Allegheny, 1955

The unnamed single-screw ocean-going tug ATA-179 (originally projected as the rescue tug, ATR-106) was laid down on 22 May 1944 at Orange, Tex., by the Levingston Shipbuilding Co.; launched on 30 June 1944; and commissioned on 22 September 1944, Lt. (jg.) Thomas C. McLaren, USNR, in command.

ATA-179 participated in the demobilization process of many fleet units assigned temporarily to the Commandant, 8th Naval District, and performed tug and tow operations on the Gulf and Florida coasts, ranging from Key West and Mayport to New Orleans, Mobile, and Galveston until she herself was inactivated and placed out of commission, in reserve, at Orange, Tex., on 10 October 1947. On 16 July 1948, she was named Allegheny (ATA-179).

Assigned to the Commandant, 3d Naval District, for duty and based at the Naval Supply Center, Bayonne, N.J., Allegheny spent the next 17 years engaged in hydrographic and research functions through the Office of Naval Research, with various research teams from the Hudson Laboratories, Bell Telephone Co., Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and Columbia University embarked as the mission required. Generally, her operations consisted of spending months from January through April in the Bermuda-Caribbean area, and the rest of the year in the Long Island-Hudson Canyon region, off New York, and occasionally involved in operations off Cape Hatteras. In the spring of 1963 she was assigned to Task Group 89.7 from 24 April to 15 May, an operational commitment occasioned by the disappearance of the nuclear submarine Thresher (SSN-593).

Ultimately declared excess to the needs of the Navy, Allegheny was decommissioned and struck from the Naval Vessel Register on 14 December 1968. Towed to Philadelphia and the Inactive Ship Facility there, the ship was turned over to Northwestern Michigan College, Traverse City, Mich., for use as a training ship to prepare young men for merchant service on the Great Lakes. Berthed at the Great Lakes Maritime Academy, the ship served as a training vessel and floating laboratory for a little under a decade. On 27 January 1978, "burdened by frozen spray flung on her superstructure by strong north winds," the ship rolled over at her Maritime Academy dock.

[Taken from the entry on Allegheny in the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships.]