The USLHT Azalea, briefly the USS Azalea was a lighthouse tender

Lighthouse tender

A lighthouse tender is a ship specifically designed to maintain, support, or tend to lighthouses, or lightvessels, providing supplies, fuel, mail and transportation....

 built in 1891 for the United States Lighthouse Service

United States Lighthouse Service

The United States Lighthouse Service, also known as the Bureau of Lighthouses, was the agency of the US Federal Government that was responsible for the upkeep and maintenance of all lighthouses in the United States from the time of its creation in 1910 until 1939...

. She was transferred to the United States Navy

United States Navy

The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...

 on 16 April 1917 and commissioned 9 May 1917. Her role in the Navy was to salvage navigational aids, adjust buoys, and tended nets during World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

. She was returned to the Lighthouse service 1 July 1919.

She returned to duty in the Second Light House District. Azalea collided with the schooner Lavinia M. Snow off Pollock Rip in 1921 but was repaired and returned to service. She was decommissioned and sold in 1933.

Additional reading

• United States Coast Guard, Aids to Navigation, (Washington, DC: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1945).
• Putnam, George R., Lighthouses and Lightships of the United States, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1933).