PALM BEACH AGER 3

Ship Name and Designation History

This section lists the names and designations that the ship had during its lifetime. The list is in chronological order.

Camano Class Light Cargo Ship Keel Laid (Date unknown) "as FS-217 one of the 18 specialized Design 427 variants of the Army Freight and Supply type, officially Vessel, Supply, Aircraft Repair, Diesel, Steel, 180', at Higgins Industries in New Orleans." Wikipedia Delivered to U.S. Army Transportation Service December 1944 USAT COLONEL ARMOND PETERSON FS-217 Commissioned 1944 - Decommissioned 1956 Acquired by U.S. Navy June 18 1966 PALM BEACH AKL-45 Designated and named Light Cargo Ship PALM BEACH AKL-45 Converted May 2 1967 to Banner Class Environmental Research Ship (AGER) USS PALM BEACH AGER-3 Commissioned May 13 1967 - Decommissioned December 1 1969 Struck from Naval Register December 1 1969 Sold in 1969-70 to Ralston Robertson, Bayou La Batre, AL. M/V ORO VERDE (Commercial Service) Resold to a Panamanian Co., date unknown, renamed M/V Oro Verde Ran aground in Cayman Islands in 1976 Final Disposition, sunk by Cayman government in 1980 to be used for scuba diving

Conflicting History Data

Lloyd’s Register of Shipping 1968 M-Z has an entry for ORO VERDE which identifies the ship as "ex F.S. 207" with builder Higgins Industries, owner of Migrant Shipping Co. Ltd., home port of Nassau, British flag. Entries for this ORO VERDE exist at least through the 1988 edition with the ship changing owners multiple times. Lloyds has no other entries for any other ship named ORO VERDE.

However, the entry in Lloyds cannot be the same ship as MV ORO VERDE / USS PALM BEACH. First, the entry in Lloyds is before the 1969 decommissioning date for USS PALM BEACH and the 1988 entry is past the sinking date of 1980. The reference in Lloyds to "FS-207" would indicate that this ship was originally named USAV Col. Demas T. Craw (FS-207). Per NavSource, USAV Col. Demas T. Craw (FS-207) had unknown decommissioning date and unknown fate. Wikipedia has no entry for FS-207.

Multiple web pages exist for the ORO VERDE dive wreck near Grand Cayman Island. All of them indicate the ship was the former USS PALM BEACH. The most informative of the sites is Oro Verde Shipwreck Grand Cayman

The preponderance of data seems to favor the NavSource narrative and that is what I chose to go with. It is interesting that we have data for two ships with the same name, from the same builder, operating in the same general geographic area at around the same time. Innocent until proven otherwise, suspicious perhaps, curious certainly.

 

Naval Covers

This section lists active links to the pages displaying covers associated with the ship. There should be a separate set of pages for each name of the ship (for example, Bushnell AG-32 / Sumner AGS-5 are different names for the same ship so there should be one set of pages for Bushnell and one set for Sumner). Covers should be presented in chronological order (or as best as can be determined).

Since a ship may have many covers, they may be split among many pages so it doesn't take forever for the pages to load. Each page link should be accompanied by a date range for covers on that page.

1. Covers Page 1     (DATE RANGE)

 

Postmarks

This section lists examples of the postmarks used by the ship. There should be a separate set of postmarks for each name and/or commissioning period. Within each set, the postmarks should be listed in order of their classification type. If more than one postmark has the same classification, then they should be further sorted by date of earliest known usage.

A postmark should not be included unless accompanied by a close-up image and/or an image of a cover showing that postmark. Date ranges MUST be based ONLY ON COVERS IN THE MUSEUM and are expected to change as more covers are added.
 
>>> If you have a better example for any of the postmarks, please feel free to replace the existing example.

 

Postmark Type --- Killer Bar Text	Date From to Date To	Thumbnail Link To Postmark Image	Thumbnail Link To Cover Image

 

NO POSTMARKS REPORTED

DATE FROM to DATE TO

N/A

N/A

Note:

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Locy Type 2n USS DE SOTO COUNTY LST-1171

1969-12-01

No Image

Last Day of Commissioning, cachet by Tazewell G. Nicholson

 

Other Information

NAMESAKE - A county and a city in southeastern Florida

 

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If you have images or information to add to this page, then either contact the Curator or edit this page yourself and add it. See Editing Ship Pages for detailed information on editing this page.

 

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