U.S. Army Mine Planter (USAMP) Maj. Gen. Arthur Murray (MP-9), keel laid in 1941 as hull 482, was launched in 1942 by the Marietta Manufacturing Company at Point Pleasant, West Virginia.

[1][2] The ship was assigned to the United States Army Coast Artillery Corps planting and tending controlled mine fields connected by cable to the coastal forts.

[1][3] The ship was named for Major General Arthur Murray, USA, (1 July 1908 – 14 March 1911) who was the first Chief of the Coast Artillery Corps.

A removable, vertical, steam operated reel capable of carrying fifty tons of mine control cable was located on the forecastle.

[3] Trapper began shakedown training in the Chesapeake Bay during April and got underway the Pacific Ocean war zone for on 11 June 1945.

[3] USS Trapper was decommissioned and transferred to the United States Coast Guard in San Francisco on 20 June 1946 and struck from the Navy List on 19 July 1946.

In 1922 the Coast Guard had obtained the 1909 Army Mine Planter Gen. Samuel M. Mills which it renamed Pequot, second USCG cable ship with the name,[note 1] for service until replaced by Yamacraw in 1946.

[6] During 1957–1958 the ship was leased by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution making voyages in the Atlantic and Mediterranean largely for acoustic and geophysical work.

The ship collected data in the western Atlantic coast from Nova Scotia to Charleston, South Carolina and into the Sargasso Sea.

[10][11][note 2] Before being transferred back to the U.S. Navy the Yamacraw was the buoy tender in the 1958 film Onionhead, which starred Andy Griffith and Walter Matthau.