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NOAAS Nancy Foster

research vessel launched in 1990

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 11, 2026
Entity authorityQ6954827 ↗
Source-derived summary

NOAA Ship Nancy Foster (R 352) is a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research vessel. The ship is named for Dr. Nancy Foster, who was the director of the National Marine Fisheries Service's Office of Protected Resources from 1986 until 1993, and the director of the National Ocean Service from 1997 until her death in 2000.

Construction and commissioning

The ship was originally built as the United States Navy Cape Flattery-class torpedo trials craft Agate Pass (YTT 12) at McDermott Shipyards in Amelia, Louisiana, and launched in September 1990. In 2001, the Navy transferred the vessel to NOAA, which outfitted her to conduct coastal research along the United States East Coast and United States Gulf Coast and in the Caribbean. NOAA commissioned her as NOAAS Nancy Foster (R 352) on 10 May 2004.

Technical characteristics

The hull of Nancy Foster is 186 feet (57 m) long with a beam of 40 feet (12 m) and a draft of 12 feet 10 inches (3.91 m). The ship has a total of 39 bunk spaces. She carries a complement of 6 NOAA Corps officers, 15 crew including 3 licensed engineers, and up to 17 visiting scientists. In 2018, the ship began a series of mid-life upgrades to extend her service life by another 30 years.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “NOAAS Nancy Foster” is research vessel launched in 1990. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through NOAAS, Nancy and Foster, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1986, 1993, 1997, 2000—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, NOAAS, Nancy and Foster is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “research vessel launched in 1990” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6954827. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1986, 1993, 1997 and 2000.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “NOAAS Nancy Foster”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow NOAAS Nancy Foster primary sources, NOAAS Nancy Foster archive and NOAAS research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “NOAAS Nancy Foster” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.