MAJOR WILBUR FR. BROWDER (tugboat) National Register of Historic Places Listing

She was built for war. In 1943, workers at the Jakobson Shipyard in Oyster Bay, New York, welded together the steel hull of what the U.S. Army designated LT-4, naming her the Major Wilbur Fr. Browder. LT-4 wasn't some harbor weakling. This 115-foot ocean-going tug packed a massive 1,200-horsepower Enterprise diesel engine designed to pull heavy loads through nasty Atlantic swells. Then came Normandy. During the D-Day invasion in June 1944, the crew braved Luftwaffe attacks and rough seas to tow ammunition barges and massive concrete caissons for the artificial Mulberry harbors right onto the beaches. She survived.

Most wartime tugs ended up scrapped, but this one got a second life. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers bought her in 1947. They renamed her Ludington. For nearly fifty years, she hauled heavy dredging equipment and broke thick winter ice across the Great Lakes. She worked hard. Her home port became Kewaunee, Wisconsin, where she eventually retired in 1996 after decades of grueling, unglamorous labor.

You can still walk her decks today. The city of Kewaunee preserved the tug as a floating museum, keeping her original engine and wartime pilot house intact. She sits on the waterfront. Historians care about her because she is one of the last surviving D-Day large tugs left on the planet. She got her spot on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002. No fake replicas here. Just raw, riveted steel that actually crossed the Atlantic to fight the Nazis.