Evidence
7 evidence entries recorded; each entry has a stable permalink (#ev-1 … #ev-7).
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[1]Naval History and Heritage Command, Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, "Heroic" (AMc-84) entry, published 2015-07-16 (accessed via Wayback Machine capture dated 2021-09-13; live NHHC URL returns HTTP 404 as of 2026-09-23) [nhhc_danfs]
- Locator
- DANFS body paragraph, "Heroic" entry
- Finding type
- vessel_history
- Finding
- DANFS text, verbatim: "Heroic (AMc-84: dp. 195 ; l. 97'1\" ; b. 22'; dr. 9'1\" ; s. 10 k.; cpl. 17; a. 2 .50 cal.; cl. Accentor) ... a wooden-hulled coastal minesweeper, was launched 5 May 1941 by Warren Boat Yard, Inc., Warren, R.I.; sponsored by Miss Sybil E. Alder; and commissioned 25 March 1942, Lt. (j.g.) A. M. White in command. Heroic reported to Mine Warfare School, Yorktown, Va., for intensive training 11 April 1942 and then proceeded to Bermuda for further training. She was assigned to patrol and minesweeping duty in the 5th Naval District and was based at Norfolk 20 July 1942 and served there throughout the remainder of the war. Heroic decommissioned at Portsmouth, Va., 18 December 1945 and was turned over to the Maritime Commission for disposal 26 September 1946."
- Verification
- verified
- Role
- supporting
- Documentation level
- ship_specific
- Accessed
- 2026-09-23
- Study period
- 1941-1946
- Population
- Crew (complement 17); construction trades at Warren Boat Yard, Inc., Warren, RI (1941)
- Limitations
- Establishes identity, construction, and Navy service history only - the DANFS entry contains no asbestos or shipboard-materials information. DANFS states only a launch date (5 May 1941) and no laid-down date; it does not give a stricken date. Non-official secondary sources (Wikipedia and a wiki mirror, not used as evidence here) assert a different launch date (30 August 1941), a laid-down date matching DANFS's launch date, and a stricken date (8 January 1946) not present in the DANFS text - these are excluded as unverified rather than reconciled, per house discipline against non-official sources.
- Atlas source
- true
- Evidence ID
- ev-uss-heroic-amc84-01
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[2]NOAA, Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, Maritime Heritage, "Heroic" vessel profile (Office of National Marine Sanctuaries / National Ocean Service / NOAA / U.S. Department of Commerce) [other_primary]
- Locator
- Ship Stats block; Historical Background section; Present Day section
- Finding type
- vessel_history
- Finding
- NOAA text (paraphrase of the vessel profile, with key figures verbatim): built 1941 as a wooden-hulled minesweeper at "Warren Boatyard, Rhode Island"; carried a "400 horsepower Atlas 6-cylinder HM2124 diesel engine" giving 10 knots; armed with two .50-cal. M2 Browning machine guns; launched May 1941, commissioned March 25, 1942; served in Chesapeake Bay for the rest of WWII; decommissioned December 1945 and turned over to the Maritime Commission for disposal in September 1946. Post-Navy ownership chain: "owned by Angelo Bacchi of Boston in 1948 under the name Elizabeth B"; "changed ownership to B and C Fishing, Inc. of Boston in 1949"; "later was renamed Heroic under the ownership of Heroic, Inc. of Gloucester" (NOAA's ship-stats block dates this ownership to 1960). On 1969-08-21, en route to Georges Bank fishing grounds, "Heroic caught fire and sank 15 miles southeast of Gloucester"; "the fire reportedly started in the engine room"; the captain and four crew were rescued unharmed by the West German fishing vessel Tiko I (5 of 5 survived); Coast Guard chemical foam could not contain the blaze and the vessel sank roughly 25 miles northwest of Provincetown. The wreck ("Heroic Coordinates: 42-24.256 N 70-27.197 W") rests in 100 ft of water with its diesel engine, hull sections, trawl winch, anchor and chain, and other fishing gear visible; a NOAA/Northern Atlantic Dive Expeditions mooring buoy was placed nearby ("Mooring Buoy Coordinates: 42-22.351 N 70-22.214 W") to protect the wreck and simplify anchoring.
- Verification
- verified
- Role
- supporting
- Documentation level
- ship_specific
- Accessed
- 2026-09-23
- Study period
- 1941-1969 (vessel history); 2000s-present (wreck documentation)
- Population
- Navy crew (WWII); civilian fishing crew (1948-1969); NOAA/contract divers documenting the wreck (2000s-present)
- Limitations
- Official federal (NOAA) primary source for identity, construction, and full post-Navy/wreck history; contains no asbestos, hazmat, or materials-survey information of any kind. Does not establish or exclude asbestos content of the diesel engine, exhaust system, gaskets, or any other component.
- Atlas source
- true
- Evidence ID
- ev-uss-heroic-amc84-02
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[3]NOAA Fisheries, "Historic Shipwreck Avoidance on Stellwagen Bank" bulletin and associated shipwreck-sites map layer [other_primary]
- Locator
- Bulletin text; shipwreck-sites map layer point for "Heroic"
- Finding type
- vessel_history
- Finding
- NOAA Fisheries lists Heroic among the historic shipwrecks in Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary subject to a 400-foot vessel-avoidance request, plotting a position of 42°22'20.7798"N, 70°22'13.7604"W (≈ 42.3724, -70.3704).
- Verification
- partial
- Role
- context
- Documentation level
- context_only
- Accessed
- 2026-09-23
- Study period
- 2026 (bulletin/map publication)
- Limitations
- This plotted point (≈ 42.3724 N, 70.3704 W) is not the wreck position given on the Stellwagen Bank vessel profile ("Heroic Coordinates: 42-24.256 N 70-27.197 W" ≈ 42.4043, -70.4533, ev-02); it instead matches that same page's separately labeled "Mooring Buoy Coordinates" (42-22.351 N 70-22.214 W ≈ 42.3725, -70.3702) to within thousandths of a degree. The bulletin/map layer therefore appears to plot the mooring buoy, not the wreck itself. ev-02's explicit "Heroic Coordinates" is adopted as the record's lat/lon; this row is kept as context to flag the discrepancy rather than silently reconciling it. Contains no asbestos or materials information.
- Atlas source
- true
- Evidence ID
- ev-uss-heroic-amc84-03
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[4]HyperWar, "US Navy Minecraft, 1940-1945" - official-record compilation of mine-warfare class characteristics; Accentor/Acme class table (AMc-84 Heroic, comm. 1942, listed) [other_primary]
- Locator
- Accentor/Acme class specification block and unit table
- Finding type
- vessel_history
- Finding
- Class configuration, verbatim: "Accentor/Acme Class Displacement: 185-205 tons Length: 97'1\"-98'5\" Beam: 21'-23'7\" Draft: 8'11\"-10'8\" Speed: 10 knots Armament: 2 .50cal. machine guns Complement: 17 Diesel engine, 400 h.p. Wooden-hulled ships designed for inshore operations." AMc-84 Heroic (commissioned 1942) is individually listed in this class table alongside its sister boats.
- Verification
- verified
- Role
- context
- Documentation level
- class_or_era
- Accessed
- 2026-09-23
- Study period
- 1941-1942 (construction era)
- Population
- Shipyard workers and class crews (class context)
- Limitations
- Class-level specification confirming the type's plant and dimensions; documents the class, not materials aboard this specific hull. Absence of a boiler/steam plant removes the most commonly documented WWII asbestos pathway but does not establish that no asbestos-containing material (gaskets, exhaust insulation, electrical insulation, fireproofing compounds) was aboard - those remain undocumented either way.
- Atlas source
- true
- Evidence ID
- ev-uss-heroic-amc84-04
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[5]Corn, Jacqueline Karnell, and Jennifer Starr, "Historical perspective on asbestos: Policies and protective measures in World War II shipbuilding," American Journal of Industrial Medicine 11(3):359-373 (1987); PMID 3555021 [other_primary]
- Locator
- Abstract and article, AJIM 11(3):359-373
- Finding type
- asbestos_application
- Finding
- Peer-reviewed historical study documenting that asbestos was used extensively as a fireproofing and insulating material in U.S. shipbuilding during WWII - the era and wartime industrial-expansion context in which this 1941 wooden-hulled minesweeper was built - and that wartime demand drove an unprecedented rise in asbestos utilization across naval and merchant construction programs.
- Verification
- verified
- Role
- context
- Documentation level
- class_or_era
- Accessed
- 2026-09-23
- Study period
- 1940s era documented; article published 1987
- Population
- WWII shipyard workers and ship crews (era context)
- Limitations
- Era-level scholarship on WWII shipbuilding generally; does not name this vessel, the Accentor class, or Warren Boat Yard, and does not establish that asbestos was or remains aboard this hull, nor quantity, location, condition, individual exposure, or causation. Independently verified via PubMed (PMID 3555021) and the publisher record, not merely carried forward from a related record.
- Atlas source
- true
- Evidence ID
- ev-uss-heroic-amc84-05
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[6]CourtListener API v4 litigation sweep (this record): opinion search "USS Heroic" (5 results); opinion search "AMc-84" (1 result); opinion search "USS Heroic" + asbestos (0 results); RECAP/docket search "Heroic AMc-84" (85 results) [court_record]
- Locator
- search_ledger rows sl-uss-heroic-amc84-06 through sl-uss-heroic-amc84-10
- Finding type
- historical_record
- Finding
- No qualifying ship-specific litigation - asbestos or otherwise - naming this vessel was located. The opinion search on "USS Heroic" returned 5 hits, all name collisions on the common word "heroic" in unrelated cases (e.g., Trunk v. City of San Diego, 660 F.3d 1091 (9th Cir. 2011); United States v. Klawuhn (usnmcmilrev, 1991); Swann v. Garrett (N.D. Ind., 1992); United States v. Steinmetz (D.N.J., 1991); Keough v. Tennessee (Tenn. Crim. App., 2010) - none reference the vessel. The opinion search on the hull number "AMc-84" returned one hit, Sanyo Electric, Inc. v. M/V Hanjin Incheon, 578 F. Supp. 75 (W.D. Wash. 1983), an unrelated container-shipping cargo-damage case with no connection to this hull. The combined "USS Heroic" + asbestos opinion search returned zero results. The RECAP/docket search "Heroic AMc-84" returned 85 hits, all generic keyword noise (e.g., PRABHAKAR v. HAWKINS; W.R. Grace & Co.; Joiner v. Meharry Medical College; various unrelated federal dockets) with no case naming this vessel or its hull number.
- Verification
- verified
- Role
- negative_finding
- Documentation level
- ship_specific
- Accessed
- 2026-09-23
- Study period
- 2026-09-23
- Limitations
- Absence of a located public record does not prove absence of litigation or asbestos exposure aboard this hull - it reports that no qualifying record was found across the queries run. A fifth query variant ("Heroic fishing vessel Gloucester fire 1969") was blocked by the fleet-wide CourtListener pace limiter before it could complete and was not retried, per batch discipline against retrying into a rate-limit ban; the sweep is therefore thorough but not proven exhaustive. All CourtListener requests were made through the authenticated fleet-pacing helper script, never anonymously or via raw HTTP.
- Atlas source
- true
- Evidence ID
- ev-uss-heroic-amc84-06
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[7]Batch-1623 search ledger (this record): NHHC DANFS (live 404, Wayback capture used); NOAA Stellwagen Bank NMS and NOAA Fisheries; ibiblio HyperWar; Corn & Starr AJIM 1987/PubMed; CourtListener API v4 (partial - fleet pace limiter); MARAD ShipHistory (blocked); Naval Vessel Register (not retrievable at current site structure); NavSource Online (unreachable by direct fetch) [other_primary]
- Locator
- search_ledger rows sl-uss-heroic-amc84-11 through sl-uss-heroic-amc84-13
- Finding type
- historical_record
- Finding
- Archival leads not retrieved: MARAD ShipHistory / vesselhistory.marad.dot.gov returned HTTP 403/302 at query time and could not be searched for a post-1946 merchant/fishing-vessel documentation record (official number, ownership-chain detail, USCG Merchant Vessels of the United States annual entries) for the Elizabeth B / Heroic civilian career. The Naval Vessel Register's current site structure (nvr.navy.mil) redirects rather than serving a retrievable per-hull record for a small craft disposed of in 1946. NavSource Online's Accentor-class photo archive page for Heroic (archives/11/03084.htm) could not be retrieved by direct fetch at query time.
- Verification
- unverified
- Role
- archival_lead
- Documentation level
- ship_specific
- Accessed
- 2026-09-23
- Limitations
- Record-path mapping only - not evidence about this hull's materials, condition, or ownership beyond what ev-01 and ev-02 already establish. No box-level NARA retrieval was attempted for deck logs or disposal-file records; digitization status of any such holdings is unverified.
- Atlas source
- true
- Evidence ID
- ev-uss-heroic-amc84-07