page_title: USFC Fish Hawk
section_title: Service history
hierarchical_section_title: USFC Fish Hawk / Service history
caption_attribution_description: English: The United States Commission of Fish and Fisheries research ship and floating fish hatchery USFC Fish Hawk in the Potomac River at a pier at Bryan Point, Accokeek, Maryland.
context_page_description: USFC Fish Hawk was a fisheries science research ship operated by the United States Commission of Fish and Fisheries, commonly called the United States Fish Commission, from 1880 to 1903 and as USFS Fish Hawk by its successor, the United States Bureau of Fisheries, from 1903 1918 and from 1919 to 1926. She was the first large ship purpose-built by any country for the promotion of fisheries, and spent her 46-year career operating along the United States East Coast, in the Gulf of Mexico, and off Puerto Rico.
  In addition to her fisheries service, Fish Hawk served in the United States Navy as USS Fish Hawk in 1898 during the Spanish-American War and from 1918 to 1919 during and in the immediate aftermath of World War I.
context_section_description: Fish Hawk was designed to work year-round in an annual cycle in which she engaged in scientific research involving trawling and dredging in the summer, then steamed north to collect and hatch cod eggs in late autumn. With the arrival of winter, she steamed south to hatch shad eggs, moving to various points along the coast during the winter and spring in accordance with the natural timing of shad runs. With those completed, she renewed the cycle by returning to research work during the following summer. As fisheries researchers later came to understand the reproduction of Spanish mackerel and striped bass, Fish Hawk added hatching of these species to her annual routine.
  Although her hatching equipment was not yet fully complete and installed, the Fish Commission wanted Fish Hawk to begin deep-sea exploration activities before the 1880 season was over, and decided that she should get underway and return to the Pusey and Jones shipyard later for the installation of the remainder of her hatching equipment. Accordingly, Fish Hawk departed the Pusey and Jones shipyard on 29 July 1880 with a United States Navy crew commanded by Lieutenant Tanner and proceeded to Fish Commission headquarters at Newport, Rhode Island, where she arrived on 2 August 1880. She made her first scientific cruise on 6 August 1880, embarking naturalists and spending the day trawling and dredging in Narragansett Bay west of Conanicut Island to test her equipment. On 3 September 1880, she briefly visited Woods Hole, Massachusetts, her future home port, for the first time.
  Fish Hawk's capabilities launched a new era in both fisheries research and fish culture. In 1871 and 1875, the Fish Commission had studied the shallow waters in the vicinity of Woods Hole thoroughly, but until the commissioning of Fish Hawk had lacked a vessel able to operate farther offshore and gather information in deeper water. Her first assignment was to investigate a previously unknown fish, the tilefish, which a commercial fisherman had brought to the Fish Commission station in Gloucester, Massachusetts, in 1879. During September and early October 1880, operating from Newport, she made four voyages to dredge the edge of the continental shelf, during which she gathered data establishing the range and quantity of the tilefish, which later would become an important fishery. Such were her scientific capabilities that she also discovered 40 new species of mollusk and 20 new species of fishes during the four voyages; in the Report of the Commissioner for 1886, published in 1889, the Fish Commission described it as "a new and exceedingly rich fauna, both as regards fish and marine invertebrates." With the four voyages completed, she returned to Wilmington from 13 October to 13 November 1880 to have her hatching cones installed so that she could begin her first hatchery work with shad eggs off the southeast coast of the United States by about March 1881. With the cones installed, she proceeded to the Washington Navy Yard in Washington, D.C., where she arrived on 20 November 1880 and turned over samples collected during the 1880 season to the Smithsonian Institution.  She then steamed to Point Lookout, Maryland, to collect oysters for the Fish Commission station at St. Jerome's Creek in Maryland. Plans called for her to spend the winter of 1880–1881 at the Washington Navy Yard, but ice formed on the Potomac River before she could return there, so instead she spent the winter at the Norfolk Navy Yard in Portsmouth, Virginia.
  On 21 May 1885 Tanner was reassigned and replaced by Lieutenant (junior grade) Robert Platt, a veteran of the American Civil War.
  Fish Hawk went on to serve the Fish Commission and its successor, the United States Bureau of Fisheries, for nearly 46 years, trawling and dredging to discover and investigate new fishery resources and to collect marine animals and plants to gather information about their identity and life history. She worked on the continental shelf along the entire U.S. East Coast from Maine to Florida, as well as in the Gulf of Mexico and off Puerto Rico. I
caption: USFC Fish Hawk in the Potomac River at a pier at Bryan Point, Accokeek, Maryland
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