USCGC Sweetgum (WAGL-309) was a Mesquite-class buoy tender built in 1943 and operated by the United States Coast Guard.

The ship was named after a North American tree of the genus Liquidambar having prickly spherical fruit clusters and fragrant sap.

[3] On 22 September 1944, she hoisted a US Navy Martin PBM Mariner onto the ship, from the which grounded on a coral reef of Carti Village, Gulf of San Blas, Panama.

In August and September 1967, she was part of a research effort to determine the pollution hazard posed by the almost one hundred oil tankers sunk near the U.S. coast during World War II.

[6] The Sweetgum was decommissioned on 2 February 1990 but was recommissioned again on 10 January 1992 and deployed to Mobile, Alabama.