Actus (S.P. 516)
1917-1920
The Navy retained the name carried by this vessel at the time of her acquisition.
(S.P. 516: tonnage 99 (gross register); length 120’0” (overall), 107’8” (between perpendiculars); beam 15’0”; draft 5’6” (forward), speed 16.0 knots (maximum), 15.0 knots (cruising); complement 23; armament 2 3-pounders)
The twin-screw steel-hulled yacht Halawa was built at Neponset, Mass., in 1907 by George Lawley & Sons, for Raymond Hoagland. The newspaper editor and publisher George William Childs Drexel, of Radnor, Pa., (owner and editor of the Philadelphia Public Ledger, “the only newspaper any lady or gentleman should read”), also a banker and philanthropist, acquired the vessel in 1910, and renamed her Actus.
Soon after the United States entered the Great War [World War I], the U.S. Navy acquired Actus from Mr. E. B. Dane for $40,000. Assigned the identification number S.P. 516, Actus was commissioned on 18 April 1917; Ens. H. A. D. Cameron, USNRF, in command.
Formally purchased by the government on 26 May 1917, a little over a month after commissioning, Actus was assigned to “scout patrol” duties in the First Naval District. She spent the entire war patrolling Cape Cod Bay and the harbors of Boston and Plymouth. After the war ended in November of 1918, she continued to serve the Navy at the Boston Navy Yard in some type of yard craft status. She also performed some unspecified service for the Naval Overseas Transportation Service office at Boston in May and June of 1919.
Decommissioned at Quincy, Mass., on 8 July 1919, Actus was stricken from the Navy Register on 17 July 1919. A little over a year later, on 20 July 1920, she was transferred to the War Department for employment as a survey vessel with the U.S. Army’s Corps of Engineers, operating out of Savannah, Georgia.
Raymond A. Mann
Updated, Robert J. Cressman
19 December 2023
