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USS Secret

patrol vessel of the United States Navy

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMar 5, 2026
Entity authorityQ7873993 ↗
Source-derived summary

USS Secret (SP-1063) was a United States Navy patrol vessel in commission from 1917 to 1918.

Secret was built as a private motorboat of the same name in 1916 by William E. Haff at New Rochelle, New York. On 28 May 1917, the U.S. Navy leased her from her owner, John S. Baker of Short Hills, New Jersey, for use as a section patrol boat during World War I. She was commissioned the same day as USS Secret (SP-1063).

Assigned to the 5th Naval District, Secret served as a dispatch boat. She also served as a rescue boat at Naval Air Station Anacostia in Washington, D.C.

Secret was decommissioned on 30 December 1918 and was returned to Baker the same day.

See also

Crash boats of World War 2

Notes

References

This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. The entry can be found here.

Department of the Navy Naval History and Heritage Command Online Library of Selected Images: U.S. Navy Ships: USS Secret (SP-1063), 1917-1918. Previously the civilian motor boat Secret.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “USS Secret” as patrol vessel of the United States Navy. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Secret, patrol and vessel.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1063, 1917, 1918, 1916—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Secret, patrol and vessel providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “USS Secret”, the useful work is to connect “patrol vessel of the United States Navy” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7873993. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1063, 1917, 1918 and 1916.

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.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “USS Secret” 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.