Reclaimer (ARS-42) was laid down on 10 November 1944 by Basalt Rock Company in Napa, California; launched 23 June 1945; sponsored by Mrs. Daniel Clark, Jr.; and commissioned on 20 December 1945.

After shakedown off San Pedro, Reclaimer steamed to Pearl Harbor where she operated until assigned to Joint Task Force 1, arriving at Bikini on 1 June 1946.

Arriving at Pearl Harbor on 12 February 1951, she then proceeded on across the Pacific touched at Majuro and Guam, and reached Sasebo, Japan on 29 April.

On 10 October, with Yuma, she towed the Royal Navy hospital ship RFA Maine which had lost a propeller, on a westward passage through the crowded and narrow Shimonoseki Straits.

After brief duty with the Wonsan blockade force, Reclaimer took SS Gulf Haven in tow while she was foundering in a typhoon, and successfully brought her to Japan.

In March 1954, she headed southwest to the Marshall Islands for salvage work during "Operation Castle", the hydrogen bomb test series at Bikini.

Returning to Pearl Harbor she began a two-month tour on the West Coast in February 1958 then, following further services at Hawaii, again set sail for a four-month deployment to WestPac.

The first salvage job on this deployment was retracting the cargo ship SS Excellancy stranded on Triton Island west of Subic Bay in the South China Sea.

Then, steaming south, she performed similar operations for merchantmen SS Grertrude Therese grounded at Afelie Island off northern Australia.

She returned to Pearl Harbor on 29 August 1966, and on 9 November was underway for Oregon to work with the cable laying ship USS Aeolus.

Between deployments Reclaimer was tasked in dumping four very large and dozens of small steel barrels filled with concrete and radioactive waste at a location about 400 miles SW of Pearl Harbor.

In June she laid a special radar reflecting buoy in the Gulf of Tonkin to aid SAR patrol ships in navigation.

She continued operations off Taiwan and Vietnam, including the salvage of South Vietnamese LSM-406 aground at Phan Thiết, until returning to Pearl Harbor at the end of 1967.

After spending the first half of 1968 in Pearl Harbor Reclaimer arrived at Da Nang, South Vietnam, on 29 August for standby salvage duty.

Reclaimer was refurbished and returned to service in the late 1980s by the men and women of the Shore Intermediate Maintenance Activity at Pearl Harbor Hawaii (SIMAPH).

She was transferred to the Maritime Commission (MARAD) on 28 July 2001, for lay up in the National Defense Reserve Fleet, at Suisun Bay, Benicia, California.