Albatross IV - Northeast Fisheries Science Center - NOAA

Administration. Albatross IV has taken multiple trips to the yards to receive a number of
physical modifications. These modifications enhanced the ship’s ability to complete her
mission, and also provided a more welcoming and hospitable environment for both
scientists and crew. The largest modification was the enclosure of the upper deck and
winch controls in the mid-1970s. This change led to the creation of today’s computer
room, ET shop, ship’s office and lounge.
Albatross IV has supported many different NEFSC missions, but her bread and
butter has always been the Bottom Trawl Survey. Now, after two years of preparation and
calibration work, the survey is ready to be turned over to NOAA Ship Henry B. Bigelow.
Thus ends of a long and illustrious line of ships that have carried the name Albatross.
In 1883 when US Fisheries Commission Steamer Albatross was launched, she too
was on the cutting edge of technology in both nautical and scientific frontiers. She sailed
along not only the East Coast of the US, but down the entire coast of South America,
through the Straight of Magellan, and north towards the Galapagos. She continued her
survey around the Pacific with stops in San Francisco, Anchorage, Honolulu, and
throughout the Philippines and Japan. After a brief stint in the Navy during the Spanish-
American War, she returned to Woods Hole to sail in the service of fisheries science
where eighty-eight years and three weeks ago she was decommissioned at the same
location where the heir to her name, Albatross IV, will undergo the same ceremony today.
In between these two illustrious ships were Albatross II and Albatross III.
Unfortunately, neither of these ships had the chance to serve their nation for as long a
period as their descendent, or in such grand and adventurous assignments as their
predecessor.
This brings us to this most somber of days. Truly, with the conclusion of this
ceremony we will see the end of an era. The Albatross line of fisheries research vessels
will always be remembered throughout the annals of scientific history. Albatross IV alone
has contributed over 17,166 samples to the Smithsonian, Yale and Harvard University
collections, in addition to 182,355 samples given to said collections from her
predecessors. Much of the documentation of Albatross IV and even portions of her
physical being, will be preserved at various locations including the Northeast Fisheries
Science Center, Marine Operations Center – Atlantic, the National Archives, the
Smithsonian Institution, and the NOAA Library.
While the preservation of her operational history and the measurement of her
accomplishments as a whole are important, none of them can compare to the emotional
bond established between Albatross IV and her loving crew and scientists. Through the
years, Albatross IV has touched many lives in a multitude of ways: loves-hates,
marriages-divorces, births-deaths, hirings-firings and so many friendships that have
endured far past the boundaries of the ship itself; friendships as limitless as the ocean
upon which she sails. Yes, this mass of steel, wires, machinery and fluids has been
pivotal in many person’s lives.
The tradition stands since the dawn of seafaring to refer to a ship in the first
person, as if she was an entity unto herself. I do not believe that it is the ship herself that
becomes her entity but the people who sail her. All of their combined efforts come
together in order to bring her to life, to fire off her mains, to steer the intended course, to
set the net off her stern, to process her catch for the advancement of science; oh yes, as
she sails off into history all who have sailed aboard her can rest assured that they are as
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