It is the kind of thing naval authorities deplore. In , with a hurricane boiling up the eastern seaboard, the newspaper headlines about a disabled ship were enough to make any sailor nervous, but it was a UPI dispatch from Cape Hatteras that crystallized my attention:.
The USS Fogg, a decommissioned destroyer escort, bounced helplessly near the storm center with its engines and most of its equipment not operating. The Coast Guard said it was being battered by tofoot waves. Two ships and search planes probed the blinding rain which kept visibility at near zero. The Fogg, which broke away from a tow-ship in heavy seas Saturday, was last reported about 45 miles southeast of Cape Lookout, N.
Named after Carleton Thayer Fogg, a naval flier from Maine who had lost his life in combat over Guadalcanal, she had acquired a nickname before she was off the ways. Somehow, I was not surprised that she was in trouble again. Consistent to the bitter end.
Even then foul weather had become the hallmark of the Pickleboat. It never left her during her war days. Now, two decades later, she seemed determined to carry this precarious flirtation with the elements right down to the wire. The Fogg rode it out, however. Some 46 hours after she broke away from her tug, she was spotted by a hurricane hunter plane and eventually the Coast Guard got her back.
Today she is in mothballs with the Reserve Fleet, Norfolk Group. Someday, perhaps she will be sold to another country. If so, or if she goes back to sea with the Fleet, I should like to know the sequel to her story.
