Rare PT boat built for U.S. Navy being restored by local boatyard

PT-3 in its prime. The rare vessel is being restored at Brooklin Boat Yard. Photo courtesy of Brooklin Boat Yard.

By Steele Hays

The U.S. Navy commissioned around 700 high-speed, lightweight PT boats during World War II, but only a half-dozen of them have been restored. Of those, only two are still operational today.

That number will increase to three in the next year or two, when Brooklin Boat Yard completes an extensive restoration project on PT-3, one of the earliest-generation Patrol Torpedo (PT) boats.  

It’s remarkable that PT-3 is still in existence. Until being transported by truck to Brooklin earlier this year, it sat for more than 30 years in dry storage in a New Jersey boatyard until being discovered by a couple of boating history experts, who recognized its importance. 

The boat is now owned by the owner of a shipyard company with operations in multiple countries. He plans to use the restored PT boat to promote his company and use it in employee recruitment efforts, according to owners at Brooklin Boatyard, who declined further details on the boat’s owner. 

Brooklin Boat Yard did not have to compete to win this project.

“It came to us,” said Eric Blake, VP and head of new construction at the firm. “We are one of the few places with the capacity and design skills to do this.” 

PT-3 was built in 1939-40 by Fisher Boat Company of Detroit, with an aluminum frame and mahogany and cypress planking. The boatyard will reuse the metal frame and rebuild all the wood components using the same varieties.  

PT-3 under wraps at Brooklin Boat Yard. Photo courtesy of Brooklin Boat Yard.

“It will be an authentic, period-correct restoration,” Blake said in an interview in his offices overlooking Center Harbor.

The 58-foot boat was one of the first prototype PT boats commissioned by the U.S. Navy and then tested against each other in the late 1930s. Ultimately, PT-3’s design was not chosen, with the Navy opting instead to go with a longer hull designed by a British yacht designer. Most of the PT boats were produced by Elco Boats in Bayonne, New Jersey, and ranged from 70 to 80 feet.  

PT-3 was given by the US Navy to the Royal British Navy, which then transferred it to the Royal Canadian Air Force, which put it to use as a high-speed rescue vessel based in Halifax, Nova Scotia during WW II. After the war, PT-3 was decommissioned and owned by a succession of private owners, one of whom lived aboard it for many years. Finally, it was put into dry dock at a New Jersey boatyard.

PT boats were considered the “hot rods” of the Navy, known for their high speed and light armaments. They carried two torpedoes and two machine guns.

As a young Navy lieutenant, John F. Kennedy commanded PT-109 in the South Pacific and gained fame when his boat was cut in half and sunk by a Japanese destroyer.  Kennedy helped rescue his crew and his experiences were the subject of a best-selling book and a popular film, “PT 109.”

Advertising copy for the Elco Boat Company described the PT boat crews as “fearless knights,” saying: “Charging full tilt into combat, often against tremendous odds, the men who ride the Elco PTs are modern versions of the fearless knights of old. Their daring and initiative, teamed with the terrific speed and offensive power of their Elco-bred steeds, have wrought vast destruction against the enemy… Never in naval history have craft so midget in size proved so fabulously mighty in deed.” 

At the end of WW II in the Pacific, the Navy ran most of its remaining PT boat fleet onto a beach and burned them rather than incur the costs of bringing them back to the U.S., which explains why so few of the boats remain operational. 

PT-3 was powered by two 1,350-horsepower Packard engines and reached speeds of 30 knots. The restorers at Brooklin Boatyard will collaborate with several marine history museums to source usable Packard engines that can be rebuilt for PT-3.

At the moment, PT-3’s hull is shrink-wrapped and in storage at one of the boatyard’s storage yards. The original construction plans have been lost, so workers are having to recreate the necessary drawings and plans needed to guide the restoration work. Once those plans are completed, the hull will be moved into the boatyard’s main shed, where  work will get underway. 

PT-3 on the day it was first launched. The historic boat will ride the waves again in a few years after being restored. Photo courtesy of Brooklin Boat Yard.