USS Admiral (SP-967)
patrol vessel of the United States Navy
The wooden-hulled screw steam yacht Red Cross was completed in 1892 at East Providence, RI, and by 1907 had been renamed Admiral. At that time, the yacht was owned by the banker, George Rumsey Sheldon. She was next owned by Irving T. Bush (1869–1948), the founder and creator of the famed Bush Terminal in South Brooklyn, NY, before being acquired by the president of the Submarine Signal Co., of New London, Gordon Dexter (1864–1937) about 1914.
When the United States entered World War I, the American Navy sought ships to perform a variety of tasks, including local patrol. The Navy acquired Admiral from Gordon Dexter on 5 July 1917, and placed her in commission at Lawley's Ship Yard, Boston, Mass., on 7 August 1917.
Admiral, given the classification SP-967, performed routine patrol duty in the 1st Naval District through the winter of 1917 and 1918. In the course of her operations toward the end of that period, the yacht cast off from Commonwealth Pier, at the Boston Section Base, at 0055 on 26 March 1918, with one petty officer and eight enlisted men of a naval port guard detachment embarked for passage to Plymouth. Admiral proceeded uneventfully south by east until 0420, when she struck a boulder off Brant Rock, near the town of Scituate, Massachusetts, and began shipping water.
Within the hour, the situation on board had worsened to the point that the pumps could no longer hold their own against the in-rushing water. The nearby life-saving stations at Brant Rock and Gurnet dispatched boats to the scene and took off the port guard detachment and 17 men of the crew as well.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “USS Admiral (SP-967)” as patrol vessel of the United States Navy. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as patrol vessel of the United States Navy. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
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 Mar 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7867044. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1892, 1907, 1869 and 1948.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. 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.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “USS Admiral (SP-967)”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow USS Admiral (SP-967) primary sources, USS Admiral (SP-967) archive and Admiral research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “USS Admiral (SP-967)”?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
- What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “USS Admiral (SP-967)” 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.