Prior to her NOAA career, she was in the United States Fish and Wildlife Service's Bureau of Commercial Fisheries fleet from 1963 to 1975 as US FWS Townsend Cromwell.

After her NOAA career, the ship became MV Townsend Cromwell, first as the property of the government of American Samoa from 2002 to 2003 and then as a private yacht in New Zealand from 2003 to 2009.

[2] On 25 December 1963, Townsend Cromwell arrived at Honolulu, Hawaii, which became her home port for her entire time in United States Government service.

She carried out fisheries assessment surveys, physical and chemical oceanography, marine mammal plans, and coral reef research, operating around the Hawaiian Islands and elsewhere in the waters of the central and western Pacific Ocean.

[3] For several years prior to her decommissioning, she took part in multi-agency U.S. Government efforts to remove hundreds of tons of discarded fishing gear and other marine debris from coral reef ecosystems.

[5] Townsend Cromwell's final cruise, a 30-day research expedition for the Northwestern Hawaiian Island Reef Assessment and Monitoring Program, ended at Honolulu on 7 October 2002.

In January 2003, the American Samoan government announced that it wanted to sell Townsend Cromwell or exchange her for a more suitable vessel for service to Manu'a.