Holy Pith Helmets, Batman
A piece of military kit seldom seen in U.S. military service, especially while underway in dress whites:
Officers of United States Revenue Cutter Tahoma, 1909: CAPT Johnstone Quinan, Commanding (second row, seated second from left) 1st LT Charles Satterlee, Executive Officer (second row, far left) 2nd LT Edward S. Addison, 2nd LT Archibald H. Scally, 2nd LT (future WWII USCG Commandant) Russell R. Waesche (front row, center) 1st LT of Engineers Harry M. Hepburn, 3rd LT of Engineers Frank E. Bagger, Passed Assistant Surgeon J. S. Boggess, U.S. Public Health Service.
USCG Historian Office’s image. 201210-G-G0000-001
After 1908-09 construction by the New York Shipbuilding Company, Camden, New Jersey, the brand new 191-foot steel-hulled cutter with her quartet of 6-pounder rapid-fire breechloaders set out for her permanent homeport at Port Townsend, Washington– which made sense, as she was named for Mount Tahoma (Mount Rainier).
Her initial east-to-west round-the-world cruise from New York to Port Townsend saw her cross through the Suez Canal and saw her make port calls at Gibraltar, Malta, Iskenderun (where she stood by for 13 days to protect U.S. interests in Turkey), Aden, Colombo, Singapore, Manila, and Yokohama– hence her officer’s tropical use of pith helmets.
Based in the Pacific Northwest, she would winter in Washington and spend each summer, typically March through October, in Alaska waters on the annual Bering Sea Patrol.
USRC Tahoma off Alaska; scanned from original in Satterlee Collection, U.S. Coast Guard Historian’s Office Special Collections.
Sadly, the proud little cutter would be lost on an uncharted reef on the south side of the Aleutian Islands some 110 years ago this month, in September 1914-– without any injuries to her crew.
With her complement able to take to the cutter’s small boats, they were rescued by the nearby merchant steamer Cordova and the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey ship USC&GS Carlile P. Patterson.
She would be the last cutter lost by the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service– formerly the U.S. Revenue Marine going back to 1790– as the service was amalgamated with the United States Life-Saving Service to form the U.S. Coast Guard in 1916.
The USCG has gone on to recycle her name twice, once for a 165-foot A-class cutter (WPG/WAGE-80) that served on convoy duty in WWII, and the second for a Bear-class 270-foot cuter (WMEC-908) that has been in service since 1988.
Neither of those have likely used pith helmets.