USS Dextrous (MCM-13)

USS Dextrous (MCM-13) is an Avenger-class mine countermeasures ship mine countermeasures ship in the United States Navy.

She was built by Peterson Shipbuilders, Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. Mrs. Jacqueline E. Schafer, the Assistant SECNAV for Installations and Environment, served as sponsor of the ship.

On March 31, 1994, USS Dextrous got underway for the first time to conduct Builder’s trials and conducted a series of tests over the coming months before eventually conducting the 59-day transit south from Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin to her first home port at Naval Station Ingleside, Texas. Shortly after her arrival, USS Dextrous was commissioned during a ceremony in Ingleside, TX on July 9, 1994.

Between February 1997 and August 1997, USS Dextrous was heavy sealift transported to Mina Salman Pier, homeported in Manama, Bahrain where she remains homeported today. In the decades since arriving in Bahrain, USS Dextrous has conducted dozens of critical exercises and real world operations in support of contingency planning and mine clearing within the Persian Gulf, to include earning a Combat Action Ribbon for her work during Operation Iraqi Freedom. She has worked with over a dozen allied and partner nations in support of the MCM mission and remains a major operational asset to U.S Fifth Fleet.

Dextrous is homeported in Bahrain and is part of the U.S. Fifth Fleet.