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NavSource Online: Patrol Craft/Gunboat/Submarine Chaser Photo Archive

Truant (PYc 14)

Coastal Patrol Yacht:

  • Built in 1892 as the yacht Truant at Herreshoff Manufacturing Co, Bristol, RI for Helen H. Newberry of Detroit, MI
  • Launched 24 August 1892
  • Acquired by Henry Ford in 1936
  • Acquired by the Navy on a bareboat charter from Henry Ford 3 July 1941
  • Commissioned USS Truant (PYc-14), 16 July 1941 at Great Lakes Naval Training Center, IL
  • Decommissioned 17 November 1943 at Dearborn, MI and returned to her owner
  • Struck from the Naval Register 6 December 1943
  • Reported abandoned, then broken up in 1945 at Ford Rouge Plant, Dearborn, MI.

    Specifications:

  • Displacement 375 t.
  • Length 131' 4"
  • Beam 17' 4"
  • Draft 6'
  • Speed 10 kts.
  • Armament: Two 3"/50 dual purpose gun mounts
  • Propulsion: One Square Level water tube boiler, one 820/810hp Herreshoff triple-expansion steam engine (Replaced in 1936 with a 600hp triple expansion engine), one shaft.
    Click on thumbnail
    for full size image    		 Size Image Description Source
    Truant 79k Photo from the March 1913 edition of Rudder magazine The Herreshoff Catalogue Raisonné website
    Truant 106k Herreshoff Manufacturing Company built this triple-expansion steam engine in 1892 for the 138-foot, steel-hulled yacht Truant. After Henry Ford purchased the aging vessel and began refitting it. He replaced the over-forty-year-old engine with a new one designed under his personal supervision. Ford kept the original and sent it to his Dearborn, Michigan, museum
    View the Truant (PYc 14)
    DANFS history entry located on the Naval History and Heritage Command website
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