USS Lucid (MSO-458)

USS Lucid (AM-458/MSO-458) is an Aggressive-class minesweeper acquired by the U.S. Navy for the task of removing naval mines that had been placed in the water to prevent the safe passage of ships.

She was purchased by civilians and served as a houseboat for ten years, before being sold again in 1986 and used as a warehouse by a scrap metal dealer on Bradford Island, in the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta.

Lucid returned to Long Beach on 14 December and operated off the southern California coast until May 1966 when she commenced overhaul at Harbor Boat Building Co. in San Pedro, Los Angeles.

Lucid served once again with the Market Time forces, performing surveillance and search duties, as well as hunting mines in the harbors of South Vietnam.

Along with patrol duty off the Vietnamese coast and upkeep periods at Subic Bay and Singapore, Lucid conducted minesweeping exercises with allied navies.

This ended in late 1986 when Dean gave up the ship to William Gardner, who towed it up to Bradford Island in the Sacramento Delta where it sat for years.

[7] In 2005, Gardner's widow donated the ship to United States Navy veteran Mike Warren, who served on Lucid as an engineman in the 1960s.

The government refused to give one of the last six MSOs to the public, claiming that it was governmental policy not to donate wooden ships due to the cost and magnitude of the maintenance required for upkeep.

Warren and a group of volunteers began the monumental task of restoring Lucid by first removing the tons of junk that had accumulated over the years and then repairing the hole in her side.

On 15 March 2012, USS Lucid was dedicated at a ribbon cutting ceremony presented by the Stockton Maritime Museum and the San Joaquin Building Futures Academy where she is now located.

Upon return to her original appearance, Lucid will be moved to the historic shipbuilding area near Weber Point in downtown Stockton where over a thousand boats and ships were built, beginning in the 1850s and ending in the 1980s.

USS Lucid (MSO-458) under restoration at the Building Futures Academy on the San Joaquin River in Stockton, CA – May 2020.
Lucid starboard side now restored, deck gun set, with superstructure still in "fifty shades of gray" - June 2022.