The Coast Guard has been neck deep in the fighting in every U.S. war from the 1800s to the Persian Gulf, with WWII being no exception. One of the coasties that served in that conflict was Linwood “Tick” Thumb, the oldest living veteran from that war.

He just had his 100th.

Tick served on a 83-foot “splinter boat” operating out of Hampton Roads (Little Creek) during the height of Operation Drumbeat, the German U-boat campaign on the U.S East Coast.

From the USCG story about Tick last week:

Having grown up on the water, Thumm figured he would take to the Coast Guard like the Wright brothers took to flying. After joining the Coast Guard and becoming a seaman 1st class, he tested for the Coast Guard Academy. Thumm’s proficiency in math paid off on the exam when he achieved a near perfect score on the celestial navigation portion. Having entered and successfully completed the program, he became an officer and was given command of an 83-foot cutter crew stationed at Naval Base Little Creek in what is now Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Thumm and his crew spent the first part of the war escorting convoys along the Atlantic seaboard, mostly from New Jersey to North Carolina. During one of these escorts, Thumm and the crew spotted a German U-boat, and with the help of a few depth charges, sent the U-boat to its final resting place on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. A naval panel at Fort Story in Virginia Beach investigated the encounter, but only credited them with a possible kill – a categorization Thumm attributes more to jealousy on behalf of the navy than a lack of evidence. In his mind, Thumm didn’t need the Navy to confirm the kill – his crew found half of a German officer’s body in the water and that was good enough for him.

Happy 100th Tick, thank you for your service.

Linwood “Tick” Thumm displays an oar received from the Portsmouth Federal Building’s Chief’s Mess in Portsmouth, Va., March 26, 2015. Thumm, a World War II Coast Guard veteran, had just turned 100 and was celebrating with fellow Coast Guard members and civilians. (U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class David Weydert)

More here

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday April 8, 2015– The Mud Lump Picket Gang

Click to very much big up. USCG Photo

Here we see an excellent bow-on shot of a 38 Foot Cabin Picket Boat CG-4371 of the United States Coast Guard as she would have appeared during World War II when all dolled up in her war paint. From 1920-1960, these boats were the local “Coasties” and fought bootleggers in the Rum Wars, the Germans, and Japanese during the real live shooting war that followed, and set the benchmark for peacetime service afterward.

Moreover, all together there were over 600 of them.

Why were they needed?

With the passage of the Volstead Act, perhaps the biggest effort at pissing in the wind in the history of the Federal Government, liquor was made the scapegoat for poor societal growth by the Temperance Movement and made thereby illegal- that should have fixed everything. Well, it only made matters far worse as the demand never went away and enterprising suppliers, many fresh from military service in the Great War and with few qualms about taking risks, began bootlegging booze by land, sea, and air. The first was risky as it was too predictable, and the final couldn’t handle the volume, which led to the serious rum-runners selecting offshore delivery as the preferred means.

It was simple, buy a surplus freighter or deep draft sailing ship (there were literally thousands of them cheap after the war) load it with legal rum in Cuba or the Bahamas if down south or good Canadian Whiskey if up north, then haul the hooch to a few hundred yards offshore of the (then) 3-mile federal limit and sell it to any enterprising small boat owner that came your way– by the case and at several times the cost. And it worked, for example, the number of quarts of rum sold in Nassau, Bahamas in 1917 was just 50,000. By 1922, it skyrocketed to 10-million. It was a boon with coastal port towns in the nearby Caribbean turning into gold rush cities and some 500,000 Americans believed involved at one stage or another in the new instant economy of bootlegging.

A schooner loaded high with whiskey on rum row.USCG Photo

The government’s answer to shut down this “Rum Row” was the USCG.

The thing is, the Coasties had few capable large craft as their offshore cutters were slow and couldn’t pursue the smaller fast boats of the rum runners headed back to shore, and the local harbor launches and rescue boats of the Coast Guard stations were likewise too slow and light (often rowboats or 36-footers Hunnewell Type lifeboats that could make 8-knots) to chase the speedy little power boats over the local mud lumps.

Therefore, while the Coast Guard quickly acquired a fleet of Navy 4-piper destroyers and sub chasers from mothballs and ordered a ton of new 165-foot, 125-foot and 75-foot gunboats, but they still needed smaller boys for when the speeds got north of 20 knots and the shoals got shallower than two fathoms. That is where the picket boats came in.

Design

Based on the classic sea bright dory fishing boats that were popular along the Jersey Coast in the late 19th Century, the Coast Guard came up with two general plans (one for a 36-foot boat, the other for a 38-footer) of fast “Cabin Picket Boats.”

A 38 foot cabin picket in their peacetime livery.USCG Photo

38 foot picket USCG Photo

Each had a wood carvel design hull with single planking and ice sheathing, either a single or double cabin, and a single gasoline engine, prop or rudder. Speeds were in the 25-knot range. They were self-bailing, had electrical lights and refrigerator, and could accommodate as many as ten coasties but only needed two to operate. With their small cabins and galley, they carried enough fuel to go out overnight and come back, venturing out to Rum Row and back several times. Too small for names, they were all given numbers.

Given a law enforcement role as primary, a first for a USCG small boat, they were tasked with patrolling and policing of harbors, shallow inlets and protected waters along the coasts. Initially the 36 footers were built to two very, um, flexible designs one with a double cabin and one with a single, and 103 were ordered from small boat builders around the country, all delivered by 1926.

From the USCG Historian’s office on the design of the 36s:

Procurement procedures for these smaller craft varied by type. In the case of the single-cabin model, a brief outline plan was distributed to boat building contractors with instructions that they retain their own naval architect to complete the boat’s final plans and specifications. With the double-cabin model, however, complete plans were drawn up and provided by the Coast Guard to prospective builders. Seven different yards were contracted for single-cabin boat construction, and six yards for double-cabin boat construction.

The 38s were all built to a single plan with 68 examples created before Dec. 7, 1941 and another 470 built between then and 1944— but we’ll get to that.

Rum War

By 1924 the Coast Guard, armed with their new boats small and large and a huge influx of cash from the Hoover administration, was set loose on Rum Row. Boat crews, often called Hammerheads due to their distinctive booze smashing (and head knocking) sledges destroyed rum and whiskey alike. Off New London alone in one year, no less than 65 ships were captured with $1.5 milly in booze as well as 290 bootleggers along with them. The crews were heavily armed with BARs, M1903s and pistols because shootouts, as well as encounters with pirate ships out to rob the bootleggers themselves were increasingly common. One source cites that over 200 civilians were killed off the U.S. East Coast during the 1920s while involved in the booze campaign.

The Coast Guard was hard handed when needed and they suffered their own losses, even exacting retribution in the hanging (at the Ft. Lauderdale Coast Guard Station) of a bootlegger, James “The Gulf Stream Pirate” Alderman that killed a Coast Guardsman.

One of the spicer incidents was the capture of the SS Economy. Ensign Charles L. Duke was aboard a picket boat on the night of 3 July 1927– right before the holiday. He two sailors were patrolling New York Harbor on board the 36-footer CG-2327 when they saw a beat up old steamer pass in the night. With the ship in poor shape, and only the name “Economy” painted across her stern in fresh script, Duke decided to board her. After the ship refused to stop following two rounds from Duke’s revolver, he ordered his two sailors that, “If I’m not out of that pilot house in two minutes you turn the machine gun on them,” and jumped on the freighter with his half-empty revolver and a flashlight.

Duke boarding the Economy. USCG Painting

He seized control of the bridge, took the ship’s wheel and grounded the vessel, then waited for reinforcements the rest of the night. Finally relieved just before dawn by additional cuttermen from all over New York, they found 22 bootleggers and 3,000 barrels of hooch in what was called “perhaps the most heroic” exploit in the rum war.

For more on the Rum War at sea, the USCG in 1964 produced a very informative 229-page report here in pdf format free.

Crazy marine life

Off Brielle, New Jersey in the summer of 1933, one local angler by the name of Captain A.L. Kahn, master of the F/V Miss Pensacola II, came face to face with a Jules Verne-sized monster of the depths. You see his anchor line became tangled in a Giant Manta Devil Fish (Manta Birostris) almost capsizing the boat. The local Coast Guard station sent its picket boat, CG-2390, and unable to free the boat or beast, dispatched it with “22 shots from a high-powered rifle.”

Giant Manta Devil Fish 1933. Click to big up

More on the Manta!

The ray was towed to Feuerbach and Hansen’s Marina in Brielle, New Jersey where it was hoisted ashore on August 26, 1933 with a travel lift. In the end, the beast weighted some 5,000-pounds and measured more than 20 feet across the wing. Kahn, with likely the biggest and weirdest catch of his life, exhibited the stuffed specimen for years.

Peacetime roles.

With the bootleggers killed by repeal of the Volstead Act, and barring the occasional sea monster fight, the pickets were some of the few Rum War-era craft that were kept in full service during the Depression due to their ease of operation, versatility, and low-cost. They continued to serve as coastal patrol and search and rescue craft, assist in maritime accidents, police fishing grounds for poachers, and even go far upriver for flood relief due to their very shallow draft.

A dozen Coast Guard picket boats (double cabin 36 footers) muster beside the former CGC Yocona on the Mississippi River during The Great Ohio, Mississippi River Valley Flood of 1937. U.S. Coast Guard photo. Yocona was a 182-foot Kankakee-class stern paddle wheelers built for the Coast Guard in 1919 and stationed at Vicksburg. Click to big up

Back at war

When Pearl Harbor jump-started the U.S. into the middle of WWII, the Coast Guard and their picket boats soon found themselves unexpectedly on the front lines. Never meant for combat, they mounted no crew served weapons. Their gasoline engines would prove fireballs if any of these ships took a hit from a major caliber shell (even if the projectile itself did not break the cabin cruiser in two). Nevertheless, by 1942, the picket boats were in the thick of it and another 470 were soon built to join the 170~ already in service.

1943 photo from the archives of the Kirkland Heritage Society showing a 38 under construction near Seattle in 1942

1943 photo from the archives of the Kirkland Heritage Society showing 38 sunder construction near Seattle in 1942

Issued submachine guns, hammers (to break periscope lenses if they got close enough) and grenades (to throw in the open hatches of surfaced U-boats, the pickets mounted regular patrols in the coastal waterways and harbor mouths across the nation.

The 38 foot cabin picket boat. Click to very much big up. USCG Photo

The 38 foot cabin picket boat, CG-4371. Click to very much big up. USCG Photo

Painted in dull war schemes and loaded up with food, these tiny boats would ply the 50-fathom curve on “five days out and two days in port” patrol rotations and later a few even received some 25-pound paint can sized depth charges and WWI-era Marlin machine guns found in storage. They tended anti-submarine nets watching for frogmen, raced to the rescue of downed patrol fliers, and all too often responded to the site of successful U-boat attacks, picking up those still alive and those that were not.

In February 1942, 432,000 tons of shipping went down in the Atlantic, 80 percent off the American coast. The pickets were everywhere picking up survivors. For example:

• 27 January 1942, tanker Francis Powell, 7,096-tons, sank after gunfire from U-130 eight miles northeast of the Winter Quarter Lightship. The 38-foot picket boat from CG Station Assateague picked up 11 survivors.
• 27 February 1942, Navy steamer Marore, 8,215-tons, was sunk by a torpedo from U-432 off the North Carolina Coast. Picket boat CG-3843 picked up the master and 13 survivors.
• 27 February 1942, Navy tanker R.P. Resor, 7,415-tons, was hit by a torpedo from U-578 off Sea Girt, Delaware and exploded taking 41 crewmembers and Navy gunners with her. CG-4344 picked up two survivors.
• 31 March 1942, the unarmed tug Menominee towing three barges at 5 knots, was attacked by U-754 with gunfire about 9.5 miles east-southeast of Metopkin Inlet, Virginia near the mouth of Chesapeake Bay. After being in the water all day, 38-foot picket CG-4345 picked up six men clinging to wreckage.

And so it went during the war until the U-boat menace abated after 1943. Still the picket boats provided yeoman service day after day, ready to fight or save lives.

During the War, as reported by one who sailed these craft on the West Coast, the crew typically consisted of six men spread across BM, MM and unrated seamen. As they were often away from the regular full-sized bases, these men were on their own, “The crews of the patrol boats received a dollar and 20 cents per day subsistence money extra with their pay. We had to buy our own food supplies from the commissary and pay our bill at the end of each month. Each boat also had an old-fashioned icebox and a two-burner alcohol stove. We carried government vouchers in case we had to buy gasoline at a harbor away from the Alameda base.”

After the conclusion of the war, many of the most used vessels, those dating from the Rum Row era, were withdrawn.

By 1950, the Coast Guard planned to replace these old 36 and 38 footers that remained with a new class of 40-foot utility boats of which 236 were complete by 1966. With that the days of the Cabin Pickets were over, although some were passed on to the U.S. Geological Survey and other government agencies for further use.

A few are still around as private yachts and are easily recognizable by their lines.

A retired picket used as a personal yacht in Virginia 1960s

An old 38 up for sale in 2012. Not too bad a shape for a 70+ year old wooden boat built by the lowest bidder.

Today, the 40-foot utilities that replaced the picket boats were themselves phased out by the 41-footers of the 1970s which were in turn retired recently in favor of the new 45 ft. Response Boats that are a common sight along the waterways of the country. This new 174-member class still largely conducts the same mission pioneered by the venerable cabin cruisers.

A new 45-foot response boat medium (RB-M) passes by the Washington Monument on the Potomac River during a capabilities demonstration. This boat was the first model put into testing and is currently assigned to Station Little Creek, Va. The RB-M will re-capitalize capabilities of the existing multi-mission 41-foot utility boats (UTB) and multiple nonstandard boats to meet the needs of the Coast Guard. U.S. Coast Guard photo by PA1 Adam Eggers – (Click to big up)

Clocking in everyday.

Specs

38

38- foot
Hull numbers: CG2385-4372, later changed to 38300-38836 during WWII
Displacement: 15,700-pounds (8~ tons)
Length overall: 38 feet, 3-inches
Beam: 10.33 feet
Draft: 3 feet
Crew-2-8
Fuel: 240 gallons
Engine: One single. These included either Hall Scott Model 168 270hp V6s, 300hp Sterling Dolphins, Murray and Tregurtha 325s, although most of these after 1942 were completed with 225hp Kermath models.
Speed: 20-25 knots depending on load and engines fitted. One, CG2385, hit 26.5kts on trails.
Range; 175 miles
Cost: $10,000

36.USCG Photo

36-foot
Hull numbers: CG2200-2229 (open cabin), 2300-2372 (double cabin)
Displacement: 10,000 lbs. (5~ tons)
Length overall: 35.8 feet
Beam: 8.9 feet
Draft: 30 inches
Crew-3+
Fuel: 240 gallons
Engine: 180 HP Consolidated Speedway MR-6 six-cylinder gasoline engine
Speed: 20-25 knots depending on load and engines fitted
Range; 175 miles
Cost: $8,800

If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find http://www.warship.org/

The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

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You may not know this, but one of the nation’s oldest sea services, the U.S. Coast Guard, which traces its lineage back to the old Revenue Cutter Service of 1790, doesn’t officially have any divers.

Well, until now anyway.

That’s not to say that they didn’t have any dive-trained personnel, as each large cutter, buoy tender and icebreaker had a dive locker with a smattering of on board officers and enlisted men who were given dive training as a collateral assignment to perform hull checks and the like.

However in recent years, well publicized accidents including a couple of tragic deaths has lead to a more dedicated program.

Click to big up

From the Coast Guard:

On April 1, 2015, 48 Coast Guard members began their journey towards proficiency in an entirely new career field by becoming the first Coast Guard men and women to be formally recognized by the Coast Guard’s 22nd rating.

Each new Coast Guard diver has undergone a 45-week training program to ensure they are well prepared for the challenging and dangerous missions that lie ahead.

The diving rating, which will commonly be known as DV for enlisted members and DIV for chief warrant officers, was implemented following years of research, analysis and training by the Diver Career Management Working Group following a diving accident that occurred aboard Coast Guard Cutter Healy in 2006.

“We revalidated the need for an organic diving capability,” said Ken Andersen, chief of subsurface capabilities. “The only solution that we could come up with was ‘How do we keep someone diving the rest of their career?’ Well it needs to be an occupation – and that means a rating.”

Further, they have completed decompression dive training this week

Petty Officer 1st Class Manuel Severino, a Coast Guard diver (DV) assigned to Coast Guard Dive Locker West, prepares for a dive from the Coast Guard Cutter George Cobb in the waters off San Pedro, California. U.S. Coast Guard photograph by Petty Officer 1st Class Andrea L. Anderson.

Bravo Zulu, Coast Guard.

While the Navy has the SEAL platoons that regularly deploy, and each ship frigate size and above has a multi-section VBSS team (blue jackets that have passed SRF-B and get three additional weeks training on insertion, collecting biometrics and team tactics), the Coast Guard also has similar programs.

Roughly the Coast Guard’s version of a VBSS team is a Law Enforcement Detachment (LEDET) while the nearest thing to a special operations unit is the Maritime Safety and Security Team or MSST and its counter-terror snake-eater unit, the MSRT.

Some 12 MSSTs (numbered 91101-91114) are spread around the country, co-located near high-value U.S. Navy bases (think Kitsap, Norfolk, Pearl, Kings Bay, et al) and ports. Composed of 75~ members, all they do all day is train for taking down high-risk maritime targets inside U.S.-controlled waters and hone such rare skill sets as underwater port security, and non-compliant vessel boardings. They also deploy abroad (CENTCOM, Guantanamo Bay, etc as needed). Further, all of the USCG’s canine teams are assigned to MSSTs.

They get very little press, but a lot of good training and equipment. If things ever get hot, they would be the ones looking for enemy frogmen, hijacked LNG tankers, CBRNE threats and USS Cole-style small boat attacks.

A member of U.S. Coast Guard Maritime Safety and Security Team 91101 Seattle stands watch in a ladderwell while his fellow boarding team members complete a sweep of Royal Canadian navy Kingston-class coastal defense vessel Yellowknife during a Trident Fury exercise in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, May 12, 2015. In order to complete their mission, the MSST team had to search every compartment on the vessel, subdue any potential aggressors and find a fake bomb that had been planted by a training team leader. (U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Katelyn Shearer)

Members of U.S Coast Guard Maritime Safety and Security Team 91101 Seattle handcuff Ensign Jacob Sibilski, a crew member of U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Active, a 210-foot medium endurance cutter homeported in Port Angeles, Wash., while conducting a boarding of Royal Canadian navy Kingston-class coastal defense vessel Yellowknife as part of a Trident Fury exercise in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, May 12, 2015. Sibilski was acting as the captain of a Russian fishing vessel that had experienced a mutiny aboard. (U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Katelyn Shearer) Click for hi rez

You have to love the Close Quarter Battle Receiver (CQBR) upper on the Mk18 rifles. We are talking 10-inch barrels here. Also note the FX Simunition marking cartridges in the clear mags (to ensure safety), blue “cold” markings and solid plastic Ring’s bluegun sidearms. Nothing like keeping it safe.

Today, I’m refraining from posting my typical drivel and instead will leave you with this image of veterans from the War Between the States. The practice we know today as Memorial Day (the remembrance part, not the obscene excuse for 25 percent off bedsheets part) started in 1868 as Decoration Day, ordered by the commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, the veterans’ organization for Union Civil War veterans, for the purpose of decorating the graves of the nation’s veterans both of that war and those that preceded it.

Over time, it has merged with Confederate Memorial Day (which started in 1866) to become the tradition we know today.

American Civil War veterans, all with GAR badges, being shown modern M1 rifles and Browning machine guns on Veteran’s Day at the Minnesota State Fair circa, 1940’s. The veteran holding the rifle with the bayonet affixed was Henry Mack, an African-American Civil War veteran who lived to be 108 years old before passing away in 1945. Click to big up. More on Mack’s fascinating story here.

4 Confederate Veterans of the American Civil War, the man on the left can be seen wearing the southern version of the Medal of Honor, the Southern Cross of Honor, ca. 1922. Source: Denmark-based creative Mads Madsen, aka Zuzah, http://zuzahin.tumblr.com/

Please use any extra time you normally spent reading this blog that you now have to spare and put it towards the reverent respect of all those who have served our great country and paid a price we can’t begin to repay.

While today many are quick to paint guns are instruments of destruction for their own political agenda, for more than 70 years the largest cannon stationed at Coast Guard stations around the country were only trotted out to rescue those in peril on the sea.

The problem

Before what we know today as the U.S. Coast Guard was established, in 1848 the government thought it was a good idea to build and staff rescue stations along parts of the coastline that were prone to shipwrecks.

By 1915, over 270 of these stations were built on every coast and were run by the United States Life-Saving Service. Stations in many cases were ran like local volunteer fire departments with one or two full time government employees stationed there to take care of the equipment and ring the bell if a ship came to close for comfort.

When the bell rang, a crew would assemble and try to launch their small rowboat through the surf and make for the grounded or broken ship. The thing is, as many of these areas were too hazardous to begin with, or during a storm (hey, think about it, when do ships wreck anyway?), all that the intrepid lifesavers could do was sit by and watch.

So in 1875, Sumner Kimball, superintendent of the USLSS reached out to the Army to build them a special cannon.

Enter Lt. Lyle.

When he graduated from West Point in 1869, David A. Lyle accepted his commission in the U.S. Ordnance Department and departed for San Francisco to assume his duties at Benicia Arsenal in the San Francisco area– the main ordnance depot west of the Mississippi at the time. In 1875, thinking the recently promoted 1st Lieutenant had too much spare time on his hands; the Army assigned him the ancillary task of designing the requested cannon for the surfmen.

The 160-ish pound 2.5-inch smoothboore bronze cannon remained in active service until 1952 and the USCG, who inherited the Life-Saving Service in 1915, still keeps a couple around for special occasions.

RODANTHE, N.C. – Petty Officer 1st Class Robert Shay pulls the line on a Lyle gun, firing a metal projectile, and rope to a simulated shipwreck on the beach at the Chicamacomico Life-Saving Station during the Breeches Buoy Drill, Monday, Dec. 14, 2009. (U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Mark Jones) Click to big up

Read the rest in my column at Firearms Talk

In the 225-year history of the United States Coast Guard and its forerunners the U.S.Lighthouse Service, U.S. Lifesaving Service and Revenue Cutter Service, the military branch has lost a total of 129 ships over 65 feet in length. Most of these have been lost in storms, accidents, or foundering.

Several have been lost in combat including six during the War of 1812, seven after May 1861 during the Civil War, five in the First World War and 15 in the Second.

However, perhaps the deepest and curious cut ever suffered by the branch occurred during a 111-day period from 27 December 1860 to 18 April 1861, when the tiny service lost no less than 7 cutters, 6 lighthouse tenders, 164 lighthouses and 10 lightships stationed or located in the former Southeastern United States to local enterprising secessionists (sometimes with the treasonous assistance of their commanders.)

This amounted to about a third of the force.

Only one Southern-based cutter, the USRC Dobbin, a 91 footer class schooner, managed to escape capture to the North, slipping her place at the federal dock in Savannah and making her way to Delaware. A second cutter, the 175-foot oceangoing USRC Harriet Lane, one of the first effective sidewheelers in the U.S. fleet, was not based in the South but was in Southern waters off Fort Sumter before the shooting started and likewise made it into U.S. Naval service on 30 March 1861.

Most of the cutters of the USRCS at the time were built direct for government use such as the 190-ton 91-foot brig-rigged schooner Washington shown here. They were shallow draft coastal vessels meant to run about and snag smugglers, illegal slavers and the last of the Gulf pirates. Typically cutters were just armed with one or two older naval pieces and small arms. Lighthouse tenders and lightships on the other hand were typically just bought off the local shipping market then modified and were unarmed.

Of the 23 seized vessels, most were used in some form by the Confederate Navy but, as far as I can tell, by 1865 all were either destroyed or condemned and none rejoined federal service after the war.

While details through the U.S. Coast Guard Historians Office on these are sketchy, here is the run down.

• USRC William Aiken; 82 ton (2 carronades) schooner, surrendered to the state authorities of South Carolina by her commanding officer, Revenue Captain N. L. Coste, on 27 December 1860.  She was the first Federal vessel of any service taken by the seceding states (South Carolina had moved to secede 20 December 1860)
• USRC Alert; 74-foot (2 x 12-pounders); 18 January 1861; Seized in Mobile Bay and used as the CSS Alert
• USLHT Jasper; 1861; Seized by North Carolina militia while under repair
• USLHT Howell Cobb 1861; Seized in South Carolina
• USLHT Helen; January 1861; Seized in South Carolina and used as a supply ship in Florida during the war
• USRC McClelland; a 91′ Cushing-class (1 x 42-pound pivot gun) topsail schooner; 29 January 1861, the cutter’s captain, John Breshwood and XO, Lt. Caldwell hauled down the ensign and offered the cutter to the state of Louisiana who renamed her CSS Pickens
• USRC Washington; a 91′ Cushing-class (1 x 42-pound pivot gun) topsail schooner; 31 January 1861; Seized by Louisiana militia
• USRC Lewis Cass; 80′ Phillip Allen-class (1 x 9-pdr.) topsail schooner; 31 January 1861; Seized in Mobile Bay after Revenue Captain J. J. Morrison offered her to the state of Alabama. Her 13-man crew however, left for points North.
• USLHT William R. King; March 1861; Seized by Louisiana militia at New Orleans
• USRC Henry Dodge; 80′ Phillip Allen-class (1 x 9-pdr.) topsail schooner; 2 March 1861; Seized by Texas militia at Galveston after her skipper, First Lieutenant William F. Rogers, USRM offered her to the state with the caveat that he remain in command.
• USLHT Buchanan; 18 April 1861; Seized by Virginia militia
• USLHT North Wind; 18 April 1861; Seized by Virginia militia
• USRC Duane; a 102′ Campbell/Joe Lane-class (1 x 24-pounder) Topsail Schooner, 18 April 1861; Seized by an armed mob in Norfolk

USRC William Aiken depicted after her seizure by South Carolina. Note the Palmetto Flag

The following lightships were seized in the first two weeks of April and either moved or sunk.

• Frying Pan Shoals Lightship
• York Spit Lightship
• Wolf Trap Lightship
• Windmill Point Lightship
• Smith’s Point Lightship
• Lower Cedar Point Lightship
• Upper Cedar Point Lightship
• Bowler’s Rock Lightship
• Harbor Island Lightship
• Rattlesnake Shoal Lightship

Speaking of lights, a staggering 164 manned lighthouses, property of the U.S. Lighthouse Board, were confiscated by either local, state or Confederate government agents by the end of April. These were referred to by the senior U.S. Naval officer on the USLHB, South Carolina native and War of 1812-veteran, Commodore William Branford Shubrick, as the work of “pirates.”

While many keepers, products of their local community and outnumbered even if they were disinclined to hand over property in their care, did so without a fight, they didn’t always go quietly.

The U. S. Gunboat “Mohawk” chases the Confederate Steamer “Spray” into the St Mark’s River. Note the Confederate flag above the lighthouse. Built in 1828 the Florida lighthouse survived both Confederate and Union attacks in the coming conflict and is preserved today passing from the Coast Guard to the state Fish and Wildlife Service in 2013 As for Mohawk, in April 1861 she defended the lighthouses and Forts Jefferson and Taylor at Key West, FL. from actions of “bands of lawless men”, enabling the Union to retain the forts and lights there as bases during the forthcoming Civil War

On March 31, keeper Manuel Moreno at the isolated Southwest Pass of the Mississippi River knew very well that something was going on 120 miles upriver at New Orleans. Hearing rumors from pilots on stem tugs, he complained to New Orleans collector Frank Hatch, “I am in this deserted place, ignorant of what is transpiring out of it.” The entire South was arming and he could not possibly be left out of the coming fray. “We ought to have about six muskets and a few pistols, and Powder and Balls, so as to be ready, at all times to resist any attack.”

By April 18, just 7 federal lighthouses, all in the Key West/Florida Keys area, remained in the custody of the USLHB and did so throughout the war.

The captured lightships and lighthouses remained (very) briefly in service of the CSA, who formed the Confederate Lighthouse Bureau under the command of CDR Raphael Semmes, CSN, formerly of the USN (and the USLHB). However, as Semmes left that post once the shooting started to pursue more properly piratical activities on the high seas, and keeping the lights lit were seen as helping the Union blockaders more than anyone else, the Confederate coasts went dark. Their lenses and clockwork in most cases removed and spirited away inland, their whale oil reserves either caved in or forwarded for naval use.

Many of the lighthouses, including the grand 200-foot tall brand new Sand Island house in Mobile Bay, were destroyed in the course of the conflict.

Sand Island lighthouse AL ca 1859

For more on the CSLHB, see, “The Confederate States Lighthouse Bureau” by David Cipra.

For more on the Revenue Marine in the Civil War, Truman Strobridge at the USCGHO has a great article here

The Coast Guard Cutter Eagle sails into Norfolk, Va., as part of Norfolk Harborfest 2015. The Eagle is a 295-foot barque sailing vessel and the only operational commissioned sailing vessel in the U.S. military.

She came into this world as a Gorch Fock-class barque, the Segelschulschiff (SSS) Horst Wessel commissioned 17 September 1936 at Blohm and Voss.

She has been in continuous service as Eagle under a much prettier flag since 15 May 1946.

4256 × 2832

2832 × 4256

4256 × 2832

(All are U.S. Coast Guard photos by Petty Officer 3rd Class David Weydert)

154-foot Sentinel compared to 110-foot Island class patrol boat (distance). Click to big up

The Island-class patrol boats of the U.S. Coast Guard have put in yeoman’s service since the 1980s. These hardy 110-footers, armed originally with a 20mm Mk. 16 forward and pair of 12.7mm guns port and starboard amidships, have fought the war of a thousand drug smugglers in the Caribbean, deployed constantly to the Persian Gulf, sank radioactive Japanese ghost trawlers, and saved countless lives that would have otherwise been lost to the sea.

Over time they were updated with better radars, overhauled engines and a 25mm Mk.38, but they are showing their age.

They are now being replaced by the 154-foot, $88 million Sentinel class Fast Responce Cutters after some 30 years of hard service.

And the Sea Shepherd group of maritime thugs conservationists have picked up a couple of them:

The former USCGC Block Island (WPB-1344) and the USCGC Pea Island (WPB-1347), now renamed the MY Jules Verne and the MY Farley Mowat, were purchased in Baltimore earlier this year and are now berthed in Key West, Florida.

You can see the 25mm and M2 mounts removed as well as the racing stripes painted over, but the ready boxes are still there…

…and the profile is unmistakeable

“These two ships, the Farley Mowat and the Jules Verne, give Sea Shepherd USA a combination of speed and long-range capabilities,” said Sea Shepherd Founder Captain Paul Watson. “We have already offered the Jules Verne to assist the rangers at Cocos Island National Park Marine Reserve with anti-poaching interventions, 300 miles off the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica, and the Farley Mowat has been offered to patrol the Sea of Cortez in partnership with the government of Mexico to protect the endangered vaquita.”

Its not the first time that the group, seen often on Animal Planet/Discover Network’s “Whale Wars” have bought old Coasties. They picked up a 95-foot Cape class patrol boat from the Coast Guard in the 1990s and their ship MY Steve Irwin was the 195-foot Scottish Fisheries Protection Agency conservation enforcement patrol boat, the FPV Westra, for 28 years.

The 110s will be getting a new paint job as part of “Neptune’s Navy”, which actually looks kinda cool, but you can bet there are some USCG Chiefs out there whose eyes are going to twitch when they see it…

During WWII, the Coast Guard bloomed from under 20,000 to more than a quarter million at its height in June 1944. At that time, the service contained 9,874 commissioned officers, 3,291 warrant officers and 164,560 enlisted personnel, augmented by another 125,000 Temporary Members of the Coast Guard Reserve who were conducting beach and harbor patrols back in the U.S. which in turn were augmented further by nearly 70,000 volunteers of the Coast Guard Auxiliary.

Coast Guard crew dressed to keep warm while on patrol aboard aboard a USCG schooner in 1943 while on coastal patrol in the U.S.

Dog Beach Patrol’, (possibly on Parramore Beach, Virginia, US. October 1943). (Source – United States Coast Guard – Photo No.726. Colorized by Royston Leonard from the UK)

With so many men and (over 13,000 women) under arms and in uniform, what was the service doing in 1944?

Well, a little known fact is that a tremendous number of small naval surface combatants on the Naval List were manned entirely by USCG/USCGR crews to include a number of patrol craft and submarine chasers (PC/SC) and at least 75 303-foot/1,300-ton Tacoma-class patrol frigates (PF) while a legion of the Coast Guard’s own cutters also served the same duty in ASW and amphibious warfare support.

Coast Guard cutter USS Spencer on convoy duty in the North Atlantic, March 1943

Speaking of the ‘phibs, when FDR gave away 10 250-foot Lake-class cutters to the Brits as Lend Lease in 1940, this left over 3,000 Coasties without a ship– and the Navy promptly took them to man 53 cargo ships and attack transports (APs & APAs)– armed freighters stuffed with bunks for troops.

As the war expanded, the Navy, acknowledging the Coasties’ knowledge of working in the shallows and surfline, soon tasked them with other assignments closer to enemy beaches. As such many of the landing craft taking troops ashore from Guadalcanal to Normandy and Iwo Jima, were manned by Coastguardsmen.

Marines crouched in a Coast Guard-manned LCVP on the way in on the first wave to hit the beach at Iwo Jima, 19 Feb 1945

US Coast Guard LCVP landing craft carried invasion troops toward Luzon in Lingayen Gulf, 9 Jan 1945

United States Coast Guard-manned LST beaching at Cape Gloucester, New Britain, Bismarck Islands, Dec 1943

Famous picture of an LCVP from the USCG-manned USS Samuel Chase disembarking troops of the 29th Infantry Division at Omaha Beach June 6, 1944. Clic to big up

USCG-six US Coast Guard patrol boat near the coasts of Normandy, D-day 1944. Dig the M1 steel pots…

US Coast Guardsmen assisting a wounded Marine into an LCVP after the Marine’s LVT sustained a direct hit while heading to the landing beaches on Iwo Jima, Feb 18, 1945.

LCI landing craft in the wake of a USCG-manned LST en route to Cape Sansapor, New Guinea, mid-1944

U.S. Navy/USCG invasion fleet off Iwo Jima, with LVTs and LCIs maneuvering near the battleship USS Tennessee (BB-43). 1945

By the end of the war, the service manned at least 77 LSTs (Landing Ship, Tank), 28 LCIs (Landing Craft Infantry, Large) and an amazing 288 vessels for the Army Transportation Corps that consisted of AMRS (Army Marine Repair Ship), TY (tankers), LT (large tugs), FS (freight and supply vessels), and F (Freight vessels) that shuttled around and carried the logistics of war that are so often overlooked.

83 foot patrol boat CG-624, later renamed CG-14 as part of Rescue Flotilla One, Normandy

On Normandy Beach during D-Day, a fleet of 60 USCG 83-foot patrol boats, dubbed Rescue Flotilla One, pulled over 400 soldiers from the water on June 6th alone. This “Matchbox Fleet” lost four of their own vessels that day to submerged German mines and coastal artillery. Four LCI(L)’s manned by the USCG were also lost at Normandy.

USCGC Alexander Hamilton (WPG-34) remains 28 miles off the coast of Iceland where she was sunk by German Type VIIC submarine U-132, just seven weeks into the war.

In all some 37 USCG vessels or USCG-manned Naval vessels were lost during the war including the Treasury-class cutter Alexander Hamilton who was torpedoed 29 January 1942 by a U-boat in the North Atlantic.

The highest cost in terms of lives came when the 14,000-ton USS Serpens (AK-97) a USCG-manned Crater-class cargo ship was destroyed by explosion, 29 January 1945 off Laguna Beach in the Solomons.

She was packed full of depth charges and artillery shells.

An eyewitness to the disaster stated:

As we headed our personnel boat shoreward the sound and concussion of the explosion suddenly reached us, and, as we turned, we witnessed the awe-inspiring death drams unfold before us.  As the report of screeching shells filled the air and the flash of tracers continued, the water splashed throughout the harbor as the shells hit.  We headed our boat in the direction of the smoke and as we came into closer view of what had once been a ship, the water was filled only with floating debris, dead fish, torn life jackets, lumber and other unidentifiable objects.  The smell of death, and fire, and gasoline, and oil was evident and nauseating.  This was sudden death, and horror, unwanted and unasked for, but complete.”

In all, Serpens lost 198 members of her crew and 57 members of an Army stevedore unit that were on board the ship in an explosion whose cause has never been determined but remains the largest single disaster ever suffered by the U.S. Coast Guard.

The Coast Guard lost a total of 1,917 persons during the war with 574 losing their life in action, died of wounds received in action, or perishing as a Prisoner of War. Almost 2,000 Coast Guardsmen were decorated, one receiving the Medal of Honor (the only one issued to the Coast Guard), six the Navy Cross, and one the Distinguished Service Cross.

The MOH went to SM1c Douglas A. Munro, USCG, who, appropriately enough, was killed trying to rescue men off the beach as officer-in-charge of a group of landing craft at Point Cruz on September 27, 1942, during the Matanikau action in the Guadalcanal campaign.

Douglas A. Munro Covers the Withdrawal of the 7th Marines at Guadalcanal by Bernard D’Andrea. Click to big up. Note the Lewis guns

Munro’s Citation:

“For extraordinary heroism and conspicuous gallantry in action above and beyond the call of duty as Officer-in-Charge of a group of Higgins boats, engaged in the evacuation of a Battalion of Marines trapped by enemy Japanese forces at Point Cruz, Guadalcanal, on September 27, 1942. After making preliminary plans for the evacuation of nearly 500 beleaguered Marines, Munro, under constant risk of his life, daringly led five of his small craft toward the shore. As he closed the beach, he signaled the others to land, and then in order to draw the enemy’s fire and protect the heavily loaded boats, he valiantly placed his craft with its two small guns as a shield between the beachhead and the Japanese. When the perilous task of evacuation was nearly completed, Munro was killed by enemy fire, but his crew, two of whom were wounded, carried on until the last boat had loaded and cleared the beach. By his outstanding leadership, expert planning, and dauntless devotion to duty, he and his courageous comrades undoubtedly saved the lives of many who otherwise would have perished. He gallantly gave up his life in defense of his country.”

A display containing Petty Officer First Class Douglas Munro’s Medal of Honor and accompanying citation hangs in Munro Hall at the U.S. Coast Guard Training Center in Cape May, N.J., (U.S. Coast Guard photo by Chief Warrant Officer John Edwards)

For more on the USCG in WWII, click and download here and here.

Perhaps one of the most amazing and unsung USCG heroes was Bernard C. “Bernie” Webber, coxswain of motor lifeboat CG-36500, from Station Chatham, Massachusetts. He and his crew of three rescued the crew of the stricken T-2 tanker Pendleton, which had broken in half during a horrific storm on 18 February 1952 off the coast of Massachusetts.

In 60-foot seas.

In a 36-foot boat.

It looks like there is one heck of a movie coming out detailing that event.

The USCGC Bernard C. Webber (WPC-1101), first of the United States Coast Guard’s Sentinel-class cutters is named after this hero.

MIAMI — The Coast Guard Cutter Webber, the Coast Guard’s first Sentinel Class patrol boat, arrives at Coast Guard Sector Miami Feb. 9, 2012. The 154-foot Webber is a Fast Response Cutter capable of independently deploying to conduct missions such as ports, waterways, and coastal security, fishery patrols, drug and illegal migrant law enforcement, search and rescue, and national defense along the Gulf of Mexico and throughout the Caribbean. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Sabrina Elgammal.

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday Aug 5, 5015: 225 Years of Semper Paratus

In honor of the Coast Guard’s 225th Birthday this week, this one is a no-brainer.

Here we see the oldest vessel in the U.S. Coast Guard and one of the last ships afloat and in active service that dates from World War II (although from the other side), the Gorch Fock-class segelschulschiff training barque USCGC Eagle (WIX-327), America’s only active duty square rigger.

Designed by John Stanley, the Gorch Fock-class school ships, three master barques with 269-foot long steel hulls, 18,000 sq. feet of square-rigged sails fore and main and gaff rigged mizzens, were perhaps the best training ships built in the 20th Century.

Horst Wessel at sea 1938

First ordered to replace the lost Segelschulschiff Niobe, capsized in 1932, SSS Gorch Fock was ordered the same year from Blohm and Voss in Hamburg and completed in just 100 days. Then, with a need to greatly expand the German Kriegsmarine soon followed sisters SSS Horst Wessel in 1936, SSS Albert Leo Schlageter in 1937, Mircea for the Romanian Navy in 1937, and SSS Herbert Norkus in 1939.

The subject of our story, Horst Wessel was a happy ship, commissioning 17 September 1936, and spent summer cruises in 1937-39 roaming the globe with a crew of German officer cadets and craggy old chiefs and officers that dated back to the Kaiser’s time.

An excellent 37-page translation of her 1937 Cruise Book is online and makes for interesting reading as does as a 50-page photo album.

Crewmen on Horst Wessel performing a totenwacht over a dead comrade

Horst Wessel

Her German Eagle figurehead

When war came, the training fleet was laid up with Herbert Norkus, never fully completed, sunk at the end of the conflict, Gorch Fock herself scuttled in shallow waters off Rügen in an attempt to avoid her capture by the Soviets, who raised her and used her anyway as the training ship Tovarishch for decades, Schlageter damaged by a mine then confiscated and sold in poor shape to Brazil and Horst Wessel with an interesting story of her own.

Armed with a number 20 mm flak mounts, Horst Wessel had shuttled around the relatively safe waters of the Baltic and came out of the war unscathed.

The Coast Guard Cutter EAGLE laying at a shipyard in Bremerhaven, Germany, 1946, being rigged and outfitted for her voyage to the United States. Note bombed out buildings in background

Won by the U.S. in a lottery of captured but still salvageable German ships, she was sailed to the U.S. Coast Guard Academy where she took the place of the 188-foot Danish merchant academy training ship Danmark, who, interned during the war, had trained thousands of USCG and Merchant Marine officers.

Horst Wessel arrived (under control of her volunteer German crew) and was commissioned 15 May 1946, as USCGC Eagle while Danmark was returned to her proper owner’s that September after Eagle was ready for deployment.

Since then she has been used extensively with a core USCG cadre crew of six officers and 55 enlisted personnel and as many as 150 cadets on summer and even yearlong cruises. During the past seven decades it can be said that she has sailed with over 10,000 swabs holystoning her decks and rigging her lines.

Eagle under U.S. Flag 1954. Note that she did not receive her distinctive red racing stripe until 1976– the last ship in the Coast Guard to do so

She has been inspected by just about every sitting President since Truman to include JFK, a former Navy man.

August 15, 1962–President john F. Kennedy addressing Cadets while visiting on board the U.S Coast Guard Academy training bark EAGLE,

Eagle gives future officers the opportunity to put into practice the navigation, engineering, damage control and other professional theory they have previously learned in the classroom.

ATLANTIC OCEAN – Photo of events aboard the Coast Guard Cutter Eagle July 6, 2012. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Patrick Kelley.

Upper class trainees have a chance to learn leadership and service duties normally handled by junior officers, while underclass trainees fill crew positions of a junior enlisted person, such as helm watches at the huge double wooden wheels used to steer the vessel.

The sails are set aboard the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Eagle Wednesday, July 27, 2011. The Eagle is underway on the 2011 Summer Training Cruise, which commemorates the 75th anniversary of the 295-foot barque. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 1st Class NyxoLyno Cangemi

Everyone who trains on Eagle experiences a character building experience gained from working a tall ship at sea.

U.S. Coast Guard Academy Third Class Cadet Brandon Foy climbs the rigging Tuesday, July 12, 2011, aboard the Coast Guard Cutter Eagle. Foy is one of 137 cadets sailing aboard the 295-foot barque during the 2011 Summer Training Cruise, which commemorates the 75th anniversary of the ship. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 1st Class NyxoLyno Cangemi

To maneuver Eagle under sail after her rerigging to a larger set of canvas than the Germans used, the crew must handle more than 22,000 square feet of sail and five miles of rigging.

The sails are set Saturday, June 25, 2011, aboard the Coast Guard Cutter Eagle in the Atlantic Ocean between Iceland and the United Kingdom. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 1st Class NyxoLyno Cangemi

Over 200 lines control the sails and yards, and every crewmember, cadet and officer candidate, must become intimately familiar with the name, operation, and function of each line.

The crew aboard the Coast Guard Cutter Eagle work to take in the sails as the ship heads to Corpus Christi, Texas, July 2, 2010. Crewmen work in the rigging nearly 100 feet above the water. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Patrick Kelley.

While she has the nickname of “America’s Tall Ship” and is seen round the world waving the flag, her bread and butter is training cadets from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy as well as NOAA Officer Candidates and the occasional Navy, Merchant Marine and foreign allied maritime officers as well.

The crew aboard the Coast Guard Cutter Eagle work to take in the sails as the ship heads to Corpus Christi, Texas, July 2, 2010. Crewmen work in the rigging nearly 100 feet above the water. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Patrick Kelley.

And all those sails don’t raise themselves

These ships have proven durable, with Gorch Fock returning to Germany from Russia in 2003 and resuming her old name as a museum ship, Mircea entering her 77th year of service to the Romanian Navy this year, and Albert Leo Schlageter— sailing under the name Sagres III for Portugal since 1961– all still in active service.

Truth be told, only the sad Herbert Norkus, which never sailed anyway, has been lost from the original five ship class.

Further, since the war ended, another five ships have been built to the same, although updated, design. These include yet another Gorch Fock (built for West Germany in 1958), Gloria (1967, Colombia), Guayas (1976, Ecuador), Simón Bolívar (1979, Venezuela), and Cuauhtémoc (1982, Mexico).

In short, nine tall ships are running around the earth to the same general specs.

And the best traveled of the pack is Eagle, who is all ours and hopefully will see another 75 years under sail.

CARIBBEAN OCEAN – The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Eagle transits the Caribbean Ocean under full sail Monday, June 7, 2010. Crewmembers assigned to the Eagle “America’s Tall Ship” set sail from New London, Conn., in April for the annual Summer Training Program. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Jetta H. Disco.

ATLANTIC OCEAN – The Coast Guard Cutter Eagle sails through dense fog, Tuesday, July 17, 2012. The crew of the Eagle take extra safety precautions when sailing through fog, such as sounding the foghorn and standing extra lookouts. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Erik Swanson.

(June 26, 2005) ONBOARD THE USCGC EAGLE – A view from the bowsprit onboard the Eagle during a cadet summer training patrol.The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter EAGLE, designated ‘America’s Tallship’ is a three masted, square- rigged sailing vessel. Coast Guard photo by Ensign Ryan Beck)

Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (May 20)–The Coast Guard Cutter Eagle sails into Guantanamo Bay to spend the night. The Eagle is involved in training exercises in the Carribean. USN photo by FINCH, MICHAEL L LCDR

The Coast Guard Cutter Eagle sails through the ocean as the moon’s reflection beams across the sea. (U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Walter Shinn)

Seaman Katy Turner (right) of Cincinnati, Ohio, and Petty Officer 1st Class Ted Hubbard of West Springfield, Mass., work from one of Coast Guard Cutter Eagle’s small boats to inspect and clean the hull prior to entering port Thursday, Aug. 6, 2009. Conducting small boat operations is one of the most dangerous evolutions for the crew because the small boats are lowered manually by crewmember, rather than by a mechanical hoist.

The Coast Guard Cutter Eagle is seen on a foggy Sunday morning at the Coast Guard Yard, Baltimore, Nov. 17, 2013. The Eagle, a 295-foot barque home-ported in New London, Conn., is a training ship used primarily for Coast Guard cadets and officer candidates. (U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Lisa Ferdinando)

ATLANTIC OCEAN – The Coast Guard Cutter Eagle sails through dense fog, Tuesday, July 17, 2012. The crew of the Eagle take extra safety precautions when sailing through fog, such as sounding the foghorn and standing extra lookouts. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Erik Swanson.

Although she long ago landed her German eagle for an American one, which carries the Coast Guard seal (while the old one collects dust as a war trophy at the USCGA Museum) and her original wheel carries her Horst Wessel birth name, it also carries her new monicker as well.

Her original German figurehead is on display at the USCGA Museum

The figurehead of the Coast Guard Cutter Eagle is seen on a foggy Sunday morning at the Coast Guard Yard, Baltimore, Nov. 17, 2013. The Eagle, a 295-foot barque home-ported in New London, Conn., is a training ship used primarily for Coast Guard cadets and officer candidates. (U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Lisa Ferdinando)

(June 23, 2005) – ONBOARD THE USCGC EAGLE – A U.S. Coast Guard Academy cadet takes the helm during a summer training patrol onboard the Coast Guard Cutter EAGLE. The three masted, square-rigged sailing vessel is normally homeported in New London, Connecticut, and sails each summer for months at a time, visiting ports around the U.S. and abroad.  (Coast Guard photo by Ensign Ryan Beck)

The helm of the Coast Guard Cutter Barque Eagle. Coast Guard photo by PA1 Donnie Brzuska, PADET Jacksovnille, Fla.

In celebration of the Coast Guard’s 225th, he commanding officer of the Coast Guard Cutter Eagle and the U.S. Postal Service will be unveiling a special edition stamp commemorating the Coast Guard’s birthday this week.

In an oil painting on masonite, renowned aviation artist William S. Phillips depicts two icons of the Coast Guard: the cutter Eagle, and an MH-65 Dolphin helicopter, the standard rescue aircraft of the Coast Guard.

The ceremony will take place Friday appx. 10:30 a.m. August 7 at the Oliver Hazard Perry Pier at Fort Adams State Park, Newport, R.I.

Eagle will be open to the public for tours at approximately 12 p.m. following the commemorative stamp unveiling ceremony.

In the event of inclement weather, the ceremony will take place in the visitor center across from the pier.

In Newport, Eagle will be open for free public tours:

* Friday from 12 p.m. to 7 p.m.
* Saturday from 11:00 a.m. to 7 p.m.
* Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Cutter Eagle by John Wisinski (ID# 90138)

If you cannot make Newport, the Eagle has her own social media account that is regularly updated and on a long enough timeline, she will be in a port near you.

Specs:

Length – 295 feet, 231 feet at waterline
Beam, greatest – 39.1 feet
Freeboard – 9.1 feet
Draft, fully loaded – 16 feet
Displacement – 1824 tons
Ballast (lead) – 380 tons
Fuel oil – 23,402 gallons
Anchors – 3,500 lbs. port, 4,400 lbs. starboard
Rigging – 6 miles, standing and running
Height of mainmast – 147.3 feet
Height of foremast – 147.3 feet
Height of mizzenmast – 132.0 feet
Fore and main yard – 78.8 feet
Speed under power – 10 knots
Speed under full sail – 17 knots
Sail area – 22,300 square feet
Engine – 1,000 horsepower diesel Caterpillar D399 engine replaced 700hp original diesel
Generators – two-320 kilowatt Caterpillar 3406 generators
Training complement – 6 officers, 54 crew, 20 temporary active duty crew when at sea, 140 cadets average.
Maximum capacity – 239 people

If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find http://www.warship.org/

The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

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Coast Guard Cutter James, a 418-ft National Security Cutter, entered into active service on August 8, 2015 at U.S. Coast Guard Base Boston. The cutter will be homeported in Charleston, South Carolina.

The latest addition to the Atlantic cutter fleet is named after Capt. Joshua James, USLSS, one of the most celebrated lifesaver in U.S. Coast Guard history, credited with saving hundreds of lives from the age of 15 when he first joined the Massachusetts Humane Society until his death at the age of 75 while on duty with the U.S. Life-Saving Service. He was honored with the highest medals of the Humane Society, the United States, and many other organizations.

James was the saltiest of sea dogs, with a lifeboat for a coffin, and another lifeboat made of flowers placed on his grave upon his death.  His tombstone shows the Massachusetts Humane Society seal and bears the inscription “Greater love hath no man than this — that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

Specs:
Displacement: 4,500 long tons (4,600 t)
Length: 418 feet (127 m)
Beam: 54 feet (16 m)
Draft: 22.5 feet (6.9 m)
Propulsion: Combined diesel and gas
2 × 7.400 kW MTU 20V 1163 diesels
1 × 22MW LM2500 gas turbine engine[3]
Speed: Over 28 knots (52 km/h; 32 mph)
Range: 12,000 nautical miles (22,000 km; 14,000 mi)
Complement: 113 (14 Officers + 99 Enlisted)
Sensors and
processing systems: EADS 3D TRS-16 Air Search Radar
SPQ-9B Fire Control Radar
AN/SPS-73 Surface Search Radar
AN/SLQ-32
Electronic warfare
and decoys: AN/SLQ-32 Electronic Warfare System
2 SRBOC/ 2 x NULKA countermeasures chaff/rapid decoy launcher
Armament: 1 x Bofors 57 mm gun and Gunfire Control System
1 x 20 mm Close-In Weapons System
4 x .50 Caliber Machine Guns
2 x M240B 7.62mm Medium Machine Guns
Aircraft carried: 2 x MH-65C Dolphin MCH, or 4 x VUAV or 1 x MH-65C Dolphin MCH and 2 x VUAV
Aviation facilities: 50-by-80-foot (15 m × 24 m) flight deck, hangar for all aircraft

And with that, here are some gratuitous shots of James from all angles.

The Coast Guard’s latest 418-foot National Security Cutter, James (WSML 754), is underway in the Atlantic Ocean, Thursday, July 30, 2015. The James is the fifth of eight planned National Security Cutters – the largest and most technologically advanced class of cutters in the Coast Guard’s fleet. The cutters’ design provides better sea-keeping, higher sustained transit speeds, greater endurance and range, and the ability to launch and recover small boats from astern, as well as aviation support facilities and a flight deck for helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles. (U.S. Coast Guard photo by Auxiliarist David Lau)

James and Eagle

The Coast Guard’s latest 418-foot National Security Cutter, James (WSML 754), is underway in the Atlantic Ocean, Thursday, July 30, 2015. The James is the fifth of eight planned National Security Cutters – the largest and most technologically advanced class of cutters in the Coast Guard’s fleet. The cutters’ design provides better sea-keeping, higher sustained transit speeds, greater endurance and range, and the ability to launch and recover small boats from astern, as well as aviation support facilities and a flight deck for helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles. (U.S. Coast Guard photo by Auxiliarist David Lau)

James and MH-65

The Coast Guard Cutter Stratton crew seizes cocaine bales from a self-propelled semi-submersible (SPSS, a/k/a/ sneaky dope sub, a/k/a narco nautilus) interdicted in international waters off the coast of Central America, July 19, 2015. The Coast Guard recovered more than 6 tons of cocaine from the 40-foot vessel.

Interesting footage of the Stratton‘s 35 foot LRI-II notching in the rear ramp of the big 418-foot National Security Cutter. I’ve done it on a 17 footer in the back of a WPB and it was a blast so I can only imagine the scale involved here.

More on Stratton‘s epic 8.4 ton seizure here.

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday Aug 19, 2015: The first of the bucking ‘165s

Image via ShipSpotting

Here we see a great color photo the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Tallapoosa (WPG-52) at rear just before World War II while still in her gleaming white and buff scheme. She may not look like much, but she was the forerunner of a class of ships that did much of the heavy lifting for the Coasties through Prohibition and two world wars.

In 1914 the Revenue Cutter Service was looking to replace the 25~ year old 148-foot steel-hulled cutter Winona.

The aging Winnie was the galloping ghost of the Gulf Coast and roamed from Galveston to Key West pulling duty busting smugglers, responding to hurricanes, operating with the Fleet when needed and, of course, saving lives at sea. Armed with a single 6-pounder to give warning shots across the bow, Winona patrolled the East Coast during the Spanish American War but by the opening of the Great War was a bit long in the tooth.

This led the service to design a new vessel to replace her.

In November 1914, the government ordered at a cost of $225,000 ($5.3 million in today’s figures) from Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia hull number CG27. This ship was based on lessons learned from Winona and was a bit longer at 165-feet, 10-inches and gave 912 tons displacement. A pair of oil-fired (most of the fleet was coal at the time, so this was advanced stuff here) Babcock & Wilcox boilers fed through a single center stack powered a triple-expansion steam engine that gave the little gunboat a 12 knot maximum speed. A 51,000-gallon load of fuel oil gave her a range of 6,000 miles, which is impressive for such a small vessel.

Tallapoosa, note the similarity to Winona, only longer. Also note the DF gear and crows-nest, both of which were used often. USCG photo.

She was one of the first ice-strengthened ships in any maritime force and was heavily armed for a cutter of the time, given literally four times the deck guns that Winona had before her.

One fat screw and a 1:5 length to beam ratio led these early 165s to hog in high seas

Able to float in just 11.9 feet of seawater, the new ship, named Tallapoosa, was launched on May Day 1915. She was commissioned on 12 August with Winona placed out of commission at Mobile, Alabama on 12 July and sold for $12,697 to a Mr. W. M. Evans of Mobile. Much of Winona‘s 39-man crew went to Virginia by train to operate the replacement vessel.

Sister USCGC Ossipee at launch, note the hull shape

A sistership to Tallapoosa, USCGC Ossipee, was laid down just afterward and built side by side with the new cutter and was commissioned 28 July 1915 at the Coast Guard Depot, Arundel, MD. Curiously, she was classified as a river gunboat though I can’t find where she operated on any.

As for Tallapoosa, she arrived at Mobile on 18 August, taking Winona‘s old dock at the L&N Railroad landing near Government Street and was assigned to patrol from Lake Pontchartrain, Louisiana to Tampa, Florida.

Tallapoosa soon rode out the epic July 4, 1916 Hurricane in Mobile Bay, narrowly avoiding three different collisions with ships that had broken their moorings in 104 mph winds then responded to check on Forts Morgan and Gains at the mouth of the Bay where U.S. Army Coastal Artillery units were stationed and cut off from commo.

Over the next few days, she ranged the Gulf looking for hurricane survivors and ships in need of assistance. As noted from a very interesting 17 page after action report filed at the time she assisted the schooner Henry W. Cramp, unnamed Russian and Norwegian barks, an unnamed British steamer, the three-master Laguna, the demasted schooner City of Baltimore, and the three-master Albert D. Mills, many of which were thrown high and dry on the barrier islands.

She then found the schooner Carrie Strong some 65 miles south of Mobile Bay, turned turtle but still afloat. After trying to sink the vessel with mines (!) which was unsuccessful due to the ship’s wooden construction and cargo of pine boards, Tallapoosa towed her to shore where the derelict was beached. While no survivors of Strong were found, the Tallapoosa‘s skipper did note that:

In light of recent news reports it may be of interest that when found, at least a dozen large sharks were found around this wreck and they were so bold that when the first boat was lowered they came alongside and struck the oars. A number were caught and killed while work was in progress.

When the U.S. entered WWI, Tallapoosa, now part of the Coast Guard, was assigned to the Naval Department on 6 April 1917. She landed her battery of 6-pounders, picked up a new one of a quartet of 3″/23 cal guns and for the next 28 months served as a haze gray colored gunboat for the Navy assigned to Halifax, N.S. (remember, she and her sister had their plating doubled around the bow and a steel waterline belt to enable them for light icebreaking, which surely came in handy in the Gulf of Mexico) as a coastal escort and search and rescue platform until 28 August 1919.

Tallapoosa‘s war record was quiet, as few U-boats popped up around Halifax, but sister Ossippee deployed to Gibraltar on 15 August 1917 and before the end of the war escorted 32 convoys consisting of 596 Allied vessels and made contacts with enemy submarines on at least 8 occasions, on one of these reportedly side-stepping a torpedo by about 15 feet.

While in open seas, they tended to roll and be generally uncomfortable, but nonetheless made great coastal boats and were generally used as such.

In 1919, both Tallapoosa and Ossipee traded their gray scheme and 3-inchers for more familiar white/buff and 6-pounders.

Tallapoosa 1924 via Janes via Navsource. Note the hot weather awnings for Gulf service and the lookout post has been deleted from the foremast

During Prohibition, Tallapoosa was back in the Gulf trying to stop rum-runners from Cuba while her sister was assigned to Portland, Maine and did the same for ships running good Canadian whiskey to thirsty mouths in New England and New York.

In 1930, they landed half their 6-pounders for a pair of new 3″/50s.

USCGC_Tallapoosa 1935 In Alaskan waters. USCG photo

These two ships, with the lifesaving, war, and bootlegger busting service proved so useful that a follow on class of 24 ships based on their design with some improvements were ordered in the 1930s to modernize the Coast Guard.

The follow-on 165s, note two stacks and twin screws for better seakeeping

The first of these new “165s,” USCGC Algonquin (WPG-75) was laid down 14 Oct. 1933 and the last was commissioned by the end of 1934– certainly some kind of peacetime shipbuilding record. Funded by PWA dollars, these ships carried slightly less oil but due to a better engine could make 12.5 knots instead of the slow 12 knots of their older sisters.

Note the 165 at bottom, with a slightly different layout from Tallapoosa/Osippee, showing two stacks and shorter masts

In the next world war, these 24 cutters proved their worth, splashing a number of German U-boats while escorting convoys, and performing yeoman service in polar areas. We’ve covered a couple of these later 165s before to include USCGC Mohawk and cannot talk these hardy boats up enough.

Tragically, one of these, USCGC Escanaba (WPG-77), was lost after encountering a U-boat or mine in 1943 with only two survivors.

Tallapoosa during WWII, note her extra armament and haze gray. USCG photo. Dig the early radar

Speaking of WWII, both Tallapoosa and Ossipee, along with their new kid sisters, chopped over to Navy service in November 1941– even before Pearl Harbor. Equipped with depth charges Tallapoosa was used as a convoy escort along the East Coast while Ossipee served her time on the Great Lakes as a plane guard for U.S. Navy carrier training operations while busting ice when able.

By 1943 the little Tallapoosa carried a SF-1 Radar, WEA-2A sonar, 2 Mousetrap ASW devices, 4 K-guns and 2 20mm Oerlikons besides her 3-inchers, with her crew doubling to over 100. She made at least two contacts on suspected U-boats but did not get credit for any kills despite dropping a number of depth charges that resulted in oil slicks.

However, with the war winding down, these older and smaller cutters became surplus with Tallapoosa decommissioning 8 November 1945 then was sold for her value as scrap the next July. She was bought by a banana boat company that specialized in shipping fruit from Central America to New Orleans and her ultimate fate is unknown, which means she very well maybe in some port in Honduras somewhere.

As far as Ossipee, she was scrapped in 1946 while the 23 remaining newer 165s were whittled down until the last in U.S. service, USCGC Ariadne (WPC-101), was decommissioned 23 Dec. 1968 and sold for scrap the next year.

Some went on to overseas service, including USCGC Thetis and Icarus, both of whom accounted for a German sub during the war and remained afloat into the late 1980s with the Dominican Republic’s Navy.

Two were briefly museum ships to include Comanche (WPG-76) who was at Patriot’s Point, South Carolina before being sunk as an artificial reef and Mohawk (WPG-78) in Key West, Florida before meeting her end as a reef in July 2012.

Mohawk in poor condition before being reefed. If you see a banana boat in Central America that looks like this, check to see if its the now-100 year old Tallapoosa.

Of the 26 various 165s that served in the Coast Guard and Navy from 1915-1968, a span of over a half century, just one remains in some sort of service.

Commissioned as USCGC Electra (WPC-187) in 1934, she was transferred to the US Navy prior to WWII and renamed USS Potomac (AG-25), serving as FDR’s Presidential Yacht. She was saved in 1980 and is currently open to the public in Oakland.

Ex-USS Potomac (AG-25) moored at her berth, the FDR pier, at Jack London Square, Oakland, CA. in 2008. Photos by Al Riel USS John Rogers.Via Navsource

Tallapoosa‘s bell is maintained in a place of honor in downtown Tallapoosa, Georgia while her christening board is on display at her longtime home port of Mobile at the City Museum.

Specs:

Profile of the 165 A class Cutter Escanaba, who was based on Tallapoosa and Ossipee. Image by Shipbucket

Displacement (tons): 912
Length: 165′ 10″ overall
Beam: 32′
Draft: 11′ 9″
Machinery: Triple-expansion steam, 17″, 27″, and 44″ diameter x 30″ stroke, 2 x Babcock & Wilcox boilers, 1,000 shp; 12 knots maximum degraded to 10 by WWII.
Complement 5 officers, 56 as commissioned
9 officers, 63 enlisted, 1930
100~ by 1945
Armament: 4 x 6-pounders (1915);
2 x 6-pdrs; 2 x 3″ 50-cal (single-mounts) (as of 1930);
2 x 3″/50 (single-mounts); 1 x 3″/23; 2 x depth charge tracks (as of 1941);
2 x 3″/50 (single-mounts); 2 x 20mm/80 (single-mounts); 2 x Mousetraps; 4 x K-guns; 2 x depth charge tracks (as of 1945).
If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

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(Per USCG ) U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy, homeported in Seattle, arrived at the North Pole Saturday Sept. 5, becoming the first U.S. surface ship to do so unaccompanied.

Note the Coastie with the Remington 870 on point for polar bears (U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Cory J. Mendenhall)

This is also only the fourth time a U.S. surface vessel has ever reached the North Pole and the first since 2005.

Healy’s crew and science party, totaling 145 people, departed Dutch Harbor, Alaska Aug. 9, in support of GEOTRACES, an historic, international effort to study the geochemistry of the world’s oceans. This National Science Foundation funded expedition is focused on studying the Arctic Ocean to meet a number of scientific goals, including the creation of baseline measurements of the air, ice, snow, seawater, meltwater and ocean bottom sediment for future comparisons.

-Semper Paratus

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday Sept. 16, 2015: The little tug that could (and did)

This image of the Coast Guard Cutter Tamaroa was shot one year before it would sail into the vicious Halloween storm to save lives. USCG Photo courtesy Coast Guard Historian.

Here we see the see the Navajo-class fleet tug turned medium endurance cutter USCGC Tamaroa (WMEC/WATF/WAT-166) nee USS Zuni (AT/ATF-95) at sea in 1990. At the time the picture was taken, she was 47 years young and had a hard life already– but was yet to give her finest service. Further, she was probably the last ship afloat under a U.S. flag to carry a 3”/50!

With the immense U.S. Naval build-up planned just before WWII broke out, the Navy knew they needed some legitimate ocean-going rescue tugs to be able to accompany the fleet into rough waters and overseas warzones. This led to the radically different Cherokee/Navajo-class of 205-foot diesel-electric (a first for the Navy) fleet tugs.

These hardy 1250-ton ships could pull a broken down battleship if needed and had the sea legs (10,000 miles) due to their economical engines to be able to roam the world. Armed with a 3″/50 caliber popgun as a hood ornament a matching pair of twin 40mm Bofors and some 20mm Oerlikons they could down an enemy aircraft or poke holes in a gunboat if needed. In all, the Navy commissioned 28 of these tough cookies from 1938 onward, making a splash in Popular Mechanics at the time due to their power plant.

Their war was hard and dangerous with 3 of the ships (Nauset, Navajo and Seminole) meeting their end in combat.

The hero of our story, USS Zuni (AT-85) was laid down at Commercial Iron Works, Portland, Oregon 8 March 1943 and commissioned just seven months and one day later. After a brief time in Alaskan waters, she sailed to warmer parts of the Pacific and by the fall of 1944 was in active combat during the capture and occupation of Saipan and Guam then the Peleliu invasion. There she took the crippled USS Houston (CL-81), a Cleveland-class light cruiser with two torpedoes in her, under tow to Ulithi.

Guess who is on the other side of the rope just off camera to the right? Sigh, ships like the Mighty Z are unsung.

No sooner had this been accomplished then she rushed to the aid of another cruiser.

On the night of 3 November 1944, Atlanta-class light cruiser USS Reno, a part of Admiral Sherman’s TG 38.3 (which in turn was a part of the greater TF 38, the Fast Carrier Task Force), was torpedoed by the Japanese submarine I-41 east of the San Bernardino Strait while escorting USS Lexington. She was hit by two torpedoes; one of which hit her outer hull, didn’t explode, and was later defused. The other one exploded, which led to the death of 2 of her crew. 4 other crewmen were injured.

Looking aft on the starboard side of light cruiser USS Reno, showing her main deck awash. She was torpedoed by submarine I-41

After spending a night dead in the water, the cruiser was attacked by yet another Japanese submarine. Fortunately, for Reno the three torpedoes the submarine fired all missed. USS Zuni came to the rescue and towed Reno (with 1250 tons of seawater inside her and her decks nearly awash) some 1,000 miles to the safety of Ulithi.

Torpedoed light cruiser USS Reno under salvage, fleet tugboat USS Zuni alongside, 5 November 1944

Moving along with the fleet, Zuni was there for the Luzon operations, Formosa and Iwo Jima where she accidentally beached herself 23 March 1945 while attempting to pull USS LST-944 off the sand. In all she earned four battle stars for her service during World War II while dodging kamikazes, suicide boats and Japanese subs.

However, with the inevitable postwar drawdown, the Navy didn’t need over 70 newly built oceangoing tugs on the Navy List and chopped Zuni over to the USCG in a warm transfer on 29 June 1946 in New York harbor.

12 November 1946 , now-Tamorara under refit at USCG Yard, Baltimore Maryland; U.S. Coast Guard Photo.

The Coasties uncharacteristically renamed the ship, giving her the moniker USCGC Tamaroa (WAT-166), a historic Coast Guard name carried by a steam tug in the 1920s and 30s.

Tamaroa went through a number of changes, first of all landing her 20mm and 40mm guns, then swapping out her haze gray for a black and buff, then later all white (with a buff stack) scheme.

Bow view of the USCGC TAMAROA while on her trial run. 1947

Stationed at New York, New York, she served as a rescue and salvage ship for twenty years while conducting weather and oceanography missions, notably going to the rescue of USS Searcher (YAGR-4) in 1955 after that ship suffered a fire at sea, the Andrea Doria/Stockholm collision in 1956 and the yacht Nereid in 1960.

In 1963 she was embarrassingly sunk while in dry-dock in New York harbor when a drunk and disorderly crewmember opened the port side valves of Tamaroa‘s dock. Tamaroa had every seacock cut out of her; the stern tube packing was out at the time so she sank fast.

It took nine months and $3.2 million to rebuild Tamaroa and in 1966 the ship was reclassed (after the addition of an SPN-25 radar, new small arms locker, and new away boats) as a medium endurance cutter tasked primarily with LE missions– but still ready for SAR and support duties as well.

1987. Note the extensive awning over her stern for Haitian and Cuban migrants found at sea.

Over the next 28 years, this seagoing cop made more than a dozen large drug busts with her biggest being on patrol 400 miles east of New York City, on 25 September 1980, she seized the freighter M/V Roondiep carrying 20 tons of marijuana after first firing warning shots across the Panamanian’s bow.

She rounded this off with at least as many large seizures of illegal foreign fishing vessels encroaching on U.S. EEZ waters and U.S.-flagged ships such as the F/V First Light and its cargo of 3,000 pounds of illegal swordfish, impounded for a Hague Line violation. She did all this while still performing Ice Patrols, rescuing lost souls on the sea (she picked up more than 300 Haitian migrants on one 40-day patrol in the Florida Straits alone in the 1980s) and other sundry tasks.

In short, by 1990 when the first image of this post was taken, she was tired.

Nevertheless, when the call went up during the ‘No Name Storm‘ of Halloween weekend 1991, she did as she had for Houston, Reno, Stockholm, Searcher and others.

Immortalized in the book The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger (turned into a film of the same name), Tamaroa rescued three people from the sailboat Satori 75 miles off Nantucket Island in seas that built to 40 feet under 80-knot winds.

“The Coast Guard Cutter Tamaroa’s rigid hull inflatable rescue boat is sent to help the sailing vessel Satori. Satori, with three people on board, needed help about 75 miles south of Nantucket Island after being caught in a northeaster-like storm that raked New England on Halloween week.” Date: 30 October 1991 USCG Photo #: 911030-I-0000A-002

The Coast Guard Cutter Tamaroa’s battles heavy seas during Satori rescue.

Coast Guard rescue swimmer Petty Officer David Moore prepares three Coast Guardsmen from Tamaroa to be hoisted into a helicopter following the Satori rescue. U.S. Coast Guard photo.

The Tamaroa in the Storm USCG painting by Terrence Maley

The ordeal over, taps sounded–with reveille only 10 minutes later.

The Tamaroa was again fighting heavy seas (with 52 degree rolls registered on the old tug) to rescue the crew of a downed New York Air National Guard HH-60 helicopter from the 106th Air Rescue Group that had run out of fuel on a similar rescue mission. Tamaroa rescued four of the five Air National Guard crewmen, a rescue that earned the cutter and crew the Coast Guard Unit Commendation and the prestigious Coast Guard Foundation Award.

Tamaroa rescues helicopter crew USCG painting by William Kusche

Then she went right back to work until just past her 50th birthday, she was put to pasture.

According to the history written by a former crewman, on 3 December 1993, “Coast Guard Headquarters decided that Tamaroa‘s spectacular record of rescues at sea was coming to an end. Facing a $1 million yard overhaul, the Mighty Z, The Tam, the invincible vessel, faced the end of a distinguished career. Heavy cuts in other Coast Guard mission funding forced the end.”

Via Shipspotting

The 205-foot Medium Endurance Cutter TAMAROA, stationed at Governors Island, NY, stands ready for patrol duties. USCG painting by William Sturm.

Decommissioned by Coast Guard, 1 February 1994, she was the last Iwo Jima veteran to leave active duty.

She was given to the Intrepid Air and Space Museum (after all, she had called New York her hometown for most of her career). However with limited dock space, the museum soon transferred her to the Zuni Maritime Foundation, who docked her at Portsmouth, VA for restoration to her historic WWII condition. Tragically, she suffered a catastrophic engine room leak in 2012 that ended those dreams.

The foundation donated historical items from her to a number of museums then sold the hulk to one Timothy Mullane who got in hot water with the Virginia Marine Police and City of Norfolk officials over his “floating junkyard” of ships sitting on the Elizabeth River bottom. Mullane planned in 2013 to sink the ship as a reef, but I cannot find if and when that actually occurred and she was still seen in Mullane’s collection as late as June 2015.

Regina Gomez calls all the ships floating in the Elizabeth River close to her family’s property a floating junkyard. Notice the grey hull in the background– that’s Zuni! (David B. Hollingsworth | The Virginian-Pilot)

In the end, the Zuni/Tamaroa, with a long and distinguished history, may still be among us for some time to come.

Several of Zuni/Tamaroa‘s Navy sisters joined her at one time or another in Coast Guard service including USS/USCGC Chilula (AT-153/WMEC-153), USS/USCGC Cherokee (AT-66/WMEC-66), and USS/USCGC Ute (AT-76/WMEC-76), however Tamaroa outlasted them all.

As for the rest of her sisters, many continued in U.S. Navy service until as late as the 1970s when they were either sunk as targets or scrapped.

A number went as military aid to overseas allies in Mexico, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Indonesia and elsewhere. One sister, USS Apache (ATF-67) who served as the support tender for the bathysphere Trieste, was transferred in 1974 to Taiwan and continues to serve as ROCS Ta Wan (ATF-551), as well as USS Pinto (AT-90) who has been in Peru as BAP Guardian Rios (ARB-123), and USS Sioux (AT-75) who lingers as the Turkish Navy’s Gazal (A-587).

Specs:

Photo: Shipbucket

Length: 205′ 6″
Beam: 39′ 3-1/4″
Draft: 15 as designed, 18 navigational draft 1994
Displacement: 1,641 tons (full load, 1966); 1,731 tons (full load, 1994)
Propulsion: Diesel-electric: 4 General Motors model 12-278 diesels driving 4 Allis Chalmers generators driving 4 electric motors; 3,010 SHP; single 4-bladed propeller
Performance:
Max: 16.1 knots; 4,055-mile range
Economic: 10.1 knots; 13,097-mile range (1966)
Fuel Oil: 66,363 (1994)
Complement: 5 officers/80 men (1943); 64 (1961); 84 (1994)
Armament: (1943)
1 x 3″/50 dual-purpose gun mount
2 twin 40mm AA gun mounts
2 single 20mm AA gun mounts
(1946)
1 x 3″/50, small arms
Electronics:
Radar: SPN-25 (1966)

If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find http://www.warship.org/

The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday Oct. 14, 2015: The great return of the hurricane Apache

Here we see the U.S. Revenue Marine Cutter Apache decked out with signal flags sometime after 1906 and before 1910.

In her 59 years of service to the nation she saw three wars, served in three (five if you really want to argue the point) different branches of the military and helped deliver one of the most remembered victory speeches in U.S. history.

Ordered from Reeder and Sons, Baltimore, Maryland in 1890, the new 190-foot iron-hulled revenue cutter was commissioned into the U.S. Revenue Marine on 22 August 1891. She was built for coastal operations, capable in floating in 10 feet of seawater, but with a 6:1 length to beam ratio and hardy steam plant with twin screws was able to operate in blue waters far out to sea if required.

She cost $95,650.

The new cutter had provision for an auxiliary sailing rig, although not equipped as such. Armed with a trio of small (57 mm, 6-pounder) deck guns and demolition charges, she could sink floating derelicts at sea which were a hazard to navigation, as well as hole smugglers who declined the offer to heave to and be inspected.

Named the Galveston in service, she shipped to that port for her home base in October 1891.

As Galveston, completed. Note the twin stacks and rakish bow. Click to embiggen and you will notice the wheel and compass station on her stern as well as an uncovered 57mm popgun way forward (the other two are under tarps amidships)

There, for the next 15 years she was the Revenue Marine’s (and after 1894 the renamed Revenue Cutter Service’s) presence along most of the Texas coast. She participated in Mardi Gras celebrations, transported local students “for educational purposes to study Galveston Harbor,” patrolled regattas, enforced oyster seasons and performed other USRM/USRCS functions as needed.

When the Spanish American War broke out in 1898, instead of chopping to the Navy like most of the large cutters, Galveston was ordered to New Orleans where she took on field pieces from the local militia and stood to in the Mississippi River delta to assist in repelling a potential Spanish naval thrust to the Crescent City.

After the war, she went back to Galveston where she encountered the super-hurricane of 1900 that left some 8,000 dead.

Root, USCG Photo

Aboard the USRC Galveston during the storm was assistant engineer Charles S. Root, later founder of the USCG’s Intelligence Service, who volunteered to lead a rescue party in the destroyed coastal town. A call for volunteers went out to the ship’s crew and eight enlisted men stepped forward to accompany Root, but first had to round up the swamped and damaged cutter’s whaleboat.

From the USCG:

Within half-an-hour of volunteering, Root and his men deployed, performing a mission more common to Lifesaving Service surf men than to cuttermen. The small group overhauled their whaleboat, dragged it over nearby railroad tracks and launched it into the overflowing streets. The winds blew oars into the air, so the men warped the boat through the city using a rope system. One of the rescuers would swim up the streets with a line, tie it to a fixed object and the boat crew would haul-in the line. Using this primitive process, Galveston’s boat crew rescued numerous victims out of the roiling waters of Galveston’s streets.

At around 6:15 p.m., the Galveston Weather Bureau anemometer registered over 100 mph, before a gust tore the wind gauge off the building. Later, Weather Bureau officials estimated that at around 7:00 p.m., the sustained wind speed had increased to 120 mph. By this time, assistant engineer Root and his rescue party returned to the Galveston having filled their whaleboat with over a dozen storm survivors. By this time, even the cutter’s survival seemed doubtful, with demolishing winds stripping away rigging and prying loose the ship’s launch. Meanwhile, wind-driven projectiles shattered the cutter’s windows and skylights in the pilothouse, deckhouse, and engine room covers.

Not long after Root returned to the cutter, Weather Bureau officials recorded an instantaneous flood surge of 4 feet. Experts estimate that the sustained wind speed peaked at 150 mph and gusts up to 200. The howling wind sent grown men sailing through the air and pushed horses to the ground. The barometric pressure dropped lower than 28.50 inches, a record low up to that date. By then, the storm surge topped 15 feet above sea level. The high water elevated the Galveston so high that she floated over her own dock pilings. Fortunately, the piling tops only bent the cutter’s hull plates but failed to puncture them.

Within an hour of returning to the cutter, at the height of the storm, Root chose to lead a second rescue party into the flooded streets. Darkness had engulfed the city and he called again for volunteers. The same men from the first crew volunteered the second time. The wind still made the use of oars impossible, so the crew warped the boat from pillar to post. As the men waded and swam through the city streets, buildings toppled around them and howling winds filled the air with sharp slate roof tiles. But the boat crew managed to rescue another 21 people. Root’s men housed these victims in a structurally sound two-story building and found food for them in an abandoned store. The cuttermen then moored the boat in the lee of a building and took shelter from flying debris and deadly missiles propelled by the wind.

The hurricane remains the worst weather-related disaster in U.S. history in terms of loss of life. Root and his volunteer crew were (posthumously and only in recent years) awarded Gold and Silver Lifesaving Medals respectively for their actions in September, 1900.

After the storm, Galveston was repaired and made ship-shape again before receiving a major refit in 1904, which included replacement of her entire engineering suite. Later her bowsprit was modified as after that time it was considered the 1891-designed provision for sail power was obsolete.

In 1906 she was renamed USRC Apache and reassigned to the Chesapeake region, based in Baltimore, the city of her birth.

After refit as Apache, note single stack and much-modified bowsprit and streamlined rigging.

Apache gave yeoman service enforcing customs and quarantine laws and saving lives. During the great blizzard of January 1914, she was credited with helping save 15 threatened fishing vessels trapped in ice and snow on the Chesapeake.

She participated in fleet drills with the Navy, transported D.C. politicians and dignitaries up and down the Bay, and generally made herself useful.

During World War I, she kept regular neutrality patrols with a weather eye peeled for U-boats and German surface raiders, becoming part of the new USCG in 1915.

When the U.S. entered the war in April 1917, she was transferred to the Navy along with the rest of the service. Painted haze gray, her armament and crew were greatly expanded in her service to the 5th Naval District.

In 28 months of Navy service, USS Apache continued her coastal patrol and search and rescue activities all along Hampton Roads, the approaches to the Potomac and Chesapeake Bay in general.

Returned to the USCG in August 1919, she regained her standard white and buff scheme, landed most of her armament– keeping just a sole 3″/23 caliber deck gun– and went back to working regular shifts for another two decades.

Coast Guard cutter “Apache” firing salute of the unveiling of the statue of Alexander Hamilton, May 1923. LOC Photo

Finally, at the end of 1937, with 46 years of hard service to include two wars and a superstorm under her belt, USCGC Apache was decommissioned, replaced by a much newer and better-equipped 327-foot Treasury-class cutter.

However, Uncle still owned her and, while other lumbering old retired cutters were brought back for coastal patrol duties in World War II, Apache languished unused and unwanted at her moorings.

Then in 1944, the U.S. Army took over the old ex-Apache and utilized her as a radio transmission ship.

Sailing to Australia, she was painted dark green, refitted with generators, receivers, cables, antennas, and two 10kW shortwave transmitters to serve as a MacArthur conceived press ship to follow along on the invasions to Japan. She was manned by a crew of a dozen Army mariners, staffed by some 25 Signal Corps radiomen, and carried a number of civilian war correspondents, thus keeping them away from the Navy’s flagships.

This floating Army broadcasting station sailed north from Sydney in September 1944, arriving at General Douglas MacArthur’s headquarters at Hollandia, New Guinea on October 10. Two days later, U.S. Army Vessel Apache joined a flotilla of American war vessels for the return invasion of the Philippines.

For the next 18 months little Apache relayed American Armed Forces Radio Service and the Voice of America via shortwave all over the Philippines, off the coast of Korea, and then further south off the coast of China.

She was the first to broadcast MacArthur’s “I have returned” speech in October 1944 to the island chain.

Following the fleet to Tokyo Bay, she stood near USS Missouri for the surrender and continued her radio programming operations until 20 April 1946 when she was replaced in service by the Army vessel Spindle Eye, a converted freighter with much more powerful transmitters.

Decommissioned, Apache was sold for scrap in 1950.

I cannot find any surviving artifacts from her.

Specs:

Displacement: 416 tons (700 full load, naval service)
Length: 190′
Beam: 29′
Draft: 9.3
Propulsion: Compound-expansion steam engine; twin screw with 1 propeller to each cylinder; 15.75”and 27” diam by 24” stroke, replaced with triple-expansion steam engine, 17”, 27”, 43” diam by 24” stroke with a single propeller in 1904.
Maximum speed: 12.0 knots
Complement: 32 officers and men as commissioned; 58 WWI USN service; 37 U.S. Army in WWII.
Armament: 3×6 pdrs as commissioned for derelict destruction as completed
(1918) Three 3″/23 single mounts and two Colt machine guns, one Y-gun depth charge launcher, stern-mounted depth charge racks
(1920) 3″/23
(1944) As Army vessel carried small arms which may have included light machine guns.

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The Coast Guard’s newest (and lightest) icebreaker, the 15-year old USCGC Healy (WAGB-20) is underway for Arctic West Summer (AWS) 2015 for which she got underway on Wednesday, 24 June. It may be remote duty, but it has some breathtaking views.

Aurora borealis is observed from Coast Guard Cutter Healy Oct. 4, 2015, while conducting science operations in the southern Arctic Ocean. Healy is underway in the Arctic Ocean in support of the National Science Foundation-funded Arctic GEOTRACES, part of an international effort to study the distribution of trace elements in the world’s oceans. (U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Cory J. Mendenhall)

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U.S. Army Lt. Col. Isaac Newton Lewis took a failed design and ran with it, producing one of the best light machine guns the world saw in the first half of the 20th Century.

The Buffalo Arms Company or Buffalo, New York in 1910 was high and dry. They owned a series of patents to rather forward-thinking gun designs, to include a 37mm auto cannon and a huge tripod-mounted, gas-operated, water-cooled machine gun in .30-40 Krag, both of which were produced by one Samuel MacLean. Unable to get these off the drawing board and into production, BAC approached Lewis and asked him to moonlight.

At the time Lewis was the director of the U.S. Army Coastal Artillery School at Fort Monroe and known as something of an inventor and accomplished engineer in his own right, having designed the Depression Position Finder– the Army’s fire control device to aim artillery over distance, as well as electric lighting systems, modern electric windmill generators, and chart plotting systems.

The gun he came up with, while based on MacLean’s original patents, was altogether different.

Fully Transferrable Class III BSA Lewis Mark II Medium Machine Gun, (sold at auction in 2014 for $11k)

Read the rest in my column at Firearms Talk