[1] John H Amos was commissioned for the River Tees Conservancy Commissioners and built by Bow, McLachlan and Company Ltd. of Paisley, Scotland.

Withdrawn from service in 1967, two years later she was presented by the Tees and Hartlepool Ports Authority to the County Borough of Teesside for "The People of Cleveland."

As a result of UK Government reorganisation of funding, the youth project based restoration was withdrawn and the boat put up for sale.

After a dispute within the council at the sale, she left Stockton watched by a crowd of 400 to the accompaniment of Rule Britannia played by a local brass band on 4 March 1976.

When HMS Endurance returned from the Falklands War, the Royal Navy offered the newly formed Medway Maritime Trust two buoys on which to moor their two boats.

When the Dockyard Trust acquired the submarine HMS Ocelot, John H Amos was moved to a new berth at which she sat on a submerged lump of concrete.

In 2008, Chatham-born artist Billy Childish made several paintings of the John H Amos, one of which shows the tug safely aboard the Portal Narvik pontoon, moored mid-river.