You raise a good question. All we seem to know at this point is that all municipal vessels would have been part of national defense fleets to the extent that they would have participated in beefed up patrols and survellance operations.

BALTIMORE was actually built as an inspection vessel in 1906 and therefore would have been out and about Baltimore Harbor and the lower Patapsco River along with other city and state owned craft on watch for suspicious activities during both of the World Wars.

The newly built (1940) Baltimore City police boat CHARLES W. GAITHER was actully pressed into goverment service with US Navy crews, painted haze grey and mounted with a 50 calibre machine gun.

We have a WW-II photograph of US Army personnel manning the rail while underway aboard BALTIMORE but it appears more like they are out for a 'cruise' instead of peering the horizon for unfamilar warships.

Walt