Operation Rusty Hull: The Last Stand of the Lightship Overfalls

If you take a tour of Lewes, Delaware, you will find the Lightship Overfalls posing for photos. This vessel is essentially lying about its resume because it never actually patrolled the Overfalls station. If you want to see the actual ship that did the heavy lifting for that station, you would have better luck heading over to Portsmouth, Virginia.

Rice Brothers Shipyard birthed this unit in 1938 as the ultimate swan song for the United States Lighthouse Service. It is the ultimate maritime introvert because its unique hull design makes it a single-ship class. This hunk of metal served as the final curtain call for the riveted-hull era before the service decided to switch to welded hulls.

This ship actually showed up for duty during World War II and maintained its position. It utilized diesel power to run generators and compressors for the beacon and other gear. A duplex 375 mm lantern sat on a single mast 57 ft above the water line while a crew of fourteen lived in the cramped quarters on a two weeks on, one week off rotation.

Nature decided to audit the ship during a severe storm in December 1970 and caused enough damage to retire it. The vessel was officially decommissioned on November 7, 1972. After the Lewes Historical Society took over and a failed sale in 1999 led to the Overfalls Maritime Museum Foundation, the ship survived. It has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1989 and secured a National Historic Landmark designation in 2011.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons