Naval trawler
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Naval trawlers are vessels built along the lines of a fishing trawler but fitted out for naval purposes; they were widely used during the First and Second World Wars. Some, known in the Royal Navy as
First World War naval trawler, HMT Swansea Castle
Second World War naval trawler, HMT Lancer
A naval trawler's gun crew mans a 12-pounder (76 mm) Mk V gun on the forecastle
HMT Northern Sky pitching and rolling at slow speed along her patrol lines. Operating off Iceland, this trawler made the last attack of the Second World War on a U-boat.
Spy ship
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A spy ship or reconnaissance vessel is a dedicated ship intended to gather intelligence, usually by means of sophisticated electronic eavesdropping. In a wider sense, any ship intended to gather infor
USS Liberty, a "technical research ship", in 1967
Oker, an Oste-class ELINT and reconnaissance ship, of the German Navy
SSV-33 Ural, the largest spy ship ever constructed, used by the USSR to observe and track US ballistic and orbital launches.
While USNS Vanguard was not strictly a spy ship, being used for space tracking, there is some overlap between her capabilities and those of a spy ship.