USC&GS A. D. Bache

USC&GS "A. D. Bache" was a ship of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey. She was a steamer constructed in 1871 as the "A. D. Bache" at Wilmington, Delaware for the Coast and Geodetic Survey, and conducted surveys for the Navy at Tortugas Harbor in 1897. She was briefly commanded in 1878 by future rear admiral Uriel Sebree.

She was used to transport divers and salvage workers to Havana in February 1898 after the battleship USS "Maine" was destroyed in an explosion. The "A. D. Bache" was also involved in evacuating the injured. She put into Baltimore in the summer of 1898 for repairs.

Sources are divided as to her subsequent fate. It may have been that the repairs were never carried out and instead was she was condemned and partially scrapped, with her hull being used for experimental purposes by the US Navy. The alternative is that she instead was rebuilt at Shooters Island, New York in 1901. She may then have returned to the Coast and Geodetic Survey, which by 1901 was operating a ship known as "Bache". This "Bache" was transferred to the Navy on 24 September 1917, and served with the section patrol in the 5th Naval District, operating out of Norfolk, Virginia until the end of the First World War. She was returned to the Coast and Geodetic Survey on 21 June 1919.

References

*DANFS|http://www.history.navy.mil/danfs/b1/bache-i.htm