Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period and will profile 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, April 9, 2025: First of a Long Line
Naval History and Heritage Command photo NH 310
Above, we see the unique U.S. Revenue Cutter Windom circa 1900. She had already fought in one war under Navy orders, would go on to carry a “USS” during WWI, bust rum-runners, and chart a course for the modern Coast Guard.
Not bad for a 170-foot ship.
A New Era
In 1890, the Revenue Cutter Service– the forerunner of the USCG– was celebrating its centennial, having been authorized as part of the Treasury Department in 1790. Having fought during the Quasi War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and the Civil War, the USRCS had a long history of suiting up for combat when needed.
It was a busy force.
In 1890, the 36 assorted cutters of the service had cruised a total of 301,416 nautical miles, boarded and examined 26,962 vessels for revenue purposes, and assisted 123 distressed vessels, saving a value of $2,806,056 in ships and cargoes on the sea. They did everything that year from chasing down seal poachers in the Bering Sea to breaking up smuggling rings along the Florida Keys and arresting murderers on the high seas.
However, it was stuck in the 19th century while pointing towards the 20th and was obsolete. Most of the 36 cutters were small (under 100 foot) sloops, luggers, and tugs, capable of harbor and coastal patrols at best. The more blue water of the fleet were typically iron-hulled topsail steam schooners (USRC Gallatin, Hamilton, Boutwell, Dallas, Dexter, Rush, Corwin, and Forward) of about 140 feet in length. Two big steamers with auxiliary rigs, the 165-foot USRC Perry and the 198-foot USRC Bear, were dedicated to the far-off Alaska patrol. A couple of more modern twin-screwed steam cutters, the 145-foot USRC Morrill and the 190-foot USRC Galveston, were just coming online.
Armament in many cases was simply whatever could be scrounged from the Navy’ that was small enough to carry and service without lifts, typically 3-pounder 47mm or 6-pounder 57mm breechloading mounts, while smaller cutters usually just carried small arms. Speaking of which, trapdoor Springfield conversions and S&W cartridge revolvers were the norm. Some older cutters carried breechloading 3-inch Ordnance conversions of Civil War-era cannon.
USRC Corwin departing for Alaska in 1887. She was a 140-foot topsail schooner-rigged iron-hulled steamer that exemplified the cutter service in 1890. She carried a single 6-pounder.
As noted by the SECNAV at the time, Benjamin Franklin Tracy, “At present this large fleet of small vessels is constructed without any reference to the necessities of modern warfare.”
Pioneering a new age of steel cruising cutters for the service, capable of serving as a gunboat for the Navy in times of war, would be our USRC Windom.
Modern for her era, she was the first cutter constructed with a fully watertight hull, longitudinal and transverse bulkheads, and a triple expansion steam plant capable of 15 knots sustained speed.
She would carry a twin schooner auxiliary rig, at least at first
Designed to service Chesapeake Bay, Windom would displace 412 tons, have a length of 170 feet, eight inches overall, and an extreme beam of 27 feet. Her normal draught, carrying 50 tons of coal aboard, would be 6.5 fee,t while her hold was 13.5 deep.
Her twin inverted cylinder, direct-acting, triple-expansion steam engines (11 3-4, 16 1-2, and 26 1-2 cylinders with a 24-inch stroke) were designed by the Navy’s Bureau of Steam Engineering under orders of Commodore George Melville and were “regarded in engineering circles as more advanced in type than any in the Revenue Cutter Service. They drove twin cast-iron propellers and could generate 800 hp at 175 rpm. They drew steam via a single tubular double-ended horizontal 16×12 foot boiler.
Her battery was one installed 6-pounder RF Hotchkiss with weight and space for a 3-inch or 4-inch BL and a second 6-pounder as well. Small arms of a “modern type” would be provided for the 45-member crew.
Revenue Cutter Windom, Port Arthur, Texas
The design of Windom would lead the service to order five so-called Propeller class cutters, which were larger and faster (as well as costing about twice as much per hull) at 18 knots. These vessels, to the same overall concept but each slightly different in design, were built to carry a bow-mounted torpedo tube for 15-inch Bliss-Whitehead type torpedoes (although they appeared to have not been fitted with the weapons) and as many as four modern quick-firing 3-inch guns (though they typically used just two 6-pounder, 57mm popguns in peacetime).
These ships included:
–McCulloch, a barquentine-rigged, composite-hulled, 219-foot, 1,280-ton steamer ordered from William Cramp and Sons of Philadelphia for $196,000. She was the longest of the type as she was intended for Pacific service and so was designed with larger coal bunkers.
–Gresham, a brigantine-rigged 206-foot, 1,090-ton steel-hulled steamer built by the Globe Iron Works Company of Cleveland, OH for $147,800.
–Manning, a brigantine-rigged 205-foot, 1,150-ton steamer ordered from the Atlantic Works Company of East Boston, MA, for a cost of $159,951.
–Algonquin, brigantine-rigged 205.5-foot, 1,180-ton steel-hulled steamer ordered from the Globe Iron Works Company of Cleveland, OH for $193,000.
–Onondaga, brigantine-rigged 206-foot, 1,190-ton steel-hulled steamer ordered from the Globe Iron Works Company of Cleveland, OH for $193,800.
But we are getting ahead of ourselves.
Meet Windom
Our subject, in frequent USRC/USCG practice, was named for a past secretary of the U.S. Treasury, in this case, William Windom. A long-term U.S. Congressman (1859-1869) and Senator (1870-1881, 81-83) from Minnesota, he served as the Treasury boss under James A. Garfield for nine months in 1881 and then again under Benjamin Harrison from 1889 through 1891, passing in office at age 63. He successfully helped defeat a push to transfer the Cutter Service to the Navy
The Honorable William Windom, of Minnesota, left, while in Congress compared to his official portrait as Secretary of the Treasury in the Garfield administration. NARA 165-A-3716 & LOC LC-DIG-cwpbh-03920
Honoring the late Mr. Windom, the Treasury Department carried his engraved portrait on the $2 U.S. Silver Certificate from 1891 to 1896, while the USRCS named its groundbreaking new cutter after him.
Ordered from the Iowa Iron Works, Dubuque, for $98,500, with delivery to be made down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico and then to Key West. The plates, frames, angle irons, and castings employed in the hull were furnished by the West Superior Steel Works of Wisconsin, while William Cramp built her engines.
Accepted by the Treasury Department on 11 May 1896, she was moved to Baltimore, Maryland, where she completed fitting out and was placed in commission on 30 June 1896.
Her initial skipper was Capt. Samuel Edmondson Maguire, a 54-year-old Marylander who had joined the Revenue Cutter Service in 1871 as a third lieutenant after carpetbagging in Louisiana during Reconstruction. Maguire had volunteered during the Civil War as a private in Company C of the 114th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment, the famed Zouaves d ‘Afrique, and was wounded at Fredericksburg.
In October 1896, Windom was tasked with keeping guard over the notorious gun-running steamer Dauntless.
Impounded at sea by the cruiser USS Raleigh off Florida after a run to arm rebels fighting against the Spanish in Cuba, Windom guarded the filibuster mothership until the Collector of Customs released the libeled Dauntless, after paying a $200 fine for lying to off the coast with no lights, to resume her illicit activities. Windom joined the cutters, Boutwell and Colfax, through the end of the year in Florida waters, based on the St. John River, to run interference against other filibuster boats headed for Cuba, impounding the steamers Kate Spencer and Three Friends in November.
Besides filibuster-busting, Windom spent the first 17 months of her career in quiet operations on the Chesapeake and patrolling the fishing grounds between the Virginia capes and Cape Hatteras.
Then came…
War with Spain!
On 24 March 1898, with the drums of war beating with Spain, President McKinley ordered the cutters Gresham, Manning, Windom, Woodbury, Hamilton, Morrill, Hudson, Guthrie, and Calumet, “with their officers and crews, be placed under the direction of the Secretary of the Navy.” This was later augmented by the Corwin, Grant, Perry, McCulloch, and Rush in the Pacific, as well as the McLane, Onondaga, and Winona, with at least 20 cutters on Navy and Army (Coastal Artillery) orders during the short conflict.
As noted by the Secretary of the Treasury after the conflict from the USRCS’s thin volume on the war:
There were in cooperation with the Navy 13 revenue cutters, carrying 61 guns, 98 officers, and 562 enlisted men. Of these, 8 cutters (43 guns), 58 officers, and 339 men were in Admiral Sampson’s fleet and on the Havana blockade; 1 cutter (6 guns), 10 officers, and 95 men were in Admiral Dewey’s fleet at Manila, and 4 cutters (12 guns), 30 officers, and 128 men cooperated with the Navy on the Pacific coast.
In addition to services rendered by vessels with the naval forces, there were 7 others, carrying 10 guns, 33 officers, and 163 men, with the Army, engaged in patrolling and guarding mine fields in various harbors, from Boston to Mobile and New Orleans.
Two days after the transfer order from McKinley, Windom, at Hampton Roads at the time, received orders to report at Norfolk and was there on 25 April when Congress passed the resolution recognizing that a state of war existed between the United States and Spain. She was painted gray and fitted with a four-inch main gun and a second 6-pounder.
USRC Windom in drydock at the Norfolk Navy Yard, Portsmouth, Virginia, 9 April 1898. Photograph from the Bureau of Ships Collection in the U.S. National Archives. 19-N-19-21-12
Windom’s wardroom during the war, in addition to Maguire, included:
- First Lieutenant F. G. F. Wadsworth, executive officer
- Second Lieutenant Richard Owens Crisp, navigator
- Second Lieutenant S. P. Edmunds
- Third Lieutenant J. V. Wild
- Chief Engineer C. F. Coffin
- First Assistant Engineer C. W. Zastrow
- Second Assistant Engineer Edwin W. Davis
- Surgeon John C. Travis (March 29 to August 1, 1898)
- Surgeon W. E. Handy (August 2 to August 29, 1898)
On 30 April, Windom departed Hampton Roads on her way to the blockade off Cuba, stopping at Key West briefly before arriving off Cuba on 8 May.
Assigned to Commodore Howell’s 1st Squadron, she patrolled the southern coast of Cuba near Cienfuegos until the 13 May, cutting the two Cienfuegos cables. She also helped cover the withdrawal of the Navy small boat raid to the cable house ashore (the Battle at Punta de la Colorados), closing with a Spanish battery and plastering it with 4-inch fire, scattering assembled local infantry. She also reportedly destroyed the lighthouse there, which was being used as an observation post by the Spanish, with her 6-pounders.
In all, Windom’s battery fired 85 rounds that day.
Her efforts helped allow 51 of the 53 Sailors and Marines dispatched from the cruiser USS Marblehead and gunboat USS Nashville to return to their vessels alive, and the cutter afterward evacuated several of the more seriously wounded bluejackets to Key West.
From her official report of the incident:
Windom then, after a respite at Key West, assumed station off Havana on 28 May, holding the line through August, chasing four Spanish blockade runners in June.
Hostilities ended on 13 August, and Windom reverted to Treasury Department control four days later. Arriving at Norfolk, she soon transferred newly installed guns to the USRC Gresham, returning to her pre-war appearance by October.
Maguire, the former Pennsylvania Zouave, remained in the service until 1906, when he retired as a senior captain, closing out 35 years of service to the Treasury Department. He passed in Patchogue, New York, in 1916, aged 73.
Return to Peace
Following the end of the Spanish-American War, Windom was soon back on her normal beat along the Chesapeake, including patrolling the America’s Cup Races in 1903.
In 1906, she transferred to Galveston to replace the cutter of the same name.
January 27, 1908. Photograph of the canal in Port Arthur, Texas. People stand along the shore. Boats are pulled over to the shore. The Revenue Cutter Windom is in the background. Heritage House Museum Local Control No: hhm_01293.
Working the length of the Gulf of Mexico from Key West to Brownsville, she returned to Maryland in September 1911 for a refit that saw her placed in ordinary for six weeks.
Back in Galveston, she was the first vessel to transit the newly opened Houston Ship Channel on 10 November 1914. President Wilson fired a cannon via remote control to officially mark the channel as open for operations. A band played the National Anthem from a barge in the center of the Turning Basin while Sue Campbell, daughter of Houston Mayor Ben Campbell, sprinkled white roses into the water from Windom’s top deck and decreed, “I christen thee Port of Houston; hither the boats of all nations may come and receive hearty welcome.”
USRC Windom in the Houston Ship Channel
In January 1915, Windom again entered ordinary in Maryland for an extensive one-year rebuild that saw her coal-fired boilers replaced by more efficient Babcock & Wilcox oil-fired models and her bunkers converted. This mid-life service extension saw her emerge with a new name: the USRC Comanche, soon to be the USCGC Comanche.
Recommissioned on 8 January 1916, Windom/Comanche returned to the Gulf and was deemed the Krewe of Rex’s royal yacht for Mardi Gras in New Orleans.
Windom as USCGC Comanche
View of the royal yacht “Comanche” as it prepares to dock at the foot of Canal Street on the Monday before Mardi Gras 1916
War with Germany!
With the U.S. entry into the Great War, Comanche was transferred from the Coast Guard to the Navy on 6 April 1917. She soon picked up another large deck gun, this time a 3″/50 Mk II. Her crew was bumped from 49 to 76 to allow for more watch standers and gun crew.
Commissioned as USS Comanche on 11 April 1917, she performed patrol duties in the New Orleans area under the command of LT Robert Ferriday Spangenberg, USNRF, until the summer of 1919.
Comanche was stricken from the Navy List on 1 August 1919 and returned to the Treasury Department on 28 August 1919.
Twilight
Wearing her white scheme once again, Comanche continued her patrols of the Gulf for another seven months and then headed for Key West where she was decommissioned on 17 April 1920 for repairs.
USRC Windom Gulf of Mexico NARA 56-AR-049
Recommissioned in July 1920, the ship relieved the USCGC Tallapoosa at Mobile and rejoined the Gulf Division. There, she was active in the campaign against bootleggers bringing contraband liquor up from the Caribbean during Prohibition.
Comanche Commonwealth Lib 2002-013-002-029
Comanche Commonwealth Lib 2002-013-002-048
Arthur S. Graham – Ralph A. Dett – Albert T. Chase – Brady S. Lindsay with barrels of confiscated 195% liquor while serving on the U.S. Revenue Cutter Comanche off Texas, circa 1920. Digital Commonwealth 2002.013.002.039.
Serving successively at Mobile, Key West, and Galveston, she patrolled coastal waters constantly until June of 1930. During that period, she left the Gulf of Mexico only once, in 1923, for repairs at Baltimore and Norfolk.
In July 1927, while at sea 170 miles southeast of Galveston, she suffered a blaze in her fireroom that left her adrift and her radio room silent, the ship’s generators offline. Towed into port by a tug a week later, she was apparently never restored to her pre-blaze condition.
On 2 June 1930, she was detached from the Gulf Division and was ordered back to Arundel Cove for the final time.
She arrived at her destination on 1 July and was placed out of commission on the 31st. She was sold to Weiss Motor Lines of Baltimore on 13 November 1930 for a paltry $4,501.
While Weiss possibly kept her in service for a time longer, I cannot find her mentioned in Lloyds from the era. Odds are, with the downturn in the economy in the early 1930s leading to the Depression, and the aftermath of the 1927 fire never addressed, she was probably just scrapped.
Epilogue
Little remains of Winston/Comanche that I can find.
Some of her plans and papers are digitized in the National Archives.
The Coast Guard recycled the name “Comanche” for two subsequent cutters (served 1934-48 and 1959-1980) that we have profiled in the past.
Comanche seen on 26 November 1934, post-delivery but before commissioning in a rare period color photo. Note she does not have her Navy-owned main and secondary batteries fitted yet but does have her gleaming white hull, buff stack and masts, and black cap.
During WWII, a Maritime Commission Liberty ship (MC hull no. 516, 7194 GRT) was named SS William Windom. Entering service in early 1943, she dodged Scharnhorst on Arctic convoys, landed cargo at Normandy, and survived the war to be scrapped in 1964.
Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive
***
Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.
***
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