USCGC Red Wood (WLM-685) is a Red-class coastal buoy tender that was designed, built, owned, and operated by the United States Coast Guard.
[2] Her secondary missions included search and rescue, light icebreaking, law enforcement, and marine environmental protection.
At the end of her Coast Guard career she was transferred to the Argentine Navy, which renamed her ARA Ciudad de Rosario.
[3] Maintaining steam-powered buoy tenders like Hawthorne had become costly and problematic, as spare parts for their engines were no longer available and had to be fabricated.
[6] He was chairman of the United States House Committee on Merchant Marine And Fisheries, which had jurisdiction over the Coast Guard budget.
He represented the district which included the Coast Guard Yard, so the building of the Red-class cutters was a jobs program for his constituents.
Her shallow draft and flat bottom was required for her work along the edges of dredged channels, but this hull form made her harder to maneuver and more prone to rolling.
[12] She was more than a month behind schedule reaching New London because of mechanical problems, including the failure of her hydraulic system.
[14] The bulk of her time was spent at sea tending her buoy fleet and a number of lighthouses, or moored, maintaining the ship and training the crew.
It was intended to take the place of the retired Scotland Light Vessel off Sandy Hook, New Jersey on the approach to New York Harbor.
In August 1965, Red Wood stood by to assist USCGC Owasco after she grounded on Little Goshen Reef in Long Island Sound.
[17] In November 1968, Red Wood recovered a body and parts of a Cessna 411 aircraft that crashed in Fisher's Island Sound.
[18] A Bell Jet Ranger helicopter crashed into Long Island Sound off Milford, Connecticut on 1 February 1975.
This transfer was part of a comprehensive program to improve the Argentine Navy's ability to interdict illicit drugs and their precursor chemicals.
She has transported medical teams to hard to reach towns along the Paraná and Paraguay Rivers in social health campaigns.
These were 6 metres (20 ft) air-conditioned truck trailers equipped with a dentistry chair, an X-ray machine, refrigeration for vaccine storage, bottled oxygen, and other medical supplies.
Medical specialists in pediatrics, cardiology, ophthalmology, urology, gynecology, and obstetrics accompanied the ship.
[42] During the COVID-19 pandemic Ciudad de Rosario carried vaccines, food, clothing, and other supplies to remote riverside communities.
[44] Ciudad de Rosario was dispatched in 2014[45] and again in 2023[46] to collect hydrographic data for the "Canal Magdalena", a new route from the Atlantic to Buenos Aires through the River Plate estuary.