USS Matagorda, a 1,766-ton Barnegat class small seaplane tender, was built at the Boston Navy Yard in Massachusetts and was commissioned in December 1941. She began her operational career by tending seaplanes in the Galapagos Islands in the eastern Pacific in May and June 1942. She then moved to the Caribbean, where she tended seaplanes and provided occasional escort services. In December 1942 Matagorda underwent maintenance at the Boston Navy Yard and, following one trip to Argentia, Newfoundland, she returned to the Caribbean in February 1943 where she acted as an escort and transported ordnance and aviation supplies for the next six months.

In August 1943 Matagorda transited up the U.S. east coast to Argentia, where she joined a convoy to the United Kingdom. She crossed the Atlantic five more times between October 1943 and March 1944, and also carried out escort and supply runs to Casablanca and Gibraltar. After a stop at Boston in April, she sailed to Brazil, where for most of the next twelve months she conducted a wide variety of seaplane tending, training, and escort operations. Matagorda returned to Norfolk in April 1945 and, after two trips on transport duty, arrived at New York for conversion to a Press Ship for the invasion of Japan. As such, she was reclassified AG-122 on 30 July 1945, but she reverted to AVP-22 on 10 September 1945 after the conversion was cancelled because of the end of the war. Matagorda was decommissioned in February 1946 and placed in reserve.

In March 1949 Matagorda was loaned to the Coast Guard as the cutter Matagorda (WAVP-373, later WHEC-373). She served out of Boston, primarily on weather station duty. She was decommissioned in January 1968, returned to the Navy in October 1968, and sunk as a target in October 1969.