Butch Smith of Gloucester visited the Mathews Historical Museum on Saturday to purchase the museum’s new mug featuring the USS Mathews, which he served aboard in the 1960s. Launched in 1944 and ship was named for Mathews County men, chiefly merchant mariners, lost at sea during the war. The Mathews, AKA-96, was an attack cargo ship that remained in the Navy for 25 years, seeing action in Vietnam. Smith was on the ship in Vietnam and in Long Beach, California. “There was a crew of 150 on the ship, and I was in charge of the anti-aircraft gunnery,” said Smith. “Then they decommissioned her in 1969 and turned her into razor blades.”
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