20 Seavette

[Fr. Frank]

The story is they all went over seas. Probably find one out in a rice field or something like that.

I know where one 27' SeaVette went, and where it sank, within about 10 miles or so on the city shoreline. I know that it sank in fresh/brackish water, about 15' deep, at an up-river hotel dock on the Senegal river in what is now St. Louis, Senegal, and that while it was dis-armed, it was not raised.

BTW, it was powered by twin MerCruiser small-block V8 Ford motors, according to one source, and was delivered to a US governmental agency for anti-pirate operations. No-kidding.

[BigLew]

I know where one 27' SeaVette went, and where it sank, within about 10 miles or so on the city shoreline. I know that it sank in fresh/brackish water, about 15' deep, at an up-river hotel dock on the Senegal river in what is now St. Louis, Senegal, and that while it was dis-armed, it was not raised.

BTW, it was powered by twin MerCruiser small-block V8 Ford motors, according to one source, and was delivered to a US governmental agency for anti-pirate operations. No-kidding.

Is that the one I read about that had a piece of artillery mounted under the deck which was fired with all the hatches shut and the seams blew apart from the expansion of gases in the cabin? Supposedly it was some covert military mission.

[Islandtrader]

I know where one 27' SeaVette went, and where it sank, within about 10 miles or so on the city shoreline.

This looks like a salvage job for Brian...aka 3rdday

[Fr. Frank]

Is that the one I read about that had a piece of artillery mounted under the deck which was fired with all the hatches shut and the seams blew apart from the expansion of gases in the cabin? Supposedly it was some covert military mission.

That's the one! It was an M40 106mm recoilless rifle mounted below deck and sticking out of the bow. (For the record, it did take out the pirate ship at which it was fired.)

I have a cousin who retired from the CIA in '87, where he was an Operations Manager for the CIA in Guatemala, Belize, and Mexico. After speaking a couple of years ago with someone who was involved with the manufacture of the 27' SeaVette, I asked my cousin to check into the stories about the small boat taking out a pirate ship with a mounted recoilless rifle off the coast of Africa in the late 60's.

He said the operation was declassified in 1994, and he came up with the info about where the boat sank in St. Louis on the Senegal River. It was at the dock of the hotel where our agents were staying. He could not verify the manufacturer of the boat, just that it did indeed have a M40 recoiless rifle mounted below deck, and that it was one of 11 armed small boats ordered for the operation from 3 different manufacturers.

Records show 4 other boats from the same operation were abandoned in place in Dar es Salaam, in Rhodesia/British East Africa (now called Tanzania), and 2 boats were destroyed in testing in the USA. Much of the information was redacted (blacked out) of the documents, which is why he couldn't tell me who the manufacturers were. All of the builders were from south Florida.

By my count that leaves 4 boats as yet unaccounted for. Maybe there's hope yet for a 27' SeaVette!

Oh, yeah, Carl Moesly once said the 27' SeaVette had the same hull as the 27' SeaMaster, so it had a 9 1/2 foot beam. Plenty of room for monster motors