USS ''Captor'' (PYc-40), briefly the seventh ship to bear the name USS ''Eagle'' (AM-132), was a

Q-ship Q-ships, also known as Q-boats, decoy vessels, special service ships, or mystery ships, were heavily armed merchant ships with concealed weaponry, designed to lure submarines into making surface attacks. This gave Q-ships the chance to open f ...

of the

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...

. Built as ''Harvard'', a steel-hulled trawler, in 1938 by

Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation Bethlehem Steel Corporation Shipbuilding Division was created in 1905 when the Bethlehem Steel Corporation of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, acquired the San Francisco shipyard Union Iron Works. In 1917 it was incorporated as Bethlehem Shipbuilding C ...

Fore River Shipyard Fore River Shipyard was a shipyard owned by General Dynamics Corporation located on Weymouth Fore River in Braintree and Quincy, Massachusetts. It began operations in 1883 in Braintree, and moved to its final location on Quincy Point in 1901. I ...

, Quincy, Massachusetts, and handed over to General Sea Foods Corporation, Boston, and put into service as ''Wave''.

Service history

Minesweeper

The fishing trawler was acquired by the Navy as part of the Auxiliary Vessels Act on 1 January 1942. Reporting to the

Portsmouth Navy Yard The Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, often called the Portsmouth Navy Yard, is a United States Navy shipyard in Kittery on the southern boundary of Maine near the city of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Founded in 1800, PNS is U.S. Navy's oldest continuo ...

Kittery, Maine Kittery is a town in York County, Maine, United States. Home to the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard on Seavey's Island, Kittery includes Badger's Island, the seaside district of Kittery Point, and part of the Isles of Shoals. The southernmost town i ...

, the trawler began conversion to war service as a

minesweeper A minesweeper is a small warship designed to remove or detonate naval mines. Using various mechanisms intended to counter the threat posed by naval mines, minesweepers keep waterways clear for safe shipping. History The earliest known usage of ...

on 8 January. With the work complete on 28 February, she was named ''Eagle'', given the

hull classification symbol The United States Navy, United States Coast Guard, and United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) use a hull classification symbol (sometimes called hull code or hull number) to identify their ships by type and by ind ...

AM-132, and placed in commission on 5 March 1942, with Lieutenant Commander Leroy E. Rogers, USNR, in command.

Q-ship

Along with and , ''Eagle'' was selected early to participate in a secret "Q-ship" program. The intention was to disguise the ship as a defenseless civilian vessel and, after luring an enemy submarine into close quarters on the surface, open fire with hidden guns and sink the unsuspecting

U-boat U-boats were naval submarines operated by Germany, particularly in the First and Second World Wars. Although at times they were efficient fleet weapons against enemy naval warships, they were most effectively used in an economic warfare ro ...

. For this reason, ''Eagle'' remained at Portsmouth, where she underwent further conversion into a Q-ship and received weapons and sonar gear. During this second conversion, the minesweeper was renamed ''Captor'' and redesignated PYc-40 on 18 April. With alterations complete on 19 May, the vessel reported for duty with the

1st Naval District The naval district was a U.S. Navy military and administrative command ashore. Apart from Naval District Washington, the Districts were disestablished and renamed Navy Regions about 1999, and are now under Commander, Naval Installations Command ...

at Boston. Unlike the other four ships eventually in the Q-ship program, ''Captor'' did not sail in convoys or along coastal shipping routes. Instead, she operated in the waters near Boston – in

Massachusetts Bay Massachusetts Bay is a bay on the Gulf of Maine that forms part of the central coastline of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Description The bay extends from Cape Ann on the north to Plymouth Harbor on the south, a distance of about . Its ...

, north to

Casco Bay Casco Bay is an inlet of the Gulf of Maine on the southern coast of Maine, New England, United States. Its easternmost approach is Cape Small and its westernmost approach is Two Lights in Cape Elizabeth. The city of Portland sits along its s ...

, east to the

Georges Bank Georges Bank (formerly known as St. Georges Bank) is a large elevated area of the sea floor between Cape Cod, Massachusetts (United States), and Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia (Canada). It separates the Gulf of Maine from the Atlantic Ocean. T ...

, and south to

Nantucket Sound Nantucket Sound_(geography), Sound is a roughly triangular area of the Atlantic Ocean offshore from the U.S. state of Massachusetts. It is long and wide, and is enclosed by Cape Cod on the north, Nantucket on the south, and Martha's Vineyard on ...

and

Rhode Island Sound Rhode Island Sound is a strait of water off the coast of the U.S. state of Rhode Island at the mouth of Narragansett Bay. It forms the eastern extension of Block Island Sound and opens out the Atlantic Ocean between Block Island and Martha's Vin ...

. While at sea, the disguised Q-ship also helped cover the coastal convoy routes coming north from New York. As growing air and sea patrols had driven most U-boats away from the New England coast in May 1942, ''Captor'' had little chance to spot an enemy submarine and ended her wartime career without a single sighting. With the decline in the U-boat threat to the east coast of the United States late in the war, ''Captor'' was decommissioned at Boston on 4 October 1944. Stricken from the

Naval Vessel Register The ''Naval Vessel Register'' (NVR) is the official inventory of ships and service craft in custody of or titled by the United States Navy. It contains information on ships and service craft that make up the official inventory of the Navy from t ...

on 14 October 1944, the trawler was transferred to the

War Shipping Administration The War Shipping Administration (WSA) was a World War II emergency war agency of the US government, tasked to purchase and operate the civilian shipping tonnage the United States needed for fighting the war. Both shipbuilding under the Maritime C ...

and sold on 21 February 1945. In 1959, the ship was acquired for use as a fishing boat, and renamed ''Wave''. She passed through several owners over the following decades while serving in this capacity. In 2005, she was acquired by R & J Shipping Inc and returned to her original name ''Harvard''. She went out of documentation in 2009, with her final fate unknown. As of 2005, no other ship in the United States Navy has been named ''Captor''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Captor Q-ships of the United States Navy Ships built in Quincy, Massachusetts 1938 ships