Trabajador (Tug)
1941-1942
The Navy retained the name carried by this vessel at the time of her requisitioning.
(Tug: displacement 148; length 111'; beam 26'1"; draft 10'6")
Trabajador, a tug completed in 1931 at Hong Kong, British Crown Colony, by the Hong Kong & Whampoa Dock Co., Ltd., was taken over by the Navy from the Visayan Stevedore Transportation Co., and was assigned to the 16th Naval District on 13 December 1941, Lt. (jg.) Trose E. Donaldson, USNR, in command.
Trabajador, misspelled as Trobagador in the correspondence establishing the Inshore Patrol, operated in Manila Bay with the Base Section of the Inshore Patrol from the day of her "commissioning" until her loss the following spring. In his book, They Were Expendable, William L. White credits Trabajador with serving for a time at Sisiman Cove, Bataan, as the tender to Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron 3, prior to the withdrawal by American and Filipino forces from that beleaguered peninsula.
Trabajador was ultimately sunk off Corregidor, probably by Japanese artillery fire corning from Bataan, and remained on the bottom of Manila Bay until after World War II ended. She was subsequently raised, repaired, and renamed Resolute. She remained in operation as a tug, in the Philippines, into the late 1970's.
Trabajador received one battle star for her World War II service.
Robert J. Cressman
10 December 2021
