Antonio Nicolo Gasparo Jacobsen (1850-1921)
Tasco
signed and dated 'A. Jacobsen. 1914' (lower right)
oil on board
20 1/8 x 36 in. (51.1 x 91.4 cm.)
Painted in 1914.
Footnotes:
Provenance
Sale, Hoosier Auction Co., Mystic, Connecticut, July 24, 2005, lot 50A.
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner.

Tasco was a screw steamship built in New London, Connecticut in 1907 and in 1908 was registered to the T.A. Scott Company as a rescue and salvage vessel, hence where she received her name TASCO. She was considered roomy and heavy, weighing 319 gross tons and from 1908 to 1914, Tasco took part in the rescue or salvage of nearly 150 wrecked ships along the east coast of the United States as far north as Maine to as far south as Key West, Florida. In 1914, T.A. Scott Company sold Tasco to Mr. J. Shewan of Brooklyn, New York. During World War I, the United States Navy requisitioned Tasco on August 4, 1917 from Mr. J. Shewan and she was subsequently placed in commission on September 29, 1917 as the U.S.S. Tasco (SP-502), serving as a patrol boat and minesweeper. It is likely that she was used very little as a minesweeper, as German mining operations along the coast of the Unites States were often sporadic and unsuccessful during World War I, but she did actively patrol the Third Naval District coastline around New York. In the spring of 1919 a few months after the signing of the Armistice on November 11, 1918, she was withdrawn from service to be returned to her owner and was officially removed from the Navy's list on May 22, 1919.