She was 77 feet long, 20 feet wide, and drew 4 feet of water. When her temperamental engines were right and her bottom was clean she could go 60 miles an hour, which, for a boat, is very fast. In the narrow waters around Bayonne, New Jersey, where she was built, she looked pretty big. On the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, going about her deadly business in the dark nights of war, she was a splinter. During World War II, Slewfoot and the rest of the PT boats were the smallest warships the Navy had. Like many small things in nature, Slewfoot's life depended on her speed, for she had no protection against gunfire, torpedoes, bombs, or strafing planes. Unlike the Navy's other ships, she had no armor; there was nothing for a man to hide behind when the tracers began to arc toward him, for Slewfoot was built of wood and mostly plywood at that. She was designed to hit and—run. Designed to carry three engines with the combined ram of four thousand horsepower to get Slewfoot into position and—out again.
