USS Kangaroo (SP-1284)

The first USS Kangaroo (SP-1284) was an armed motorboat that served in the United States Navy as a patrol vessel from 1917 to 1919.

For other ships with the same name, see USS Kangaroo.
Kangaroo in 1917 just after her completion and prior to her acquisition by the U.S. Navy
History
United States
Name: USS Kangaroo
Namesake: The kangaroo (previous name retained)
Builder: Herreshoff Manufacturing Company, Bristol, Rhode Island
Completed: 1917
Acquired: 18 September 1917
Commissioned: 10 December 1917
Decommissioned: 20 May 1919
Notes: Operated as private motorboat Kangaroo 1917, as U.S. Coast Guard patrol boat USCGC Kangaroo 1919-1923 and USCGC AB-6 1923-1932, and as a private motorboat from 1932
General characteristics
Type: Patrol vessel
Displacement: 29 tons
Length: 62 ft 4 in (19.00 m)
Beam: 10 ft 11 in (3.33 m)
Draft: 3 ft 6 in (1.07 m)
Installed power: 120 brake horsepower
Propulsion: 2 × 4-cylinder gasoline engines, twin screws[1]
Speed: 21 knots[2]
Complement: 11
Armament: 1 × 1-pounder gun

Construction and commissioning

Kangaroo was built as the private motorboat Herreshoff Hull # 316 in May 1917 by the Herreshoff Manufacturing Company at Bristol, Rhode Island, one of nine identical motor boats built in anticipation of eventual acquisition by the U.S. Navy from their private owners. Her civilian owner, Henry A. Morse of Marblehead, Massachusetts, had named her Kangaroo by the time the U.S. Navy purchased her from him at Boston, Massachusetts, on 18 September 1917 for service as a patrol boat in World War I. She was commissioned on 10 December 1917 as USS Kangaroo (SP-1284) with Chief Quartermaster C. H. Waterman, USNRF, in command.

United States Navy service

Assigned to the 1st Naval District, Kangaroo served on section patrol and inner harbor patrol in Penobscot Bay, Maine, until 14 October 1918, when she departed for Key West, Florida.

Due to an urgent need for craft such as Kangaroo at Brest, France, an order dated 14 October 1918 went out from Washington, D.C., to Boston directing the Commandant of the 1st Naval District to ready six section patrol boats -- USS Commodore (SP-1425), USS Cossack (SP-695), USS War Bug (SP-1795), USS Sea Hawk (SP-2365), Kangaroo, and USS SP-729—to be shipped to France as deck cargo along with spare parts to keep them operational. However, this proposed movement appears to have been cancelled, probably because of the armistice with Germany of 11 November 1918 that ended World War I and eliminated the need for more U.S. Navy patrol craft in Europe.

Instead, Kangaroo arrived at Key West on 12 January 1919. Based there, she performed patrol and dispatch duties along the Florida Keys and in Florida's Atlantic coastal waters.

Kangaroo was decommissioned on 20 May 1919.

Later career

On 22 November 1919, Kangaroo was transferred to the United States Department of the Treasury for use by the United States Coast Guard, which commissioned her as USCGC Kangaroo. Renamed USCGC AB-6 in 1923, she served in the Coast Guard until sold in 1932.

Notes
  1. The United States Coast Guard Historican's Office (at http://www.uscg.mil/history/webcutters/Kangaroo1919.pdf) reports this propulsion plant, but also reports that Kangaroo had a top speed of only 13 knots. The Dictionary of Naval Fighting Ships (at http://www.history.navy.mil/danfs/k1/kangaroo-i.htm) and NavSource Online (at http://www.navsource.org/archives/12/171284.htm) do not mention Kangaroo's propulsion plant, but credit her with a top speed of 21 knots. It is not clear whether or how her propulsion differed during her time in U.S. Navy service or why her top speed would have dropped so much during her U.S. Coast Guard service unless her propulsion was changed in some unreported way.
  2. See note (1)
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References
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