Luna is the last surviving full-sized wooden ship-docking tug on the US Gulf and Atlantic coasts and was the world's first diesel-electric tugboat built for commercial service.

Today Luna is preserved in Boston Harbor, where her rehabilitation process has been underway since the tug was rescued from being broken up in 1995.

Due to her wartime service with a civilian crew, Luna is also a member of the Naval Historic Vessel Association.

As a result, Luna's aesthetics embody the classical sweeping profile of the American harbor tug.

The project was a showpiece for Thomas Edison's General Electric Corporation, which seized the challenge to design, build and deliver the components, in conjunction with their control subcontractors.

All the other tugs in the Mystic Steamship fleet - commercially known as the Boston Towboat Company - were powered by coal and oil-fired boilers and steam engines.

Most of the time, the tugs were busy pushing and towing tankers, freighters, refrigerated cargo ships, passenger liners, warships, and large barges within Boston Harbor including Chelsea Creek, the Mystic River, the Charles River and Fort Point Channel.

She was used as a civilian-crewed and privately owned and managed tugboat at shipyards, repair yards, terminals, piers and anchorages from Bath, Maine to the Cape Cod Canal.

Luna was the flagship of the Boston Towboat fleet until the end of the war, when modern surplus war-built tugs were sold off by the government.

She was maintained on a shoestring budget by Captain Frances Rose Gage and many volunteers but sank twice in this period.

In October, 2000 Luna was towed to Boothbay Harbor, Maine to begin a major overhaul of her hull structure and returned to Boston in May 2002.

This work was completed in May 2008 and was followed immediately by cleaning and coating of all original machinery and steel structure in her engine room.

Plans are being developed for the installation of a small, modern diesel engine for "shadow" propulsion of the tug, permitting the original machinery to be restored to its original appearance, despite its corrosion damage suffered when the tug sank in fresh and salt water in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Douglas Fir is a straight-grained and strong wood used for main deck planking, and fore and aft masts.