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Here at LSOZI, we take a break every Wednesday to explore the old steam/diesel navies from 1833 to 1954, profiling a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger 

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Warship Wednesday 3 June 2026: The Mighty Mud Duck

Above we see the 240-foot Tampa-class cruising cutter/gunboat USCGC Modoc (WPG-46) in her circa 1922-1940 peacetime white and buff livery, likely somewhere off North Carolina, her stomping grounds when not on ice patrol.

A hard-charger in an interesting class of cutters, Modoc had several brushes with history during her career and wartime service.

The Tampas

In late 1917, with 47 USCG cutters and 272 boat stations transferred to the Navy’s control under the mobilization plan for the American entry to the Great War, six of the smaller service’s largest cruising cutters on the East Coast– the 205-foot USCGC Algonquin and Manning, Seneca (204 feet), Ossipee (165 feet), Tampa (190 feet), and Yamacraw (191 feet)– had been quickly fitted with extra guns and depth charges and sent overseas to Gibraltar.

The six-pack formed Patrol Squadron Two of the Atlantic Fleet Patrol Forces, Sixth Division, and were tasked with escort duties for convoys sailing between England and the Mediterranean. They gave yeoman service, with Tampa tragically lost during the conflict. Seneca alone escorted 30 convoys, accounting for an armada of more than 500 ships.

With that as a forward, on 12 November 1917, the Navy General Board met with USCG Constructor Frederick E. Hunnewell to discuss the smaller service’s future shipbuilding program. It had been decided that the service would begin construction on a new class of larger, more capable cutters. The guidelines favored a 240-foot vessel with decent warfighting characteristics (speed and armament) as well as endurance and seakeeping, with the Navy stressing a 16 knot speed (most of the cutters deployed to Europe pushed 12 knots, maximum) and Board member RADM Charles Badger (USNA 1873) urging “three 5-inch guns centerline, one 3-inch anti-aircraft gun, and two machine guns” as standard armament.

With magazine space for 200 rounds per 5-incher, a 6,000-gallon-per-day evaporator, a five-kilowatt radio, day and night signaling apparatus, a submarine signal receiver, two 30-inch searchlights, an ice machine, and six 30-foot small boats, the estimated cost of six desired new 240-foot cutters so armed would be $700,000 apiece, with the class pushing $4.2 million and change.

However, with the Navy prioritizing its own vessels for construction during the war, the planned half-dozen 240-footers never made it to the schedule before the Coast Guard reverted to the Treasury Department in 1919 upon the outbreak of peace.

Still a program of record, the service whittled the number of hulls down from six to four and pursued novel cost-savings measures and innovations to cover the basics of the circa 1917 mandate, but on a more shoestring T-department budget.

In 1921, Captain Quincy B. Newman, Engineer-in-Chief of the Coast Guard, introduced the first synchro-turbo electric drive on ships in any of the U.S. services on the class leader of the new 240-footers, the USCGC Tampa (WPG-48). The plant consisted of two Babcock & Wilcox, cross-drum type, 200 psi, 750° F superheated boilers transferring to a General Electric 2,040 kVa electric motor driven by a turbogenerator, pushing a single 13-foot four-bladed screw.

A more in-depth dive by Newman, from Marine Engineering and Shipping Age, January 1922:

On trials, Tampa made 16.2 knots against a planned 16. Effective range was 5,500nm at 9 knots, about what a plodding convoy was good for.

Here’s a better look at the plan of these 240s. Note the forward “officers’ country” for the eight members of her wardroom. The berthing for the 81 enlisted was over the engineering spaces.

Robert Scheina notes that:

“The 240-foot cutters followed the traditional cutter hull form, having a plumb bow and counter stern. These features proved particularly undesirable while on the International Ice Patrol. Heavy seas coming up under the counter caused severe shocks. The wardroom in this class was well forward; thus, the deck sloped upward. This feature was known as the ‘Honeywell Hill,’ in honor of the principal architect of the class.

Armament in peacetime would be two unshielded 5″/51 Mark 8 single mounts (new guns for the Coast Guard, only entering Navy service in 1911), a 3/50″ DP gun, a pair of 57mm 6-pounders (loved by the Coast Guard for “shots across the bow”), and a 1-pounder saluting gun. Weight and space were reserved on deck for multiple depth charge racks, while the 6-pounders could be swapped out with additional 3″/50s in time of war.

Note her 3″/50 was on a platform before the bridge:

When it came to peacetime, the typical magazine allowance was 100 5-inch Service rounds, 100 3-inch Service, 110 6-pounder Service, 60 1-pounder Target, and 110 6-pounder Blank charges. Also stored were 20 Torpedo “D” wrecking mines with another 20 TNT booster charges. This went out the window in wartime.

Likewise, with the Coast Guard long keeping the ability to send up to half of a cutter’s 89-man complement ashore to suppress assorted rowdies, bandits, and pirates, as needed, the class had an allowance of 53 “Landing Force Kits” each consisting of a M1903 Springfield rifle with bayonet, scabbard, and belt; a canteen with cup and cover, a haversack, and canvas leggings. For good measure, 25 M1911 pistols with belts and magazines were also included. Other goodies in the small arms locker included two Lewis guns, a single Thompson sub gun, two 22LR rifles and two .22LR pistols for marksmanship training; two .45-70 black powder line throwers, and four 1-inch Very pistols.

Landings, boardings, recoveries, and rescues were accomplished by eight boats: a 27-foot whaleboat, two 26-foot Monomoy surf boats, a 26-foot sailing launch, a 26-foot self-bailing surfboat, a 22-foot motor dinghy, and an 18-foot punt.

All four of the class (Tampa, Haida, Mojave, and Modoc, all named for Native tribes) were built by the short-lived https://navalmarinearchive.com/sbh/shipyards/emergencylarge/union.html Union Construction Company of Oakland, with Tampa laid down on 27 September 1920 and the last, Modoc, delivered 14 January 1922.

Which sets the stage for us to…

Meet Modoc

Ordered in 1920 with the rest of her four-member class, the future Modoc was Yard No. 19. Launched  1 October 1921 with a bottle of sparkling cider smashed by a Miss Jean Lemard, Modoc commissioned 14 January 1922.

After completion, she headed via the Panama Canal to join sisters Tampa and Mojave on the East Coast while Haida remained on the West. Modoc’s first homeport was Wilmington, North Carolina, where she augmented and then replaced the old (circa 1899) 188-foot USCGC Seminole, with the latter eventually shuffled off to semi-retirement in the Great Lakes.

She is well remembered in Wilmington, which she called home for much of the next 18 years. She was captured by local photographer Louis T. Moore in her typical dock in front of the Customs House.

Modoc “defended” the town from faux buccaneers during the Feast of Pirates, which was held during the summers of 1927-29.

She also had some very real LE operations against bootleggers during Prohibition. Of note, the Tar Heel State maintained its own liquor ban from 1909 to 1935.

In the Ice

During the April-to-June ice season, when bergs from Greenland calve and drift south into the North Atlantic shipping lanes, Modoc, Tampa, and Mojave alternated 15-day stints on the International Ice Patrol, a service founded just after the loss of the Titanic.

Forward based out of either Boston or Halifax (it changed throughout the decade), these cutters tracked, day by day, the icebergs and field ice, determining their set and drift, then duly reporting their presence and location to the hydrographic office of the Navy while broadcasting the data by radio for protection of shipping. Each season in the 1920s typically tracked 400 large bergs.

It was customary for the cutter on station during the anniversary of the great liner’s loss to hold a ceremony. The skipper read prayers, three volleys were fired, and taps were sounded by the ship’s bugler. One such service aboard Modoc in 1925 was filmed and remains in public archives.

April 1928 saw Modoc as one of the spotting beacon ships off the Newfoundland for the German transatlantic plane Bremen, attempting a crossing from Dublin to St. John’s.

Lifesaver

While not on Ice Patrol, Modoc performed the standard counter-smuggling, derelict destruction, law enforcement, and SAR that you would expect from a Coast Guard cutter.

She participated in several peacetime “saves.”

In February 1923, Modoc was sent from Wilmington to the lumber schooner Friendship, reported sinking in Oregon Inlet, about 90 miles south of Virginia Beach, and effected a rescue.

In January 1924, she rushed to the site of the Danish freighter Normania, reported foundered off Norfolk, but the steamer’s crew had already been rescued by the closer SS Henry R. Mallory just before their vessel plunged to Davy Jones.

In December 1926, Modoc responded to the sinking of the Coast Guard schooner Lincoln, which was destroyed by fire with a loss of six lives, several miles southwest of Cape Lookout Lightship. Lincoln, a seized rumrunner, was being used to carry oil and gasoline to lightships and stations.

In October 1926, Modoc responded to the de-masted schooner Purnell T. White, which had been caught in the northeaster off Cape Lookout and towed her to port.

January 1928 saw her tow the disabled motor yacht Cutty Sark, owned by Alexander Smith of Chicago and New York, into Charleston.

In January 1929, three barges loaded with lumber from Fernandina, Florida, to Georgetown, South Carolina, broke away from their tug in a storm, and one, the barge Belfast, foundered off Frying Pan Shoals, with Modoc saving her four-man crew.

March 1930 saw Modoc involved in the sweeping search for the missing yawl Nahma, owned by Mr. A. Felix Du Pont, with 12 souls, including his 19-year-old son Richard, aboard. They eventually turned up, but Nahma, Richard, again at the wheel, was lost off Cape Hatteras just two years later, the six aboard rescued by the Army transport Republic. Richard Chichester du Pont would meet his end in 1943, piloting an experimental glider at March Field in California, aged just 32 with a commercial carrier he founded beforehand now today’s American Airlines.

In February 1936, Modoc was sent to the aid of the 7,200-barrel Atlantic Refining Company tanker Albert Hill, bound from Philadelphia to Atreco, Texas, for a cargo, 200 miles off the coast of South Carolina. Soon after taking her under tow, the 435-foot Hill suffered an explosion, with the cutter rescuing all but four of her crew. Nonetheless, Hill was pulled into port and eventually returned to service after extensive repair at Robins Dry Dock in New York and was only scrapped in 1947.

In July 1936, Modoc was sent to search for the schooner Dewless, which started that summer’s biennial 635-mile Newport-to-Bermuda race and then promptly vanished. Dewless, owned and skippered by F. William Schnirring of New York, was located safe and sound two days later.

While on the Ice Patrol, in May 1930, the cutter documented an encounter with a white whale.

Not War, but You Can See It from Here…

When the Germans invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, Modoc was steaming off the Virginia Capes, conducting small arms gunnery drills. Ordered to put into Norfolk with leaves canceled and those detached recalled, she soon transferred 24 enlisted, nearly a third of her complement, to bring the large 327-foot USCGC Bibb up to a more warlike footing. The bigger cutter was soon bound for duty with the newly formed U.S. Neutrality Patrol in the North Atlantic.

Even with a reduced crew, Modoc soon was on patrol herself, trailing and identifying passing vessels offshore, exemplified by this entry from 15 November 1939, in the Atlantic.

This continued through 1940, with a break at the Coast Guard Yard in Curtis Bay for a quick refit, and patrols as far south as the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico.

Modoc began New Year’s 1941 on patrol in the Florida Straits and in early February, she responded to the distressed 2,512-ton Brazilian freighter SS Mahukona, which disappeared without a trace while sailing from Newport News to Rio.

By April, Modoc was in drydock at Algiers across from New Orleans, prepping for continued North Atlantic service, calling at her traditional home port of Wilmington by the end of the month. Sent from there to the Boston Navy Yard for weapon upgrades, including adding two water-cooled .50 cal machine guns, two depth charge racks and two Y-gun projectors to her stern, she steamed out of Beantown for the Gulf of Maine on 12 May 1941, beginning a North Atlantic patrol off Newfoundland two days later, in doing so relieving cutter Northland (WPG-49), whose mission was to patrol the convoy lanes and pick up survivors of merchantmen sunk by German U-boats.

On the afternoon of Saturday, 24 May 1941, the neutral USCGC Modoc was shadowing British Convoy HX-126 on the lookout for survivors of nine freighters and tankers sunk by Wolfpack West over 20-22 March. Her radiomen overheard British traffic concerning the sinking of the vaunted battlecruiser HMS Hood, sent to the bottom of the Denmark Strait with 1,400 of her crew by the battleship Bismarck that morning.

Soon enough, Modoc’s lookouts reported a mysterious man-of-war on the horizon, followed by a biplane, and three other warships in the distance. It turned out the first ship was Bismarck, the aircraft was a Swordfish torpedo plane from the carrier HMS Victorious, and the three trailing ships were the battleship HMS Prince of Wales and the cruisers Suffolk and Norfolk.

Managing to avoid fire from either side, Modoc was able to observe the Sword’s attack on the German battleship and the resulting flak, then slipped back into the mists as the faster ships sped on for their rendezvous with destiny.

Her deck log from that evening:

Still in her peacetime white and buff scheme, the British reportedly thought she was a yacht at first, then almost opened fire on her.

Following this exciting patrol, Modoc reported for duty with the Navy on 1 June 1941 and was designated flagship of the South Greenland Patrol, serving in the waters of that frozen subcontinent through the rest of the year.

As noted by DANFS:

Transferred to the Navy by Executive Order No. 8929 of 1 November 1941, Modoc joined the Greenland Patrol, whose orders were to do “a little of everything.” This duty involved keeping convoy routes open, breaking and finding leads in ice for the Greenland convoys, escorting the convoys and rescuing survivors from torpedoed ships, constructing and maintaining aids to navigation, and reporting weather conditions. Ships of the patrol were also expected to discover and destroy enemy weather and radio stations in Greenland, continue hydrographic surveys, maintain communications, deliver supplies, and conduct search and rescue operations. All these duties, the Coast Guard performed with exemplary fortitude and faithfulness throughout the war.

War!

With the U.S. officially in the war after Germany declared war on it on 11 December 1941, following Pearl Harbor, Modoc was in Greenland’s waters. Sent back to Norfolk for six weeks of repairs and alterations in early 1942, she returned to Greenland on 26 April, escorting the oiler USS Laramie (AO-16), the latter filled with a vital cargo of gasoline and oil for Army bases on the island.

In May, she escorted the empty Laramie, SS Omaha, and SS Azra back to Boston. Then came subsequent convoy runs from Newfoundland to Greenland and back for the rest of the year, often working with sisters Tampa and Mohawk.

The Ice Patrol suspended during the war; on 19 March 1943, the massive 14,795-ton whale factory ship Svend Foyn collided with an iceberg 70 miles south of Cape Farewell while sailing with Convoy HX-229A from New York to Liverpool with a cargo of fuel oil. The vessel foundered two days later with the loss of 43 out of the 195 crew and passengers aboard, with the USCGCs Aivik, Algonquin, and Frederick Lee on scene, later joined by Modoc to transfer those plucked from the sea to the latter cutter for transport to St. Johns.

It was an epic rescue.

As related by DANFS

Due to the deep roll of the Modoc, operating without lights in the middle of the night, the taking on of the half-frozen survivors was a difficult feat. Several of her crew distinguished themselves by going down the net and working waist-deep in the icy water to haul half-numb survivors aboard. One man, Leonard W. Campbell (101-707) CBM, almost lost his life in this rescue work. He and two others–John T. Hendrix (200-373) CEM, and William F. Coultas (251-300) Sea1c, were commended, and each of them later received the Navy and Marine Corps Medal. The Svend Foyne finally sank with 24 persons reported trapped aft. When the vessel sank, the Modoc and Algonquin searched the position and heard cries for help, but could not sight any survivors. Nearly four hours later, she took aboard one man who died of heart failure an hour later due to the extreme cold of the water in which he had been immersed for hours.

Modoc steamed into St. Johns with 128 living men from Svend Foyne on 28 March 1943.

Returning to convoy work for the rest of 1943, Modoc joined the CGCs Storis and Comanche in a futile search for survivors of the lost USAT Nevada, which had gone missing in a storm off Greenland on 16 December.

During a stateside refit in 1944, Modoc landed her 5-inchers, Y-gun depth charge throwers, and .50 cals, kept her 3″/50s, added four 20mm Oerlikons, as well as 4 K-gun throwers and two forward Mousetrap ASW devices. She also picked up SF-1 and SC-3 radars and a QCJ-3 sonar. Not bad, given the circumstances.

Modoc, along with the cutters Tampa and Algonquin, spent part of March and April 1945 as ASW cats in the waters off Portland, Maine, chasing the “tame mouse” Italian submarine Goffredo Mameli (T.V. Cesare Buldrini) in exercises.

Remaining a fixture on the Greenland convoy routes the rest of the war, Modoc went to the assistance of the distressed HMT Strathella in February 1944, the steamer Chippewa in November 1945, and RMS Begun in December 1945.

Modoc returned to the Treasury Department in accordance with Executive Order No. 9666 of 28 December 1945.

She earned one battle star for her WWII service.

But she still had at least one more good sub-arctic rescue in her.

Damaged by heavy seas, the EC2-S-C1 type Liberty ship SS Henry Baldwin, carrying 589 troops, radioed for help (“Developed plate crack in starboard of after-deck. Extremely heavy westerly seas”) on 16 January 1946 from a position about 300 miles southeast of Cape Race, Newfoundland. Modoc, sailing back to the U.S., was ordered at once to her aid, and Baldwin limped into Argentia. After repairs, the freighter continued service for another 24 years.

Afterward, Modoc reported to Boston Navy Yard on 26 January for installation of weather equipment and repairs.

On 26 March 1946, Modoc inaugurated the first post-war International Ice Patrol, using radar and LORAN for the first time in the IIP’s history. Also, for the first time, patrol aircraft were used to assist the cutter– USCG PBY-5As and PB4Y-1s of VP-6CG out of Argentia.

Decommissioned 1 February 1947, just shy of 25 years of service, ex-Modoc was sold to Manuel Velliantis in Honduras.

She was converted for merchant use as a barco bananero (banana boat) and renamed Amalia V. Later registered in Ecuador in 1950 by Tropical Navigation Co., she was renamed Machala, and served as a merchantman until scrapped in 1964

Epilogue

Little exists of the Modoc outside of her logbooks and plans in the National Archives and the occasional relic on the collector market.

The Coast Guard recycled the name Modoc for use on the transferred WWII-era USS Bagaduce (ATA-194), which served as USCGC Modoc (WATA-194/WMEC-194) from 1959 to 1979. That 143-foot vessel saw an active post-military career, serving as a bed and breakfast and as a sea base with the Earthrace Conservation group.

Since the International Ice Patrol has been maintained by the Coast Guard, there has been no berg-related loss of life in the area during the annual season, which now typically counts. The last cutter patrol was by USCGC Spar in 1990, the mission transitioning to aircraft and, by 2016, a combination of aerial and satellite surveillance.

Thanks for reading!

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

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