The USS Amesbury (DE-66/APD-46) was a Buckley-class destroyer escort laid down on March 8, 1943, and launched on June 6, the same year. It was commissioned on August 31, 1943, under Lt. Comdr. Allen B. Adams Jr.’s command with the hull number DE-66 and served in the U.S. Navy for 3 years until it was decommissioned on July 3, 1946. During its activity, the ship carried a complement of 213 men on board and had its main missions in Bermuda, Norfolk, Northern Ireland, Greenock, Key West, Hawaii, and San Diego. After decommissioning, the ship was struck from the Naval Register on June 1, 1960. One year and a half later, on October 24, 1962, it was sold to Chet Alexander Marine Salvage, but it sank. Between World War II and the late 1970s, the shipbuilding industry used asbestos to insulate boilers, hot steam pipes, fuel line pumps, turbines, compressors, and condensers. Water damage, continual vibration, aging, and physical impact such as drilling, grinding, buffing, cutting, sawing, or striking can break the asbestos-containing materials down making fiber release more likely.
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