Artmar III, a 63-foot motor pleasure boat, was built at Greenwich, Rhode Island, in 1912. Acquired by the Navy in May 1917 and placed in commission as USS Artmar III (SP-408), she served for the rest of World War I as a patrol craft, mainly operating out of New Bedford, Massachusetts. Decommissioned in February 1919, she was turned over to the U.S. Treasury Department's Customs Service in the following April. Transferred to the U.S. Coast Guard in September 1919, and renamed Dash later in that year, she was subsequently stationed at Buzzard's Bay, Massachusetts, and at Charleston, South Carolina. Her name was changed to AB-5 in 1923. In 1924 she briefly served at Washington, D.C., before returning to Charleston in November. Damaged soon thereafter, she was apparently inactive for most of the next nine years. AB-5 was sent to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in mid-1933 and sold in September of that year.