USCGC Lotus
USLHT Lotus | |
| History | |
|---|---|
| United States Army | |
| Name | Colonel Albert Todd |
| Builder | Fabricated Ship Corporation |
| Launched | 31 January 1920 |
| Fate | Transferred to the US Lighthouse Service, October 1921 |
| United States Coast Guard | |
| Name |
|
| Identification | Hull symbol: WAGL-229 |
| Fate | Sold 1947 |
| General characteristics | |
| Displacement | 1,130 long tons (1,150 t) |
| Length | 172 ft 6 in (52.58 m) |
| Beam | 32 ft (9.8 m) |
| Draft | 11 ft 6 in (3.51 m) |
| Installed power | 2 steam engines, 1,040 horsepower |
| Propulsion | 2 propellers |
USAMP Colonel Albert Todd was a steel-hulled ship built for service in the U.S. Army as a mine planter. She was launched in 1920. The ship was transferred to the U.S. Lighthouse Service, and recommissioned as USLHT Lotus in 1921. When the Lighthouse Service became part of the U.S. Coast Guard in 1939, she was redesignated USCGC Lotus and was given the pennant number WAGL-229.
During most of her government career her primary mission was to maintain and supply aids to navigation including buoys, lighthouses, and lightships. During World War II, when the Coast Guard was subject to U.S. Navy orders, she also maintained antisubmarine nets at a number of ports.
Lotus was sold to private interests in 1947. The ship was never Federally documented, and her whereabouts and activities are unknown until she was reported in the Miami River in 1956. She sank at her moorings and spent years sitting on the bottom of the river. She was refloated, towed into the Atlantic, and sunk in 1971. The wreck is now a recreational diving site.