USS Narcissus (WAGL-238) was built for the United States Coast Guard by Marine Iron and Shipbuilding Corporation, Duluth, Minnesota, in 1939. Designed as a navigational aid tender, she was assigned to Wilmington, North Carolina. In 1940 she transferred to Portsmouth, Virginia.
Executive Order 8929 of 1 November 1941 transferred the Coast Guard to the US Navy. Through the war years Narcissus continued to serve as a large inland buoy tender, operating out of Portsmouth. When the Coast Guard returned to the Treasury Department on 1 January 1946, the tender remained in an active status. Through 1970 she has continued her buoytending duties from her permanent station at Portsmouth.
Famous quotes containing the word narcissus:
“The narcissus has copied the arch
of your slight breast:
your feet are citron-flowers,
your knees, cut from white-ash,
your thighs are rock-cistus.”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)