Truant (PYc-14)
1941-1943
The Navy retained the name carried by this vessel at the time of her acquisition.
(PYc-14: displacement 395; length 138'0"; beam 17'4"; draft 6'7"; speed 10 knots; complement 10; armament 2 3-inch)
Truant, a steel-hulled single-screw steam yacht built in 1892 at Bristol, R.I., by the Herreshoff Manufacturing Co. for Helen H. Newberry, was purchased by Henry Ford in 1938 and extensively refitted. When he offered the yacht for the duration of the emergency, the Navy agreed to his request that she retain her name during her Navy service.
Acquired on a bare-boat basis on 3 July 1941, Truant was classified a coastal yacht and designated PYc-14. Assigned to the Ninth Naval District on 11 July, she was commissioned on 16 July 1941 at the U.S. Naval Training Station (NTS), Great Lakes, Illinois, Lt. Cmdr. Isaac R. Boothby, DM, USNR, in command.
On 13 August 1941, Rear Adm. John Downes, Commander of the NTS came on board with an aide, Lt. Cmdr. C. A. Richardson, as well as two representatives of the Ford Motor Co. (a Mr. McLaren and R.H, Mills) and one from the Bay Burner Co. (H. Napier) to observe Truant's trial run. The ship's passengers left the ship after the trials. One month later (13 September), a Mr. J. Hanson, a representative of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) came on board to help calibrate the vessel's radio direction finder, embarking at Great Lakes and disembarking at Milwaukee, Wisconsion.
Truant plied the waters of Lake Michigan on training cruises until mid-September 1941; then headed for Dearborn, Mich., where she arrived on 20 September 1941. She remained there in winter quarters near the Ford Motor Company plant until the early spring of 1942, when she resumed her training cruises. On board this slim, graceful craft, officers and men of the growing and expanding Navy received schooling in basic gunnery and seamanship, which prepared them to serve on board ships in the war zones of the Pacific, the Atlantic, and the Mediterranean. With the onset of winter in 1942, she again tied up at her "winter quarters" at the Ford Motor Company plant at South Chicago, Ill., for the cold months and remained there into the spring of 1943.
The yacht then resumed training exercises and maneuvers in Lake Michigan into November. On 17 November 1943, Truant was decommissioned at the Ford Motor Company plant at Dearborn and returned to her owner. On 6 December 1943, her name was stricken from the Navy List.
Reported abandoned in 1944, Truant was broken up fot scrap in 1945.
Updated, Robert J, Cressman
5 July 2022
