The Research Vessel Rachel Carson – Winter 1986
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The Great Lakes… 84% of the continent’s fresh water… a different story in every drop.
By Patrick N. Thompson
One of the unique Great Lakes vessels has been the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s limnological research vessel Rachel Carson. Once the largest research vessel on the Lakes, it is named after the famous naturalist-author whose book Silent Spring gave a huge second start to environmentalism by alerting millions of Americans.
Operated by the U.S.E.P.A., Great Lakes National Program Office in the Region V offices in Chicago, Illinois, and in conjunction with the U.S. and Canadian Joint Commission of Lakes Studies, the vessel became a familiar sight to people along the shores from Buffalo to Duluth. Very visible in her white paint, hull and superstructure, with a wide blue stripe diagonally from the open bridge on the O-2 level to the waterline, accented with a green stripe on either side and a wide green band around the superstructure at main deck, she has been mistaken by many for a yacht and in Canadian waters for a new fisheries enforcement vessel. But the Carson was much more.
Assigned as a floating lab, she could collect, process and preserve biological, chemical and microbiological samples. The on-board wet lab, chemistry lab, and micro lab, well equipped and manned by her thirteen science department personnel, both men and women, processed the samples immediately upon being brought aboard.
Other studies carried out on board were thermal checks at each station, as well as other studies such as the P.C.B. studies on Lake Superior, bottom profiling to study taconite tailings in Superior and special water studies for the Canadian government, current meter projects for N.O.A.A. on Lake Erie.
Equipped with navigational equipment including radar, Loran-C, recording fathometers, gyrocompass, speed and distance log, and from time to time, a satellite navigations system, the Carson could return to within seventy-five feet of a survey station time after time. With her operational crew of ten, captain, chief mate and second mate, chief engineer, second engineer, assistant, two deck hands, cook and utility man, she was well staffed.
The crew also assisted the science department with operating deck winches and other topside equipment.
Research vessel RACHEL CARSON tied up.
The Rachel Carson has been active in lake surveys since her transfer to the lakes in 1977. She worked on Lake Erie two years, Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, Green Bay, Lake St. Clair, and the rivers. Some- times she worked close to shore for study sites. Sometimes she anchored and dispatched a small boat to the sample site as in the mouth of the Detroit River. Working these areas, she was not immune to the perils, running aground on a mud flat at the mouth of the St. Clair River near Tin-Can- Alley, and later touching bottom in the Portage at Houghton-Hancock, Michigan, while on a port visit, and again in Lake Erie off Put-in-Bay where the rock bottom damaged her props.
Rachel Carson has been a guest attraction in many lake towns. The guests were always curious. Suspicious Canadian commercial fishermen were relieved to find we were not fish enforcement people.
The Rachel Carson was not always a research vessel. Built in Tacoma, Washington at Tocoma Boat in 1966, she was launched as the USS Crockett PG-88. The third of the PG-84 class of Patrol Gunboats. Known as a class by the lead boats name, Asheville, these vessels were designed for shallow water patrol and coastal work. They each had a revolutionary combination power system of twin 12-cylinder diesel engines for cruising, and a 1500-horsepower gas turbine or jet engine for high speed maneuvering, or for the chase to catch a suspect vessel, and had a combination construction of aluminum hull and fiber glass and balsa wood superstructure. These vessels were 165’6” in length, 23’10” in beam with a max draft aft of 9’5” and 4’ forward with full military load, including 40 milimeter anti-aircraft type gun aft. Three 50 caliber rapid fire guns for- ward and four 50-caliber machine guns in twin mounts. The vessels still only displaced 250 tons.
The USS Crockett served in Viet Nam in 1968 and in 1969 was assigned to “Operation Market Time.” She was commended for service in that theatre and given the prestigious Meritorious Unit Commendation.
The patrol gunboat, though the Navy’s smallest, was one of the deadliest ships. The Crockett, while operating in support of a small boat unit on one of the rivers in Viet Nam some 20 miles from the sea, took a rocket hit from a captured U. S.-built weapon fired by the V.C. Hit forward on the starboard side with the forward store room on fire, power to the forward 3” gun knocked out, and the aft 40mm mount inoperable, Crockett’s crew fought their way out of the ambush with machine guns, and other light weapons.
With the fire out, and damage under control, the Crockett departed the area.
Engineman Paul Stegg, a resident of Toledo, Ohio, was a crewman on the Crockett during that action. His path, and that of the Crockett, were to cross again closer to home.
After Crockett returned from wartime duty, she was assigned to reserve duty with a river patrol squadron on the Great Lakes, home ported at Great Lakes, Illinois. Crockett, her sister ships USS Ashville PG-84, and USS Marathon PG-89 and PTF-I7, 18 and PTF-19 were assigned to coastal river Division Twenty One, a slight rebirth of the Corn Belt Fleet, training citizen sailors of the Great Lakes area. These vessels in military colors, operated in the lakes showing the flag and doing public relations work for the Navy until disestablishment of the division in 1976. But not before these tur- bine driven vessels moving at 40 knots amazed and astonished fishermen and boaters, lake captains and crews. These vessels were not strangers to these waters, as some of the sister ships to the Crockett and Ashville, were built in the Great Lakes yards. Peterson Builders of Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin was the birthplace of some of these hybrid navy war ships.
After her return to salt water in 1976, Crockett was readied for decom- missioning. She ended her Navy career in January of 1977. She was turned over to the EPA and her military sting, weapons, turbines and much of the associated military gear was removed. She underwent conversion to a research vessel in Annapolis, Maryland, white paint covering her battleship grey.
Thoroughbred turned plow horse, she was ordered to the Great Lakes again. Returning in late 1977 without her sisters, the research vessel Crockett of the U.S.E.P.A. began fighting another war. Crewed by many sailors from the Great Lakes area, she served well in all projects assigned. Crewmen came and went, and even in her white disguise, many times an ex- navy PG sailor, knowing her lines immediately, came to the gangway asking which one she was. This is what brought one of her ex-engineers to her again. Paul Stegg, retired from the Navy and working in Toledo, saw a newsphoto of two of her crewmen and the foreward end of the superstructure. He came to investigate. He found the Rachel Carson, renamed in late 1980, laid up in Toledo at the bridges and harbor docks, and in need of a ship keeper. Hence Paul again found himself serving on the PG-88.
Today the Carson’s research job for the EPA has been taken over by a vessel which gives the researchers a more stable platform, the R/V Roger R Simons (ex-USCG Tender Maple). But the Carson, like Rachel herself, wrote a big chapter in environmental history.
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