NOAAS John N. Cobb

U. S. fisheries research vessel

+NOAAS John N. Cobb
NOAA Ship John N. Cobb (R 552) was a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research vessel in commission from 1970 to 2008. She was named for John Nathan Cobb and was the oldest commissioned ship in the NOAA fleet when she was decommissioned, having previously served in the United States Department of the Interior′s Fish and Wildlife Service from 1950 to 1956 and in the United States Fish and Wildlife Service′s Bureau of Commercial Fisheries from 1956 to 1970 as US FWS John N. Cobb (FWS 1601).

W. C. Nickum and Sons designed John N. Cobb based on a West Coast purse seiner design. The Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) funded her construction using US$150,000 ifrom the sale of the FWS fisheries research vessel Washington, and the Western Boatbuilding Company constructed her in Tacoma, Washington. She was launched on 16 January 1950 and commissioned as US FWS John N. Cobb (FWS 1601) on 18 February 1950. She joined other vessels in rescuing LeContes 86 passengers from life rafts, picking up most of them herself. and she was moved to Salmon Bay in Seattle. She was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on 11 February 2009, but the Academy never repaired her broken crankshaft, In 2015, the Academy sold her to Daniel J. Webb, A legal dispute over payment of mooring fees and for repairs to the vessel broke out during 2016 between the Port of Port Townsend and the State of Washington, which represented the Seattle Maritime Academy; the port claimed that the Academy had violated the law by selling an unseaworthy vessel to an owner who could not afford to repair her, while the state countered that the law exempted unregistered vessels used primarily for government purposes, that the Academy had never registered John N. Cobb and therefore was not bound by the law, that the Academy was free to surplus the vessel in any way it saw fit consistent with the wishes of her donor, and that any matter of financial restitution to the port was matter between the port and Webb.