USCGC Sundew (WLB-404) was an Iris-class seagoing buoy tender built for the United States Coast Guard during World War World II. Launched in 1944 by the Marine Iron and Shipbuilding Corporation in Duluth, Minnesota, the 180-foot vessel was nicknamed "The Superior One" and spent the vast majority of her 60-year military career serving the Great Lakes region. As a heavily reinforced ice-strengthened vessel, Sundew’s primary mission was a mix of maintaining essential navigational aids, light icebreaking to keep critical shipping channels open, and conducting search and rescue operations across the treacherous lakes. Notably, she was one of the primary cutters dispatched to hunt for survivors in the immediate, freezing aftermath of the tragic 1975 sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald on Lake Superior.
When she was decommissioned in 2004, Sundew retired as the oldest operational cutter of her class in the entire Coast Guard fleet. The vessel was initially donated to her final homeport city of Duluth to serve as a floating museum ship alongside other local maritime landmarks. However, following a decline in city tourism revenue a few years later, the historic cutter was sold into private hands in 2009. Though no longer operating as a public, city-run museum, the beautifully maintained vessel remains an iconic fixture of the Duluth waterfront, where her private owners preserve her legacy and occasionally take her out onto the open waters of Lake Superior.