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Natick (YTB 760)

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Named after the city in Massachusetts, the NATICK was the lead ship of a class of large harbor tugs and the second ship in the Navy to bear the name. Stricken from the Navy list on March 28, 2003, the NATICK was sold on April 27, 2005.

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Crew List:

This section contains the names of sailors who served aboard NATICK. It is no official listing but contains the names of sailors who submitted their information.

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NATICK History:

NATICK was the lead unit of the NATICK-class of large harbor tugs, built at the turn of the 1960s as part of a wider modernization of the U.S. Navy's service craft. Designed to maneuver warships, submarines and auxiliaries in confined waters, tow barges, and provide waterfront firefighting capability, she embodied the standard features of the class: a single 2,000 horsepower diesel engine, single screw, about 109 feet in length, 29 feet in beam and a draft of around 13-14 feet, with a crew of about twelve.

The contract for NATICK was awarded on June 29, 1960, as the Navy moved to replace older World War II-era tugs that were increasingly inadequate for handling larger postwar combatants. Construction began at Southern Shipbuilding Corporation in Slidell, Louisiana, where her keel was laid down on September 1, 1960, under hull number 38. Partway through construction, the unfinished hull was transferred to Jakobson Shipyard at Oyster Bay, New York, which completed the tug for the Navy. This arrangement later led some sources to list Jakobson as the builder, while others emphasize Southern Shipbuilding's role in starting the hull.

NATICK was launched on February 28, 1961, entered the water for fitting out, and was completed on June 13, 1961. She was delivered to the Navy on June 19, 1961, and formally placed in service at Norfolk, Virginia, on June 30, 1961, as NATICK (YTB 760), the lead ship of her class of large harbor tugs.

From 1961 until 1964, NATICK served in the 5th Naval District, based at Norfolk. Her work there reflected the standard mission of the NATICK-class: maneuvering destroyers, cruisers, carriers, and auxiliaries in Hampton Roads, assisting mooring and undocking at the naval station and shipyard, towing barges and yard craft, and providing harbor firefighting services with the class's 2,000-gallon-per-minute fire pump and foam equipment. Although day-to-day tug operations were rarely recorded in detail, this early period established NATICK's routine of close-quarters work alongside much larger ships, in one of the Navy's busiest Atlantic ports during the early 1960s, as Cold War deployments increased and Norfolk's piers filled with Atlantic Fleet ships rotating to and from the Mediterranean and North Atlantic.

In mid-1964, NATICK was selected to support the Atlantic Fleet's most sensitive mission area: the Polaris fleet ballistic-missile submarines based at Holy Loch, Scotland. Holy Loch had been designated Fleet Ballistic Missile Refit Site One in 1960, and the submarine tender PROTEUS (AS 19), followed by HUNLEY (AS 31) and SIMON LAKE (AS 33), had established a forward support base there for Polaris patrols in the North Atlantic.

NATICK departed Norfolk in the summer of 1964 and crossed the Atlantic, and on July 31, 1964, she formally joined Submarine Squadron 14 (SUBRON 14) at Holy Loch. A contemporary squadron history notes that on that date NATICK "joined the squadron", assisting with arrivals, departures, and berth shifts, a succinct description of the tug's central role in moving the nuclear-armed submarines and their tenders in the confined waters of the Scottish loch.

From 1964 into 1970, she was assigned to SUBRON 14 at Holy Loch, where she spent most of her time alongside or near submarine tenders and ballistic-missile submarines, handling lines, nudging hulls into position, and serving as an indispensable part of the floating infrastructure that kept Polaris patrols on schedule. During these years, NATICK worked in company with the successive tenders that supported SUBRON 14 as the squadron cycled through modernization and missile-system upgrades from the original Polaris to the improved Poseidon system.

The tug appears in official and later-released imagery alongside this infrastructure: photographs from Holy Loch show NATICK and her sister tug PIQUA (YTB 793) assisting HUNLEY at anchor, with another SIMON LAKE-class tender moored outboard, illustrating her typical employment in bringing the large tenders on and off their moorings and moving submarines alongside. Crew recollections and later commentary emphasize that this work continued in all weather, in a narrow Scottish loch that could be challenging in strong winds or poor visibility, with NATICK constantly moving between moorings, tending buoys, and supporting SUBRON 14's intensive patrol cycle.

In 1970, NATICK was reassigned from the North Atlantic refit site to a developing submarine support location in the Mediterranean. Official summaries state that she was moved to La Maddalena, on the island of Santo Stefano in northern Sardinia, where from 1970 to 1973 she supported U.S. Navy ships at the new base. At La Maddalena, a U.S.-Italian arrangement gradually produced what became the primary Mediterranean advanced refit and support site for attack and ballistic-missile submarines, built around a submarine tender moored at a NATO pier on Santo Stefano with submarines berthed alongside. NATICK's role mirrored her work at Holy Loch: moving tenders and submarines in tight harbor spaces and handling logistics barges and lighters. Her presence there in the early 1970s helped establish port routines that would be refined by later tenders such as ORION (AS 18) and SIMON LAKE, which in subsequent decades made La Maddalena a familiar name to several generations of submarine crews.

After this early tour in Sardinia, NATICK's documented movements show her returning to the Holy Loch environment and continuing to work there for many years. Naval records summarizing her assignments give La Maddalena as her station from 1970 to 1973, with Holy Loch listed again as a major homeport, and crew-list recollections place her in Squadron 14 service in the mid-1970s. A mess specialist who served aboard from September 1975 to August 1977 recalled his tour with "Squadron 14" rather than the Mediterranean base, consistent with NATICK being back in Scotland by that time. Additional crew entries and comments show NATICK still operating at Holy Loch in the mid-1980s and early 1990s, and a widely reproduced photograph from the U.S. Naval Historical Center shows NATICK and PIQUA assisting HUNLEY at Holy Loch in a view received in June 1992.

Another image shows NATICK in Holy Loch in the winter of 1988 with the village of Kilmun in the background, further confirming her extended Scottish service. Through these years, Holy Loch remained a focal point of the Atlantic ballistic-missile submarine force, with rotating tenders and Polaris/Poseidon SSBNs making regular calls. NATICK's part in this infrastructure, although rarely singled out in formal reports, is reflected in the fact that she remained with the squadron across decades and earned multiple Meritorious Unit Commendations for her unit's collective performance. The Holy Loch base closed in 1992, when SIMON LAKE and SUBRON 14 left Scotland as part of a broader post-Cold War drawdown.

By the late 1990s, NATICK was again documented at La Maddalena, now firmly established as the Mediterranean successor to Holy Loch as a forward submarine support site. An updated description of her history notes that in the late 1990s, NATICK was stationed with Port Services at La Maddalena, supporting SIMON LAKE in her renewed role as the resident tender there. This aligns with broader accounts of the period: SIMON LAKE shifted to La Maddalena in 1993 and served there through the 1990s, followed in 1999 by EMORY S. LAND (AS 39), which continued tender operations at Santo Stefano into the 2000s.

NATICK, as one of the port's principal U.S. tugs, worked alongside these tenders and the submarines that rotated through the Mediterranean, supporting moorings, underway movements and routine harbor services around the NATO pier. NATICK's final years in Navy service are recorded through both administrative summaries and a 2003 command history for EMORY S. LAND. NATICK was placed out of service on March 28, 2003, and struck from the Naval Vessel Register the same day, marking the end of more than four decades of naval service.

A 2003 report from EMORY S. LAND records a Fleet Assistance Team visit to NATICK at La Maddalena, confirming that as late as early 2003 the tug was still physically present and being supported in Sardinia as a Navy asset. After being declared excess, NATICK was offered for sale for commercial use. On April 26, 2005, she was sold at Boston, Massachusetts, to Burnham Associates, Inc., a dredging and marine-contracting firm based in Salem, Massachusetts, which retained the name NATICK for her new civilian career.

Following the sale, NATICK remained for a time in the Mediterranean for conversion work. Burnham Associates later described acquiring the former U.S. Navy YTB 760 in 2005 and sending her to La Maddalena for a substantial refit before she made her transatlantic voyage back to Boston. The refit adapted the tug from Navy harbor service to commercial towing, while retaining her core machinery: a ten-cylinder Fairbanks-Morse 38D 8-1/8 opposed-piston diesel engine driving a single screw through a Lufkin reduction gear, still rated at about 2,000 horsepower.

After arriving in New England, NATICK entered a program of continual upgrades under Burnham's ownership, including hull and systems work necessary to obtain American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) load line certification and full compliance with U.S. Coast Guard Subchapter M towing-vessel regulations. In commercial service, NATICK has operated primarily along the U.S. East Coast, based out of Boston and working in dredging support, towing and related marine construction tasks. Photographs from the 2010s and early 2020s show her with large fendering along the bow and sides, pushing or towing barges in coastal and harbor settings, still recognizable by her profile despite civilian livery and modifications.

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