981 kilowatts) and two single-end Scotch marine boilers. When transferred to the BOF, her hull, deckhouses, bulwarks, and boats were painted white and her masts, funnel, davits, and ventilator cowls and the trim on her deckhouses were buff. The BOF made plans to modify her extensively to provide quarters for a crew of 26, ample accommodations for embarked scientists, and a large laboratory, and to install oceanographic and collection equipment aboard her. The BOF had high hopes for Albatross II, describing her in mid-1926 as "an excellent ocean-going vessel" that would "fill the bureau′s requirements for many years as efficiently and more economically than either of her predecessors," a reference to both Fish Hawk and the research vessel USFS Albatross, which the BOF had decommissioned in 1921.
After the crew of the BOF research vessel reconditioned Albatross II at the Portsmouth Navy Yard in Kittery, Maine, during February 1926, the BOF commissioned her into service in 1926 as USFS Albatross II. Assigned to take over fishery and oceanographic efforts in and around the Gulf of Maine previously performed by Halcyon – which had been laid up pending condemnation and sale – Albatross II put to sea in early August 1926 on her first scientific voyage. Before fiscal year 1927 ended on 30 June 1927, she had steamed , made observations at 69 oceanographic stations, and tagged 7,785 fishes.