![]() USCGC Bristol Bay | |
History | |
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Name | Bristol Bay |
Namesake | Bristol Bay |
Builder | Tacoma Boatbuilding Co. |
Completed | 1978 |
Commissioned | 1979 |
Homeport | Detroit, Michigan |
Identification |
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Honors and awards | See Awards |
Status | Active |
General characteristics | |
Class and type | Bay-class tugboat |
Displacement | 662 t (652 long tons) |
Length | 42.7 m (140 ft) |
Beam | 11.4 m (37 ft 5 in) |
Draught | 3.8 m (12 ft 6 in) |
Propulsion |
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Speed | 14.7 knots (27.2 km/h; 16.9 mph) |
Range |
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Complement | 3 officers and 14 enlisted |
Armament | 2 × M240 machine guns |
USCGC Bristol Bay (WTGB-102) is the second vessel of the Bay-class tugboats built in 1978 and operated by the United States Coast Guard. [1] The ship was named after the body of water formed by the Alaskan peninsula, which emptied into the Bering Sea. [2]
The 140-foot Bay-class tugboats are operated primarily for domestic ice breaking duties. They are named after American bays and are stationed mainly in the northeast United States and the Great Lakes.
WTGBs use a low pressure air hull lubrication or bubbler system that forces air and water between the hull and ice. This system improves icebreaking capabilities by reducing resistance against the hull, reducing horsepower requirements.
Bristol Bay was built by the Tacoma Boatbuilding Co., in Tacoma, Washington in 1978. She was commissioned in Detroit, Michigan, 1979.
In August 1991, Bristol Bay became the first Bay-class tugboat to receive a barge specially designed to perform aids to navigation work. The 120-foot (37 m) barge works with the ship to service more than 160 aids to navigation each year.
USCGC Hollyhock and Bristol Bay were deployed for ice breaking at the St. Clair River, on 25 February 2019. [3]
On 3 February 2021, Bristol Bay and CCGS Griffon were both dispatched to break up ice at the St. Clair River. [4] On 25 January 2022, Bristol Bay and CCGS Samuel Risley freed the lake freighter Assiniboione after the freighter was stuck in ice on the St. Clair River. [5] [6]
In January 2025, Bristol Bay was deployed to help free the Manitoulin after she became icebound near Buffalo. [7]
USCGC Healy (WAGB-20) is the United States' largest and most technologically advanced icebreaker as well as the US Coast Guard's largest vessel. She is classified as a medium icebreaker by the Coast Guard. She is homeported in Seattle, Washington, and was commissioned in 1999. On 6 September 2001 Healy visited the North Pole for the first time. The second visit occurred on 12 September 2005. On 5 September 2015, Healy became the first unaccompanied United States surface vessel to reach the North Pole, and Healy's fourth Pole visit happened on 30 September 2022.
CCGS Samuel Risley is a Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker and buoy tender assigned to the Great Lakes area. Lead ship of her class, the vessel is named after Samuel Risley, the 19th century maritime inspector and first head of Board of Steamship Inspectors for Upper Canada and Ontario. Based in the Great Lakes, CCGS Samuel Risley is responsible for keeping an ice-free passage between Port Colborne, Ontario and Thunder Bay, Ontario.
USCGC Polar Sea (WAGB-11) is a United States Coast Guard heavy icebreaker. Commissioned on 23 February 1977, the ship was built by Lockheed Shipbuilding and Construction Company of Seattle along with her sister ship, Polar Star (WAGB-10). Her home port is Seattle, Washington.
The Keeper class of coastal buoy tenders consists of fourteen ships built for and operated by the United States Coast Guard. The ships were launched between 1995 and 1999 and all remain in active service. Their primary mission is to maintain thousands of aids to navigation, both buoys and land-based. Their secondary missions include marine environmental protection, search and rescue, law enforcement, and light ice-breaking.
USCGC Mackinaw (WAGB-83) is a decommissioned United States Coast Guard icebreaker which operated on the Great Lakes for 62 years. A state-of-the-art icebreaker when she was launched in 1944, Mackinaw was built to extend the shipping season on the Great Lakes into the winter months and thereby strengthen the wartime economy of the United States during World War II. Unlike the U.S. Coast Guard's large icebreakers before and since, Mackinaw was designed specifically for use in the shallow, freshwater Great Lakes.
The Bay-class tugboat is a class of 140-foot (43 m) icebreaking tugboats of the United States Coast Guard, with hull numbers WTGB-101 through to WTGB-109.
USS Glacier (AGB-4) was a U.S. Navy, then U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker which served in the first through fifteenth Operation Deep Freeze expeditions. Glacier was the first icebreaker to make her way through the frozen Bellingshausen Sea, and most of the topography in the area is named for her crew members. When built, Glacier had the largest capacity single armature DC motors ever installed on a ship. Glacier was capable of breaking ice up to 20 feet (6.1 m) thick, and of continuous breaking of 4-foot (1.2 m) thick ice at 3 knots.
USCGC Mackinaw (WLBB-30) is a 240-foot (73 m) multi-purpose vessel with a primary mission as a heavy icebreaker specifically built for operations on the North American Great Lakes for the United States Coast Guard. IMO number: 9271054.
USCGC Bollard (WYTL-65614) is a cutter in the U.S. Coast Guard.
USCGC Staten Island (WAGB-278) was a United States Coast Guard Wind-class icebreaker. Laid down on 9 June 1942 and launched on 28 December 1942, the ship was commissioned on 26 February 1944, and almost immediately afterward transferred to the Soviet Union, under the Lend Lease program, under the name Severny Veter, which loosely translates as Northwind, until 19 December 1951. When returned to the United States Navy, she was designated USS Northwind until 15 April 1952, when she was renamed USS Staten Island to distinguish her from her successor USCGC Northwind (WAGB-282) which had been laid down shortly after she was lent to the Soviet Union. The ship was transferred to the U.S. Coast Guard as USCGC Staten Island in February 1965, and served until November 1974, before being scrapped.
USCGC Katmai Bay (WTGB-101) is a United States Coast Guard Cutter, and the lead ship of the Bay-class of icebreaking tugboats. At 140 ft (43 m), she is designed to have greater multi-mission capabilities than the 110' Calumet-class Harbor Tug (WYTM). She is homeported in Sault Ste Marie, Michigan, operating in support of the much larger USCGC Mackinaw (WLBB-30).
USCGC Biscayne Bay (WTGB-104) is a United States Coast Guard Cutter and an icebreaking tug. She is based at Coast Guard Station St. Ignace with a primary area of operation in the Straits of Mackinac including Mackinac Island, Mackinac Bridge, and the northern portions of Lakes Michigan and Huron and occasionally Lakes Superior, Erie and their connecting rivers. Beyond her role as an icebreaker, Biscayne Bay performs search and rescue and law enforcement functions.
Canadian Coast Guard Ship Griffon is a Canadian Coast Guard (CCG) high endurance multi-tasked vessel and light icebreaker stationed in Prescott, Ontario, Canada. Completed in 1970, Griffon provides icebreaking services along eastern Lake Ontario and upriver along the Saint Lawrence River to Montreal.
USCGC Hollyhock (WLB-214) is a 225-foot (69 m) Juniper-class cutter of the United States Coast Guard.
District 9 is a United States Coast Guard district, based at the Anthony J. Celebrezze Federal Building, in Cleveland, Ohio. District 9 is responsible for all Coast Guard operations on the five Great Lakes, the Saint Lawrence Seaway, and surrounding states accumulating 6,700 miles of shoreline and 1,500 miles of international shoreline with Canada.
USCGC Neah Bay (WTGB-105) is the fifth vessel of the Bay-class tugboat built in 1980 and operated by the United States Coast Guard. The ship was named after a bay located within the state of Washington and bordered by Puget Sound.
USCGC Morro Bay (WTGB-106) is the sixth vessel of the Bay-class tugboats built in 1980 and operated by the United States Coast Guard. The ship was named after a seaside city in San Luis Obispo County, California.
USCGC Thunder Bay (WTGB-108) is the eighth vessel of the Bay-class tugboat built in 1985 and operated by the United States Coast Guard. The ship was named after a bay in the U.S. state of Michigan on Lake Huron. She is homeported in Rockland, Maine
USCGC Hollyhock (WAGL-220) was the lead ship of the Hollyhock-class buoy tender built in 1937 and operated by the United States Coast Guard. The ship was named after an annual, biennial, or perennial plant usually taking an erect, unbranched form.