The USCGC Dexter was a steel-hulled patrol vessel of the United States Coast Guard, commissioned in 1925 and serving until 1936. Built by the Defoe Boat and Motor Works in Bay City, Michigan, she was the third vessel to bear the name Dexter in the history of the Revenue Cutter Service and Coast Guard. During her operational years, Dexter was stationed in various locations, initially in Boston, Massachusetts, from 1925 to 1927, then transferred to Pascagoula, Mississippi, in late 1927, and later to Buffalo, New York, by 1935. Dexter’s most notable action involved her sinking the Canadian rum-running sloop I'm Alone in 1929. While the incident was believed to have occurred within U.S. territorial waters, the sinking actually took place in international waters in the Gulf of Mexico, approximately 200 miles out. The event resulted in the death of a French crew member and sparked an international incident involving Canada, Britain, and France, with a subsequent lawsuit settled in 1936. Decommissioned in 1936, Dexter was transferred to the U.S. Navy and renamed YP-63. During World War II, she patrolled in the Caribbean, based out of Trinidad, as part of the Atlantic Sea Frontier. Notably, on June 16, 1942, YP-63, along with the yacht Opal, rescued 91 survivors from three merchant ships sunk by German U-boats U-126, U-161, and U-502. Her service in wartime is officially recognized in the "Chronology of the U.S. Navy in World War II." After the war, the vessel entered private hands, serving as a recreational fishing boat off Boston, an oil drilling support vessel off Louisiana, and later as a pirate-themed party boat in Chicago. Eventually renamed the MV Buccaneer, she became associated with providing alcohol to her patrons. In 2010, she was intentionally sunk in Lake Michigan as an artificial reef, resting at a depth of 74 feet about eight miles off Chicago’s coast, where she now serves as an underwater habitat for marine life.

This description has been generated using GPT-4.1-NANO based on the Vessel's wikidata information and then modified by ShipIndex.org staff.