PT-109 is widely known as the torpedo patrol boat John F. Kennedy commanded during World War II. It sank when it was run over by a Japanese destroyer while under his command, but he was also in charge of another patrol boat during the war, PT-59, which some people say is the boat that was recently found in the Harlem River.
After the war the PT-59 was sold as Navy surplus and used as a fishing boat, but a former schoolteacher who used the World War II patrol boat as a houseboat in the early 1970s says that it is Kennedy’s boat based on the hull number he found while living aboard.
The boat’s remnants were discovered in the mud during a construction project to prevent a railyard from flooding. Efforts are being made to recover more of the vessel and to affirmatively establish its provenance.
You can read more about it in The New York Times and The Daily Mail.
