Muskeget (AG-48)
1942-1943
An island off the southeast coast of the state of Massachusetts.
(AG-48: displacement 370; length 233'6"; beam 20'2"; draft 17'0”)
The cargo vessel Cornish was launched on 10 February 1923 at Sparrows Point, Md., by the Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corp., and delivered to the Eastern Steamship Co. of Boston, Mass., upon completion, and by 1941 was homeported at Newport News, Virginia. Acquired by the Navy from that company on 29 December 1941, four days after the first Christmas of World War II, she underwent conversion at New York, N.Y., by the Sullivan Dry Dock & Repair Co., and commissioned as the miscellaneous district auxiliary YAG‑9 on 3 January 1942.
Assigned to the Third Naval District, YAG‑9 performed patrol duty off New York until reclassified as a miscellaneous auxiliary, AG‑48, and named Muskeget on 30 May 1942. One month later, on 30 June 1942, the miscellaneous auxiliary was transferred to the U.S. Coast Guard and commissioned as Muskeget (WAG-48) on 1 July 1942, Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Toft, USCG, in command. She carried out her first patrol on Weather Station No. 2 (53°00'N, 42° 30'W) soon thereafter (6—27 July).
On 24 August 1942, Muskeget set out for her second stint on Weather Station No. 2, and subsequently transmitted a report on 9 September, after which such transmissions ceased abruptly. A little over an hour and a quarter into the first dog watch that day [9 September], the German Type VIIC submarine U-755 (Kapitänleutnant Walter Göing, commanding), on her first war patrol out of Kiel, Germany, scored two hits from a spread of three torpedoes. “Sinking noises” came in the wake of the explosions.
U-755’s victim, unquestionably, was Muskeget. There were no survivors among the nine officers, 111 enlisted men, one Public Health Service medical officer and four U.S Weather Service civilian employees, a total of 125 souls all told.
Muskeget was stricken from the Naval Register on 26 October 1943.
Updated, Robert J. Cressman
11 August 2022
