The USS Zuni was a United States Navy Cherokee-class fleet tugboat, formerly called Navajo class. It was a ship named for the Zuni, the popular name given to a tribe of Pueblo Indians indigenous to the area around the Zuni River in central New Mexico near the Arizona state line.
Launched on July 31, 1943 she was deployed as a Navy tug to the war-torn Pacific. Hopping from island to island, she towed torpedoed warships to safety and performed routine missions assisting broached landing craft and laying submerged fuel pipes as the U.S. drove Japanese forces back east.
In 1945, she arrived off Iwo Jima three days after the initial assault. For 31 days, she performed yeoman service for the warships in the area. She pulled a transport off a sand bar. She deliberately ran herself aground alongside a disabled LST to help that ship land ammunition. She would tow two heavily damaged cruisers, the USS Houston and USS Reno, hundreds of miles to safety.
Two crewmen died when a tow cable snapped and struck them. They were the only casualties during a two-year span in which the Zuni participated in four invasions and traveled thousands of miles in seas patrolled by Japanese warships and skies swarmed with fighter squadrons. Zuni earned four battle stars for her World War II service.
Of the dozens of men who served on the ship, the last known surviving member of the original crew was Lt. Herb Ruben of Westchester County, N.Y., who died at 94. “He always said it was a ship that could take anything.” “He was very proud of being in the Navy and being on the Zuni.”
A year after the war ended, the Zuni was transferred to the U.S. Coast Guard and renamed the Tamaroa, where it spent almost five decades rescuing ships in distress, intercepting drug smugglers and enforcing fishery laws. In 1956, it was one of the first ships to reach the sinking luxury liner Andrea Doria off Nantucket, where it helped rescue more than 1,600 passengers and crew.
A half-century later on Oct. 30, 1991, it made history when three storm systems slammed together off the New England coast with gusts of 70 mph and waves as high as a four-story building. She overcame gale force winds and 40-foot waves to help save seven people off the New England coast, a rescue effort immortalized in the book and film “The Perfect Storm.”
75 miles south of Nantucket Island the Tamaroa’s rigid hull inflatable rescue boat was sent to help the sailboat Satori. Satori had three people on board and needed help after being caught in the storm raking New England that came to be known as The Perfect Storm.
The Tamaroa tried to rescue the Satori’s three crew members via a smaller, inflatable boat it had launched. The crew was able to toss survival suits to the three men on the Satori. But the waves were too much and the Satori’s stern came crashing down on the smaller boat. Both crews were soon hoisted up to a helicopter and flown to safety.
The Tamaroa’s work was far from done. It was soon sent to rescue the crew of an Air National Guard helicopter. The Jolly 110 had run out of fuel on a rescue mission in the storm and had to be ditched in the ocean. Bobbing up and down in the sea, the Tamaroa made several attempts over two hours before finally hoisting four of the five crew members aboard.
“Capt. Kristopher Furtney deployed a cargo net along the side of his ship then laid her side-to the immense waves produced by the storm. The ship took 52-degree rolls in those 40-foot seas and was buffeted by 80-knot winds. Fortunately, the maneuver was a success and the crew of the helicopter was able to grab the cargo net and were pulled to safety by the Tamaroa’s crew.” The ship then spent the next 48 hours searching for the National Guard’s rescue swimmer, Sgt. Rick Smith, unfortunately without success.
The storm made national news but attention quietly died down. “For years it was called the “No-Name Storm” until the Tamaroa’s exploits were documented in Sebastian Junger’s 1997 book, “The Perfect Storm,” and three years later in a film starring George Clooney.”
“Capt. Brudnicki said newer Coast Guard cutters would not have been able to make a rescue in “The Perfect Storm.” The Tamaroa was 700 tons heavier and sat 6 feet deeper than more modern ships. That allowed it to endure the hill-sized waves.
We would not have been able to sustain the waves we took if we were in a more modern ship,” said Brudnicki, who retired in 2002. “Back then, they built ships to last.”
But the Tamaroa could not conquer time. Only three years after the storm, the Tamaroa was decommissioned. It changed ownership several times and was moored on the Hudson River and then in Baltimore. A group of Navy and Coast Guard veterans formed the Zuni/Tamaroa Maritime Foundation, with the goal of restoring it.
Unfortunately, after almost a decade of work and tens of thousands of dollars spent moving it to Norfolk, Virginia, the ship sprung a substantial leak in 2012 and saltwater flooded key parts of the vessel. Repairs were estimated to cost as much as $2 million.
With few options, the foundation members resigned themselves to sinking their beloved ship. The ship that has made so much history would be sunk off the southern coast of New Jersey to help expand an artificial reef that attracts both scuba divers and anglers.
“Having the Tamaroa sit on the ocean floor isn’t how many who served on the ship envisioned its fate. There is an emotional attachment to the ship far more powerful than mere nostalgia. The Tamaroa was home to generations of crew members who routinely risked their lives in some of the most brutal conditions to save others.”
The man who commanded the ship during the 1991 “Perfect Storm” said “sinking the Tamaroa is a better outcome than being demolished for scrap metal, a common ending for old service ships.”
“It’s always sad when you sink a ship, but some good will come of it,” retired Coast Guard Capt. Larry Brudnicki said. “It’s being repurposed. It’s being used. If it’s cut up, who’s going to know that their razor blade came from the Tamaroa?”
They originally scheduled to sink the Tamaroa around Oct. 30, the 25th anniversary of “The Perfect Storm. This was delayed by rough seas and related issues. She was finally scuttled at 13:00 on May 10, 2017 in the Atlantic Ocean approximately 33 nautical miles from Cape May, New Jersey, at a depth of 120 feet, to form an artificial reef.
A positive note. It is a coup for New Jersey divers. “It’s like anything else, it’s name recognition,” said Brian Nunes-Vais, a trustee with the Ann E. Clark Foundation, which helps fund New Jersey’s artificial reef program. “Would you want to dive Bob’s boat or the Tamaroa?”
“I’d rather see her be a permanent undersea memorial than be scrapped,” said Bill Doherty of Rockland County, N.Y., who served on the Tamaroa in the late 1960s, when it was based in New York Harbor. “She has too much history for that.”
Not every piece of the Tamaroa will be on the ocean floor, however. Lt. Col. Dave Ruvola, the pilot of the Jolly 110 whose crew was rescued by the Tamaroa during “The Perfect Storm,” heard the ship was in danger of being scrapped and wanted a memento. The foundation gave him a porthole.
Today, that porthole hangs at the headquarters of the 106th Rescue Wing in eastern Long Island in honor of Rick Smith, the pararescueman who died when the helicopter went down.
“It was the ship that saved my life,” Ruvola said. “So I thought it was fitting that we use a piece of Tamaroa to pay respects to Rick. He was a guy who gave his life trying to save others.”