Former Coast Guard cutter moved to Manistee

Tue, Oct 20, 2009    to del.icio.us

The retired U.S. Coast Guard cutter Acacia has a new home in Manistee.

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The 180-foot-long cutter arrived in Manistee's harbor on Saturday, the Ludington Daily News reported.

Tom Read, who is involved in both the Manistee-based Society for the Preservation of the SS City of Milwaukee and the American Academy of Industry — which obtained the Acacia after it was decommissioned three years ago — told the Ludington Daily News that the cutter will remain in Manistee next to the Milwaukee, a National Historic Landmark docked along U.S. 31 on the northwest end of Manistee Lake.

The plan is to open the Acacia to the public for tours.

The Acacia was decommissioned in June 2006 and turned over to the American Academy of Industry, which is based in the Chicago area. The ship spent the past three years docked in Burns Harbor, Ind., as volunteers worked to transform it into a maritime history museum and educational platform.

The academy's intent was to dock the Acacia along the banks of the Chicago River or some other area in Chicago, but plans apparently fell through and they decided instead to relocate it across the lake to Manistee. Read told the Ludington Dailly News the Acacia was given back to the federal government so it could be given to the state of Michigan and then to the City of Milwaukee preservation society.

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The "Ace of the Lakes" was built in Duluth, Minn., and launched Sept. 1, 1944. It was named after the original USCG cutter Acacia that was sunk by a German U-boat off the British West Indies in March 1942.

The Acacia was one of 39 180-foot buoy tenders built for the Coast Guard between 1942 and 1944. Its primary duties on the Great Lakes were maintaining buoys, lighthouses and other navigational aids, and breaking ice during the winter season.

Its homeport was Grand Haven in the 1980s before it was reassigned to the Coast Guard station in Charlevoix in 1990.