Search the Site with

General Characteristics

Crew List

Cruise Books

History

About the Ship's Coat of Arms

Image Gallery

End of page

USNS Grasp (T-ARS 51)

USS GRASP is the second ship in the SAFEGUARD - class of Rescue and Salvage Ships. Transfered to the Military Sealift Command on January 19, 2006, the GRASP subsequently underwent a shipyard period for conversion for operation by civilian mariners.

back to top

go to the end of the page

back to top

go to the end of the page

Crew List:

This section contains the names of sailors who served aboard USS / USNS GRASP. It is no official listing but contains the names of sailors who submitted their information.

• Click here to view the list.

back to top

go to the end of the page

USS GRASP Cruise Books:

• Mediterranean Cruise Book 1996

back to top

go to the end of the page

USS / USNS GRASP History:

USS GRASP was the second unit of the SAFEGUARD-class rescue and salvage ships. Her keel was laid at Peterson Builders in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, on March 30, 1983; she was launched on May 2, 1985 and commissioned at Sturgeon Bay on December 14, 1985. After fitting out and the Great Lakes/St. Lawrence River delivery to the Atlantic, she settled into her East Coast routine at Naval Amphibious Base Little Creek, Virginia, completing shakedown, diving system certifications, towing trials, and the full spectrum of beach-gear and four-point-moor drills that define the Navy's post-Vietnam salvage doctrine.

Through 1986, the ship alternated Hampton Roads-area training with short underway periods to exercise her traction winch, bow and stern rollers, recompression chamber, and off-ship firefighting monitors with embarked Navy divers.

In 1987, GRASP conducted her first extended overseas employment to the Mediterranean, departing in March and operating through September. The deployment combined mine-countermeasures support and multinational salvage training under Sixth Fleet, interleaved with port visits in Italy and Turkey that framed bilateral diving exchanges and harbor-clearance rehearsals. Returning to Little Creek, she resumed Atlantic fleet services - target towing, gear recovery, small-boat operations, and emergency assists - while maintaining a steady pier-side maintenance cadence at Norfolk-area yards. As the Cold War ended and the Navy rebalanced its auxiliaries for regional contingencies, GRASP kept a predictable pattern: local operations and yard work in home waters, punctuated by periodic Mediterranean or North Atlantic tours for salvage readiness, mine-warfare support, and allied engagement.

The early 1990s brought back-to-back deployments. From August 1991 into February 1992 she was again under Sixth Fleet, executing mine-clearing support and at-sea training serials that kept her crew and embarked Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit teams current on moors, heavy lift, and emergency patching. In 1993, she continued extended operations overseas, and photographic records show her in Grand Harbour, Malta, on January 27, 1993, en route to additional Mediterranean tasking before returning stateside. In 1994, she rotated through another Mediterranean/West Africa sequence, reflecting a post-Cold War emphasis on maritime security cooperation along the southern littorals, with mine-warfare play and diving demonstrations providing practical connective tissue with partner navies. The mid-1990s also saw stretches of local Atlantic workups and a material readiness focus in Norfolk to keep the hull-mechanical-electrical plant and topside gear at full capability.

In the summer of 1996, GRASP was thrust into one of the decade's most visible and technically demanding domestic salvage operations after the crash of TWA Flight 800 off Long Island, New York, on July 17. Anchored over the Moriches Inlet offshore site by July 25, she served as a stable, four-point-moored diving platform while Navy teams conducted methodical body recovery and wreckage retrieval at depths near 120 feet. The ship's recompression chamber cycled divers between serials. Her decks filled with tagged evidence and recovered components bound for the investigation. She operated in company with sister ship GRAPPLE (ARS 53), Coast Guard surface units, and NOAA survey vessels that mapped debris fields with side-scan sonar, knitting together a large multi-agency effort. When operations drew down in the autumn, GRASP returned to Little Creek with a crew that had done the difficult, quiet work required in a high-scrutiny recovery.

Three summers later, she again found herself on a recovery scene that drew intense public attention. After the July 16, 1999, crash of John F. Kennedy Jr.'s Piper Saratoga near Martha's Vineyard, NOAA's survey ship RUDE first imaged debris. GRASP then located the fuselage late on July 20 and supported Navy divers as they recovered remains and major wreckage. The tempo of operations - mooring, side-scan verification, diver insertion and lift - mirrored the disciplined approach refined during TWA 800, but in shallower water and a tighter timeline. Between these emergencies, GRASP continued to provide routine Atlantic and Mediterranean services, including seasonal periods of mine-warfare support and multinational dives that kept NATO and partner-nation teams familiar with U.S. salvage methods.

In the opening years of the 2000s, GRASP returned to the Mediterranean. She sailed in late 2002 for a six-month deployment built around port-and-harbor diving tasks and readiness demonstrations with allied clearance divers, and she returned to Little Creek on May 2, 2003. The rhythm of that cruise - transits among Sixth Fleet hubs, a steady pulse of dives, light towing, and harbor surveys - typified the ship's utility in an era when small-footprint, technical cooperation was often more valuable than major combatant presence. Two years later, she repeated the pattern on a longer scale. Departing in early 2005, she spent seven months in the Mediterranean conducting combined diving operations with Israel, Tunisia, Albania, and Croatia, and logged more than two dozen port calls that combined logistics with engagement. GRASP returned to Little Creek in October 2005 and entered a short maintenance period to reset the ship and crew.

On January 19, 2006, after twenty years as a commissioned warship, GRASP was decommissioned at Little Creek and transferred the same day to Military Sealift Command, re-designated USNS GRASP (T-ARS 51) and operated by civil-service mariners with embarked Navy diver detachments as missions required. Her tasking remained the same - tow, recover, clear, and assist - but with MSC's global logistics backbone behind her. She continued to work primarily from the Atlantic seaboard. In January 2010, following the Haiti earthquake, GRASP paused at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay to load fuel and stores while en route to support humanitarian assistance and disaster-relief operations, bringing a capable diving platform, dewatering sets, emergency power, and towing ability to a region where ports and approaches required rapid assessment and clearance.

The ship remained a familiar sight on the Virginia waterfront into the mid-2010s but routinely went forward for Sixth Fleet tasking. In the summer and fall of 2016, she spent four months in the Mediterranean conducting dive and salvage operations to locate missing aircraft and vessels and to tow targets and hulks as assigned. She returned to Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story on November 16, 2016. In August 2013, between those longer forays, she and embarked Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit TWO divers had executed a highly visible local mission off the mid-Atlantic coast: over the period August 6-20 they found and salvaged a downed U.S. Air Force F-16 off Virginia, employing side-scan sonar, remotely operated vehicle inspections, staged dives, and deck-rigged lift evolutions that showcased the core SAFEGUARD-class toolbox.

A strategic shift followed in 2018. After decades as an East Coast asset, GRASP executed a homeport change to San Diego in October to support Military Sealift Command Pacific. The move reflected where her skills were increasingly needed: a Pacific fleet modernizing aggressively, decommissioning aging surface combatants, and demanding reliable ocean tows and salvage coverage across vast distances. From San Diego she settled into a new pattern of West Coast workups, local salvage support, and long coastal tows that required detailed route planning and weather windows. That portfolio came into sharp focus in 2023, when the Navy began retiring a tranche of TICONDEROGA-class cruisers. GRASP connected at sea to ex-MOBILE BAY (CG 53) in San Diego on August 18 and completed the tow delivery to the inactive ship facility at Bremerton on August 31. In September she repeated the evolution with ex-LAKE CHAMPLAIN (CG 57), and on October 12 she delivered ex-BUNKER HILL (CG 52), closing a demanding sequence of heavy-displacement ocean tows up the Pacific Coast in late-summer and early-autumn conditions.

Her Pacific tasking continued into 2024. During the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise, GRASP handled towing assignments in support of the world's largest naval exercise while also participating in at-sea events that keep mariners and divers proficient on seamanship and salvage procedures at scale. The ship remained active in 2025 as a go-to Pacific tow and salvage platform, rotating crews, maintaining her heavy-lift and towing machinery, and standing ready for the unscheduled calls that define the trade.

back to top

go to the end of the page

About the Ship's Coat of Arms:

The Shield:

The seahorse symbolizes the GRASP as a Navy "work horse," and also denotes that its duties are performed both above and below the water's surface. It also endows the ship with the fine qualities of the horse - strength, endurance and speed. The grappling iron, an old but efficient method of locating and retrieving wreckage from the sea, indicates the ship's salvage operations. The looped and twisted line running from the iron to a neat, orderly coil signifies the ship's capabilities of restoring order from chaos, as demonstrated by the USS GRASP (ARS 24) during WWII, Korea, and Vietnam in the clearing of harbors and the restoring of damaged ships and installations. The three arrowheads commemorate the service of the former GRASP in these three conflicts. The wavy blue area against the gray "riveted" border, suggests the sea against the hulls of ships, and denotes the ship's mission of salvage and repairs.

The Crest:

The two hands "grasping" the trident allude to the ship's name. The upper hand suggest the "helping hand," and denotes the many humanitarian services performed by the officers and crew of the former GRASP. The mailed hand symbolizes the past and present ship's combat capabilities. The modified trident is a symbol of the tools used in sea salvage and repair with the center prong, a flame, suggestive of the cutting and welding torch. The hands holding the torch are also suggestive of the passing on of the torch, history and honors of the past ship, to the present USS GRASP (ARS 51). The four stars commemorate the battle stars awarded to the GRASP in WWII and Korea. The globe denotes the extensive cruises of the former ship, and world-wide salvage and repair capabilities of the present one.

back to top

go to the end of the page

USS / USNS GRASP Image Gallery:

The photo below was taken by me and shows the GRASP at Norfolk, Va., on October 28, 2010.

The photo below was taken by Sebastian Thoma and shows the GRASP at Naval Base San Diego, Calif., on November 28, 2021.

The photo below was taken by Michael Jenning and shows the GRASP at Naval Base San Diego, Calif., on May 29, 2022.

back to top

Back to Rescue and Salvage Ships site.

Back to ships list.

Back to selection page.

Back to 1^st page.