The Last Minesweeper
USS Lucid’s Second Life on the Stockton Waterfront
By Michael Cockrell
Moored near the Port of Stockton, the USS Lucid is entering the final stages of restoration.
Built in 1953 by Higgins Industries in New Orleans, Louisiana and home ported in Long Beach, the Aggressive-class oceangoing minesweeper made multiple Western Pacific deployments and supported Operation Market Time during the Vietnam era. She is a true sister ship to three vessels constructed in Stockton at Colberg Boat Works in the early 1950s — a direct link between local shipbuilding and Cold War naval history.
Decommissioned in 1970 and acquired by the Stockton Maritime Museum in 2012, Lucid will soon be relocated to downtown Stockton, across from the Ballpark and Arena, where she will open to the public as a permanent museum ship.
One of only a handful of museum ships in the Bay Area and Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta, Lucid is the last surviving Aggressive-class minesweeper in the United States.
Watch the video to explore her history, her painstaking restoration, and what visitors can expect when she takes her place along Stockton’s waterfront.
Michael Cockrell’s public service career has included law enforcement, water conservation enforcement, and emergency management. After 35-years at San Joaquin County’s Office of Emergency Services (OES), he retired as Director in December 2017. His OES experience between 1982-2017 included a wide range of emergencies and disasters such as floods, earthquake recovery, mass-casualty incidents, train derailments, hazardous materials releases, droughts, extreme heat and cold events. His education includes Associate and Bachelor degrees in Social Science, concentrating in Administration of Justice, and, a Master’s Degree in Public Administration. He has also completed many continued-education courses on administration and emergency management.
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