History | |
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United States | |
Name: | USS Recovery (ARS-43) |
Builder: | Basalt Rock Company |
Laid down: | 6 January 1945 |
Launched: | 4 August 1945 |
Sponsored by: | Mrs. Harry Burris |
Commissioned: | 15 May 1946 |
Decommissioned: | 20 September 1994 |
Struck: | 30 September 1994 |
Fate: | Transferred to Taiwan, 30 September 1998 |
History | |
Taiwan | |
Name: | ROCS Da Juen (ARS-556) |
Acquired: | 30 September 1998 |
Commissioned: | 1 March 1999 |
Status: | in active service |
General characteristics | |
Class and type: | Bolster-class rescue and salvage ship |
Displacement: | 1,995 long tons (2,027 t) full |
Length: | 213 ft 6 in (65.07 m) |
Beam: | 44 ft (13 m) |
Draft: | 15 ft (4.6 m) |
Speed: | 11 knots (20 km/h; 13 mph) |
Complement: | 84 officers and enlisted |
Armament: |
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USS Recovery (ARS-43) was a Bolster-class rescue and salvage ship of the United States Navy, which remained in commission for over 48 years.
Laid down on 6 January 1945 by the Basalt Rock Company in Napa, California, the ship was launched on 4 August 1945, sponsored by Mrs. Harry Burris, and commissioned on 15 May 1946, Lt. J. T. Moritz in command.
Following shakedown, Recovery operated briefly out of San Diego, then on 9 August got underway for the Panama Canal Zone. Homeported at Naval Station Rodman from her arrival on 30 August, until September 1953, the ship performed salvage, repair, and towing operations in the Canal Zone and the Caribbean; provided men and equipment for underwater projects of the Army Engineers; served as a training ship for Naval Reservists of the 15th Naval District; and, after April 1952, added a second-class diving school to her duties. Transferred to the east coast in October 1953, Recovery arrived at her new homeport, Norfolk, Virginia, on the 11th only to depart soon after for her first tour in northern latitudes in support of MSTS North Atlantic and Arctic resupply programs. She arrived at Goose Bay on 3 November and operated off Labrador, Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia into the new year, returning to Norfolk on 29 January 1954.
In addition to annual deployments to subarctic and arctic waters to support Military Sea Transportation Service operations over the next seven years, Recovery's mobile ability to provide salvage, repair, towing, diving, and rescue services to the fleet was utilized along the lengths of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts and in the Caribbean as well as in the Chesapeake Bay area. Occasionally assigned to experimental programs, in 1960 she assisted in shock test programs at Key West and in the Bahamas and in escape and recovery tests off the Virginia coast for the National Aeronautical and Space Administration's man-in-space program. That year she also provided disaster relief for the outer islands of the Bahamas in the wake of Hurricane Donna.