Modoc I (YT-16)
1898-1946
A small tribe of Lutuanian Native Americans from northeastern California, who, following a long series of wars with the whites, was placed part upon the Klamath Reservation, Oregon, and part upon the Quapaw in Oklahoma
I
(Tug: displacement 240; length 96'9"; beam 20'8"; draft 9'3"; speed 10 knots; complement 7)
Enterprise, an iron-hulled harbor tug built in 1890 at Camden, N.J., by J. H. Dialogue & Sons, was acquired by the Navy during the Spanish‑American War from the American Towing Co., Baltimore, Md., on 29 April 1898 and renamed Modoc.
Assigned to the Philadelphia Navy Yard, Modoc operated at that installation for the next 48 years. From 1899 to 1905, the tug made frequent coastal voyages to New York, N.Y., Boston, Mass., and Annapolis, Md., towing barges and the like and then was assigned to the Fourth Naval District before the United States entered the Great War [World War I] in 1917.
Modoc continued her service to the fleet through the end of World War II. Designated as a harbor tug, YT‑16 on 17 July 1920, her name was canceled on 5 October 1942. She was re-designated as a little harbor tug, YTL‑16, on 15 May 1944 and continued on in service in that capacity at Philadelphia until turned over to the Maritime Commission for disposal on 30 January 1947.
Charles E. Banks Towing Co., of Camden acquired ex-Modoc later in 1947, renaming her Flo. Ultimately, deterioration caught up with the veteran harbor craft and her hulk was used as landfill in the Cramer Hill section of Camden in 1972.
Updated, Robert J. Cressman
23 July 2022
