HMCo #415p YMs 18

"Mar[ch] 26, 1941.
U.S. Mine Sweepers Y.M.S. 1-44
Length O.A. 136'-0".
Length on designed L.W.L. 130'-0.
Extreme beam over planking 24'-0.
10 stations, 13'-0" apart.
Frame spaces 15".
Both begin on FP = forward perpendicular.
Moulded draft 6'-3 1/2".
Thickness of planking 3".
Thickness of frames 5" ? 5 1/2".
Scale of model 3/8" = 1'." (Source: Herreshoff, A. Sidney DeW.? [Penciled note in Offset Booklet HH.4.075.] Haffenreffer-Herreshoff Collection, MIT Museum, Cambridge, MA.)

"Contracts that will provide work for several hundred men up to October of next year have been received by the Herreshoff Manufacturing Company, Bristol concern engaged in the manufacture of minesweepers for the U. S. Navy, it was reliably learned this morning.
Several weeks ago the company was forced to lay off one-third of its personnel due to a shortage of steel. This condition, however, has been corrected, it was learned, and the workmen who were laid off will be placed again within a week or two.
Workers, it was said, have been asked to contact the concern's office so that it will be ascertained whether or not they will be available when called for.
Neither Carl W. Haffenreffer, general manager, or J. H. Garrity, personnel manager, could be reached this morning to confirm the report. However it is known that letters bearing the information have been received by the workers.
The Bristol plant, as well as other boatyards along the coast, was forced to lay-off a large part of its help due to the inability to get Navy-approved and Navy-supplied steel armor plates as well as tensile steel which is used in the construction of hulls of large craft. Delay in receiving Navy-supplied plans also was held responsible.
There are two large crafts [#416p YMs 19 and #415p YMs 18] under construction at the plant and it is reported that the concern has orders for eight more. [The 'eight more' are possibly a reference to the nine Coastal Transports #425p APc1 to #433p APc9.]" (Source: Anon. "Herreshoff Shipyards Ready to Resume Full Operations." Bristol Phoenix, November 25, 1941, p. 1.)

"The Herreshoff Manufacturing Company boatyard will be the scene of another launching tomorrow morning at 9 o'clock. At this time the fifth mine­sweeper to be constructed for the United States Navy at the local ship­building plant, will slide down the ways to get its first taste of salt water. Mrs. R. F. Haffenreffer, 3rd., will perform the christening ceremony as the blocks are pulled away and this newest addition to Uncle Sam's war fleet starts its slow journey to the water. The ship will bear the name 'Y. M. S. 18.'
'Y. M. S. 18' is the largest mine-sweeper yet made in Rhode Island shipyards and is the largest boat to be launched in the State since the construction of Harold S. Vanderbilt's 'Vara' [#385p]. It is 135 feet in length, with a beam of 24 feet and a draft of 10 feet. The launching tomorrow is also an appropriate way of observing the anniversary of the receipt of the first contract for a minesweeper by the Herreshoff Manufacturing Company. During the past twelve months, five of these sturdy craft have been launched including the 'Y. M. S 18'. A sixth is nearly completed and it is expected that this will be ready for launching within two weeks time.
Further contracts were recently received and it is believed that these will keep the local well-known boat building establishment busy for several months. It is understood that the contracts call for eight additional mine­sweepers.
Representatives of the U. S. Navy Department will be on hand tomorrow to witness the launching." (Source: Anon. "Minesweeper to be Launched at Herreshoff Yard Tomorrow. Will Be The Largest Boat Launched In Rhode Island Waters For Several Years. Will Be Christened 'Y. M. S. 18' By Mrs. R. F. Haffenreffer, 3rd. More Being Built." Bristol Phoenix, December 5, 1941, p. 1.)

"Bristol, R. I., Dec. 6 --- A 135-foot mine sweeper was christened today at the Herreshoff yard, where many famous defenders of the America's Cup left the ways in the past, but a faulty cradle caused postponement of the launching.
Mrs. R. F. Haffenreffer, 3d, wife of an official of the yard, was sponsor of the mine sweeper, fifth and largest of the type built at the yard, now occupied entirely with defense work.
A falling jack wedged two blocks under the cradle and stopped the ship from reaching the water. [Note: Though not identified by name, the fact that it was the fifth and largest mine sweeper built at HMCo identifies her as #415p YMS 18.]" (Source: Anon. "Mine Sweeper Delayed By Faulty Cradle." Washington Post, December 7, 1941, p. 20.)

"BRISTOL, R. I., Dec. 6 [1941] --- A 135-foot mine sweeper, as yet known only as the Y. M. S. 18, was launched today from the Herreshoff Yard, from which many famous defenders of the America's Cup left the ways in the past.
Mrs. R. F. Haffenreffer 3d, wife of a yard official, was sponsor.
The mine sweeper is the fifth and largest of the type built at the yard, which now is occupied entirely with defense work.
All the cup boats, including those which defended the yachting trophy against the late Sir Thomas Lipton and T. O. M. Sopwith, British sportsmen, have been broken up and much of the material obtained from them has been used for defense production." (Source: Anon. "Old Cup Yachts Broken Up." New York Times, December 7, 1941, p. 70.)

"A good many vessels have been built for the Navy on the shores of Narragansett Bay, small ships for the important but unspectacular jobs of sea and amphibious warfare. Last week the Navy disclosed that one of them had distinguished herself in battle.
She is the YMS 18, from the Herreshoff yard in Bristol where designs of racing sloops have been put aside for blueprints of minesweepers, coastal transports and PT boats.
YMS 18 is a minesweeper. She is of wood, 135 feet long, and she sits low and solidly in the water. At a port on the south shore of Sicily she performed her hazardous duties with such dispatch and under such difficult conditions that her deeds brought her official notice.
Day Before Pearl Harbor
The nation was at peace when Mrs. Rudolf F. Haffenreffer, III, broke a ribboned champagne bottle on YMS 18's heavy stem. The vessel should have moved then down the ways, out of the great frame shed where she was built and into the waters of the bay. But she was reluctant. A crowd of 300 Navy people and town officials waited.
A big tractor tried to pull her toward the water. Two heavy jacks exerted their strength and she moved about 20 feet. Twelve men with heavy beams could force her no farther. She passed the night with her cradle just in the water but with her black and gray hull above the waves lapping the ways. The date was Dec. 6, 1941.
The next day, at about the same hour that silver planes bearing red discs on their wings were wheeling over burning, stricken ships and smashed airfields half the world away, YMS 18 slipped smoothly and quickly into the water.
Bristol and Rhode Island may have forgotten the YMS 18 in the swift course of events which followed the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, so curiously coincident with her launching. She was fitted out, made her trials, a Navy crew came aboard, and then YMS 18 moved out.
The Herreshoff people had news of her from time to time. She had been at this port or that, had crossed the ocean, had been in action. Now that the Navy has told what YMS 18 accomplished at Porto Empedocle, Sicily, they can reveal their pride in her.
'We take vicarious pride in this recognition,' says Carl W. Haffenreffer, the general manager.
Lieut. Ralph Blake Williams, USNR, of Dover, Mass., was YMS 18's skipper at Porto Empedocle. To him the commander of United States Naval Forces in Northwest African waters wrote a letter.
'Your meritorious performance of duty as commanding officer of the U. S. S. YMS 18 while engaged in sweeping a channel through a large enemy minefield off Porto Empedocle, Sicily, is worthy of special commendation,' the letter said.
A force of Allied ships bearing supplies was en route to the Sicilian port. Ashore, American troops needed the cargoes those ships carried. Between the ships and the docks were tons of high explosives, tethered out of sight beneath the sea.
YMS 18 and two others, YMS 16 and YMS 83, pushed ahead. They nosed into the minefield and began sweeping, swiftly and competently.
Enemy Planes Attack
Enemy's batteries on shore opened up. Shells hissed into the water around the little grey ships. Then planes appeared. Some dived on the minesweepers with heavy bombs. Machine guns of others strafed them, but the sweeping went on.
'This operation,' the force commander said in his letter, 'resulted in the successful clearing of a channel into Porto Empedocle, thus enabling the landing of supplies at that port which were urgently required for the support of the United States Army in Sicily.'
A glance at a map will show why the enemy's effort to keep the Americans out of Porto Empedocle had been so 'determined,' as the Navy described it. Porto Empedocle lies four miles southwest of Girgenti and is the port of that town, but more important it is the southern terminus of a north-south railway which cuts across Sicily to a coastal railroad running east and west. The junction is near the city of Palermo.
The work of YMS 18 and her consorts was soon completed. Her hour of action was only a small incident in a very large war, and her contribution to their well-being probably never was known by the soldiers who received the supplies landed at Porto Empedocle. But she showed that | Rhode Island, which has provided so many fighting men at sea since Commodore Esek Hopkins took command of the small fleet of a new republic, can turn out fighting ships, too.
[Image caption:] THE YMS 18, pictured soon after launching at the Herreshoff yard in Bristol, R. I. , on Dec. 7, 1941. Since picture was taken certain changes have been made in her upper structure. (Photo from Herreshoff Manufacturing Co.)" (Source: Spilman, Charles H. "Minesweeper Built in Rhode Island Yard Cited for Accomplishment Off Port in Sicily." Providence Journal, no date (1940s). In: "Herreshoff Yachts. The Finale." Scrapbook compiled by the Haffenreffer Family. Collection of the Herreshoff Marine Museum, Bristol, R.I.)

"YMS-18
YMS-1 Class Auxiliary Motor Minesweeper: Laid down 6 June 1941 by the Herreshoff Manufacturing Co., Bristol, RI; Launched 8 December 1941; Completed 9 May 1942; Commissioned USS YMS-18, (date unknown); Decommissioned, (date unknown); Transferred to France 1 October 1944 as Glycine (D 332); Sold to France 21 March 1949; Struck from the Naval Register, (date unknown). Fate unknown.
Specifications: Displacement 270 t.; Length 136'; Beam 24' 6"; Draft 8'; Speed 15 kts; Complement 32; Armament one single 3"/50 gun mount, two 20mm, two dcp; Propulsion General Motors diesel engines. two shafts." (Source: http://www.navsource.org/archives/11/19018.htm, retrieved March 16, 2007.)

• Wenonah and #415p YMs18 (MIT Museum-made index card)
• Note: The vessel index cards comprise two sets of a total of some 3200 cards about vessels built by HMCo, with dimensions and information regarding drawings, later or former vessel names, and owners. They were compiled from HMCo's early days until 1920 and added to in later decades, apparently by Hart Nautical curator William A. Baker and his successors. While HMCo seems to have used only one set of index cards, all sorted by name and, where no name was available, by number, later users at MIT apparently divided them into two sets of cards, one sorted by vessel name, the other by vessel number and greatly expanded the number of cards. Original HMCo cards are usually lined and almost always punched with a hole at bottom center while later cards usually have no hole, are unlined, and often carry substantially less information. All cards are held by the Francis Russell Hart Nautical Collections of the MIT Museum in Cambridge, Mass.

Year: 1942
E/P/S: P
No.: 415p
Name: M s 18
OA: 136'
LW: 130'

Source: Vermilya, Peter and Maynard Bray. "Transcription of the HMCo. Construction Record." Unpublished database, ca. 2000.

Note: The transcription of the HMCo Construction Record by Peter Vermilya and Maynard Bray was performed independently (and earlier) than that by Claas van der Linde. A comparison of the two transcriptions can be particularly useful in those many cases where the handwriting in the Construction Record is difficult to decipher.

"Launched 1941-12-6, delivered 1942-05-9." (Source: van der Linde, Claas. June 15, 2016.)

"Displacement 270 [long or short?] t." (Source: http://www.navsource.org/archives/11/19018.htm, last visit March 16, 2007.)

Note: Research notes contain information about a vessel that is often random and unedited but has been deemed useful for future research.