PCE(R)-855 was a patrol craft escort fitted out as a rescue ship, of the PCE(R)-848 class. The hull followed the Admirable minesweeper, arranged as a small hospital. She carried a medical officer and pharmacist's mates, beds for about eighty patients, a surgery, a pharmacy, and an X-ray. She also kept a 3-inch gun, 40 mm and 20 mm guns, a Hedgehog, and depth charges. She was built to escort convoys, and to take wounded men off radar-picket ships when kamikazes hit them.
She was planned as PCE-855 and reclassified PCE(R)-855 in June 1943, before the keel was laid. Pullman-Standard Car Manufacturing Company, at Chicago, laid her down on 8 December 1943 and launched her on 10 April 1944. The Navy commissioned her at New Orleans on 1 November 1944 as PCE(R)-855, still without a name. Arnold C. Anderson, USNR, had her from that day until 30 January 1945. The commissioning account calls him a lieutenant. The command list calls him a lieutenant (junior grade). Lieutenant Alfred Francis Blair, USNR, relieved him on 30 January.
She shook down in the Gulf of Mexico. Blair had the ship when she passed through the Panama Canal and reached Pearl Harbor on 18 February 1945. She then sailed by way of Saipan and Ulithi for the Okinawa campaign.
From about April through July 1945 she worked off Okinawa, mostly on the radar-picket line, as a floating hospital and a rescue ship, and she patrolled the anchorages for submarines. On 11 May 1945 kamikazes hit the destroyer Evans (DD-552) on a picket station. Casualties from Evans were brought aboard from the high-speed transport Ringness (APD-100). After the destroyer escort Oberrender (DE-344) lost power, this ship took off Oberrender's casualties, eight men killed and fifty-three wounded, and the tug Tekesta (ATF-93) towed Oberrender in to Kerama Retto. One account credits her with on the order of four hundred sailors recovered. Lieutenant Arthur Laurence Dowling, USNR, had her from June 1945. The day in June is not known. The command list notes a Navy Cross for him in 1945.
After Okinawa she operated in Leyte Gulf, in Philippine waters, and in the South China Sea until early December 1945. One account carries that duty through 2 December. She touched at Guam, one account on 8 December, and at Pearl Harbor for repairs, one account on 22 December. She arrived at San Diego on 15 February 1946.
On 15 February 1946 she was assigned to the Navy Electronics Laboratory at San Diego. On 7 June 1946 she was redesignated an experimental patrol craft escort (rescue). The hull number is written EPCER-855, and also EPCE(R)-855. The ship was converted for oceanographic and electronics research. The after guns came off and a large cargo boom went on, so she could tow instruments over the side. One of them was a thermistor chain that measured temperature and salinity down to about 800 feet. For years she stayed under the laboratory, running electronic, communications, navigational, and underwater-sound experiments off the West Coast, off Hawaii, and off Mexico.
The Navy gave her a name, Rexburg, for the city in Idaho. One account puts the naming in 1955. Another gives 15 February 1956. In October 1959 she came under the Operational Test and Evaluation Force, Pacific Projects Division. Lieutenant Hugh Larimer Webster, USN, had her from June 1959 to June 1960. On 1 July 1967 she shifted to Cruiser-Destroyer Force, Pacific, in Cruiser-Destroyer Flotilla Nine.
She was decommissioned and struck on 2 March 1970. On 28 October 1970 she was sold to National Metal and Steel Corp., at Terminal Island, California. She passed through several civilian owners. For a time the Church of Scientology had her, and she carried the names Asia and Excalibur. One spelling of the second name is Excaliber. She also worked as a fishing vessel, Atlantic Breeze among the names she used. Around 2009 she drops out of the record. What became of her after that is not known.