Light Vessel Number 83 (LV-83) Swiftsure is a lightship and museum ship owned by Northwest Seaport in Seattle, Washington.

[3][4][5] As built, LV-83 was one of the nation's new third-generation lightships, with an all-steel hull, wooden decks, and a powerful double-expansion steam engine.

The ship's aids to navigation currently include a 1,000-watt beacon light, a 140-decibel Diaphone horn, and a 1,000-pound (450 kg) foredeck fog bell.

[4][5][6] For propulsion, LV-83 was driven by a single 8-foot diameter screw powered by a 375-horsepower marine steam engine, originally fed by a pair of coal-fired fire-tube Scotch boilers.

Crew size did fluctuate slightly with technological modifications such as the labor saving oil-fired boilers or the successive waves of new electronic devices like radio and radar.

Since the Panama Canal would not be completed for another decade, LV-83 (accompanied by LV-76) had to steam around the tip of South America and north to San Francisco to reach its first station assignment at Blunts Reef off Crescent City, California.