Check out this great view of Coast Guard Island in Alameda, taken 30 years ago this month, showing five immaculate USCG high endurance cutters:
USCGC Boutwell (WPG-719; WHEC-719) in the foreground; then directly starboard of Boutwell is the USCGC Jarvis (WHEC-725) which is moored ahead of the USCGC Munro (WHEC-724). Munro is astern of Jarvis and inboard of the Morgenthau (WHEC-722)–note the Harpoon launchers on Morgenthau directly behind her main battery; and finally, the USCGC Sherman (WPG-720; WHEC-720) is directly astern of the Munro; USCG PACAREA photo; photo no. #PA 051892(01)-34A; May, 1992; photo by PAC R. L. Woods.
The top of the line in 1960s warship technology, the dozen New Orleans-built Hamilton-class of High Endurance Coast Guard Cutters or “378s” as they are referred to by the branch, were the go-to workhorses of USCG for five decades. They replaced a host of WWII (and earlier) cutters and stood on the line against the Soviets, ready to escort convoys to Europe if the balloon ever went up. They saw a real-live shooting war in Vietnam, providing naval gunfire support to the troops ashore. Mostly based on the west coast, today the class spends most of its time in Alaskan and Hawaiian waters.
Above you see five in 1992 in San Diego (Alameda). This is just after they were FRAM’d with Harpoon missiles (only Morgenthau so equipped) 76mm guns, CIWS, and modern torpedo tubes using Mk50s.
Of these five today, all are still in hard use around the Pacific rim and the Indian Ocean. Sherman transferred to the Sri Lanka Navy in 2018 as SLNS Gajabahu (P626). Munro decommissioned last April and is slated to transfer to the Vietnam Coast Guard where Morgenthau has been serving as CSB 8020 since 2017. Boutwell transferred to the Philippine Navy in 2016 as BRP Andres Bonifacio. Meanwhile, Jarvis has served the Bangladesh Navy since 2012 as BNS Somudro Joy (F-28).
The Hamiltons have all since been replaced by the new Bertholf-class National Security Cutters and four– USCGC Bertholf (WMSL-750), Waesche (WMSL-751), Stratton (WMSL-752), and Munro (WMSL-755)– are all stationed there.
From the DHS/USCGC FY2023 Budget book are a few gems including the drawdown of the once-mighty 49-ship strong Island-class 110-foot patrol boats— built between 1985-1992– the fact that at least one of the circa 1960s 210-foot Reliance-class cutters will decommission soon, and one of the 13 crews of the circa 1980s 270-foot Bear-class cutters will be disbanded as the class undergoes a Service Life Extension Program (SLEP) process to continue service for another decade (or two) as the Offshore Patrol Cutter comes onboard.
Islands
We’ve talked a bunch about the Islands in past years, and they deserve it, as they are great boats. The planned drawdown leaves just five Island-class cutters in domestic waters, three in New England and two in the Pacific Northwest, areas where smaller 87-foot boats have a tougher go of it:
Cuttyhunk is set to decommission this week– on Thursday 5 May– after 33 years of service and will be replaced at Port Angeles by Anacapa who just shipped down there from Alaska, where she has, in turn, been based for the past 32 years.
A snippet of Cuttyhunk’s long and distinguished career:
Over the past 34 years of service, Cuttyhunk’s crew conducted a wide range of operations. The cutter’s crews completed over 1,000 operations ranging from law enforcement boardings to search and rescue responses throughout the Pacific Northwest. Cuttyhunk assisted U.S. Naval Base Kitsap Bangor in several submarine escorts before Coast Guard Maritime Force Protection Unit Bangor was established to ensure the safe transport of Ship Submersible Ballistic Submarines.
Nicknamed “The Pest of the West”, Cuttyhunk assisted in one of the largest maritime drug seizures in the Pacific Northwest, near Cape Flattery, Washington, in December of 1997. More than 3,500 pounds of marijuana, estimated at a street value of $15 million, was recovered from the OK Jedi, a 60-foot sailboat with three people onboard.
And then there were four.
Bears in hibernation
The Coast Guard has a habit of doing most of their repair, modernization, and SLEP work in-house, at the Government-owned CGY in Maryland. If only the Navy had such a program, right?
Anyway, USCGC Seneca (WMEC-906), commissioned in 1987, is the sixth of the 270-foot Bear-class cutters completed but is the first to complete its nine-month SLEP. Besides hull work in drydock, this included replacing generators and updating systems throughout the ship.
Incidentally, the Coast Guard Yard has been the DOD’s primary supporter of the MK 75 76mm gun, as everything that carried the old OTO Melera Super Rapid in the U.S. Navy (FFG-7, PHM, etc) has been decommissioned.
Bear-class cutter USCGC Thetis with her new (to her) MK 75
Changeout of CGC THETIS’ MK75 using a previously-overhauled MK75 this month at the CG Yard
Offshore Patrol Cutter
Fast facts: • Class: Offshore Patrol Cutter (OPC) Heritage-class (WMSM) • Weight: 4,320 tons • Length: 360 feet • Beam: 54 feet • Speed: 22.5 knots • Armory: Mark 110 57mm Bofors rapid-fire gun, Mark 38 MOD 3 25mm autocannon with 7.62mm chaingun over the helicopter hangar, remote and crew-served .50 caliber M2HB heavy machine gun mounts • Crew: up to 126
Panama City’s Eastern Shipbuilding Group is celebrating the award of the fourth Heritage Class offshore patrol cutter (OPC), the future USCGC Rush (WMSM 918), as Hull# 309A last week. The Coast Guard plans to field as many as 25 of the new 360-footers to replace both the 210-foot Reliance and 270-foot Bear-class cutters.
The three other OPCs under contract to ESG, all in various states of construction:
U.S. National Archives Local Identifier 26-G-01-19-50
Here we see the U.S. Revenue Cutter U.S. Grant, in her original scheme, seen sometime late in the 1890s, likely off the coast of New York. With the Union general and 18th President’s birthday today– coincidentally falling on National Morse Code Day– you knew this was coming, and interestingly, the above cutter, which had served during the SpanAm War, was the first post-Civil War U.S. vessel named in honor of Ulysses S. Grant.
Built at Wilmington, Delaware at the yards of Pusey & Jones Corp in 1871, Grant was a one-off Barque-rigged iron-hulled steam cutter ordered for the Revenue Cutter Service at a cost of $92,500. With the Revenue Marine/Cutter Service one that typically ran quick little sloops and schooner-rigged vessels between 1790 and 1916 when it became part of the newly-formed U.S. Coast Guard, Grant was one of the few built for the seagoing service with three masts.
Some 163-feet in length (overall) the 350-ton ship was the largest of four new steam cutters– the other three were paddle-wheelers– authorized by Congress in 1870 as part of a plan by N. Broughton Devereux, head of the Revenue Marine Bureau, in an effort to revitalize the force that had languished in the days immediately after the Civil War despite having been the sole federal agency tasked with patrolling the broad and wild seas off Alaska.
Cutter Grant via the New York Historical Society
Despite the massive amounts of left-over Civil War ordnance being sold as surplus, Grant was given a battery of four bronze M1841 24-pounder muzzleloading howitzers– field guns that had been considered obsolete at Gettysburg– and a small arms locker made up of rare .46 caliber (rimfire) single-shot Ballard carbines. She was known to still have this armament into the early 1890s. Her crew consisted of about 35 officers, engineers, and men.
Her shakedown complete just after Christmas 1871, Grant was assigned to the New York station on 19 January 1872 a cruising ground that covered from Montauk Point to the Delaware.
For the next 20 years, she maintained a very workaday existence in the peacetime Revenue Service. This included going out on short patrols of coastal waters, assisting with the collection of the tariff, catching the occasional smuggler, responding to distress calls (helping to save the crew of the reefed Revenue Cutter Bronx in 1873, saving the schooner Ida L. Howard in 1882, the British steam-ship Pomona bound from this port for Jamaica in 1884, and the demasted three-masted schooner William H. Keeney in 1887), policing posh ocean yacht races (even hosting her namesake President aboard in July 1875 for the Cape May Regatta), taking President Rutherford B. Hayes’ Treasury Secretary John Sherman (Gen. William T. Sherman’s brother) for a tour of all Revenue Cutter stations along the east coast in 1877, searching for lost cargo (notably spending a week in December 1887 along with the sloop-of-war USS Enterprise on the hunt for a raft of logs towed from Nova Scotia hat had departed its line off New England), suppressing mutinies (the steamer Northern Light in November 1883), and getting in the occasional gunnery practice.
In 1877, Grant had the bad fortune of colliding with the schooner Dom Pedro off Boon Island on a hot July night. Standing by, the cutter rescued all nine souls aboard the sinking vessel and brought them safely into Boston. An inquiry board found the Dom Pedro, who had no lights set while in shipping lanes at night, at fault.
In July 1883, Grant inspected– and later seized under orders of the U.S. Attorney’s office and at the insistence of the Haitian government– the tugboat Mary N. Hogan, which had reportedly been fitting out in the East River as a privateer under finance from certain British subjects to carry arms to rebels in Haiti.
Grant would serve as a quarantine vessel hosting Siamese royalty, as well as Hawaiian Queen Kapiʻolani and Princess Liliʻuokalani, the latter royals stopping in New York on their way to attend the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria in London.
From November 1888 through April 1889, Grant had her steam plant replaced at the DeLamater Iron Works docks– the same plant that had constructed the steam boilers and machinery for the ironclad USS Monitor.
Shortly afterward, Grant landed her ancient Army surplus howitzers for a pair of brand-new rapid-fire Mark 1 Hotchkiss Light 1-pounders, from a lot of 25 ordered by the Revenue Cutter Service from a Navy contract issued to Pratt & Whitney of Hartford.
Unidentified officers around an early 1-pdr on the gunboat USS Nahant. Detroit Publishing Company Collection Photograph. Library of Congress Photograph ID LC-D4-20046.
Her skipper at the time, a man who would remain with Grant for the rest of her career, was Captain Dorr Francis Tozier. Something of a legend in the service already, the Georgia-born Tozier received his commission from Abraham Lincoln one month before the president’s assassination and was awarded a Gold Medal by the President of the French Republic “for gallant, courageous, and efficient services” in saving the French bark Peabody in 1877, while the latter was grounded on Horn Island in the Mississippi Sound.
Tozier, 1895
In July 1891, it was announced that the 11 large sea-going cutters of the RCS would switch to a white paint scheme– something that the modern Coast Guard has maintained ever since.
In October 1893, as part of beefing up the Bearing Sea Patrol which enforced a prohibitory season on pelagic sealing as well as protecting the Pac Northwest salmon fisheries, the East Coast-based cutters Perry (165 ft, 282 tons, four guns)– which had been based at Erie Pennsylvania to police the waters of Lake Ontario– along with our very own Grant, were ordered to make the 16,000-mile pre-Panama Canal cruise from New York to Puget Sound, where they would be based. The two vessels would join the cutters Rush, Corwin, Bear, and Wolcott, giving the RSC six vessels to cover Alaskan waters, even if they did so on deployments from Seattle.
The re-deployment from Atlantic to Pacific was rare at the time for the RSC, as vessels typically were built and served their entire careers in the same region. Sailing separately, the two cutters would call in St. Thomas, Pernambuco, Rio, Montevideo, Stanley, Valparaiso (which was under a revolutionary atmosphere), Callao, and San Diego along the way.
Leaving New York on 6 December, Grant arrived at Port Townsend on 23 April 1894, ending a voyage of 73 days and 20 hours, logging an average of 8.45 knots while underway, burning 358 pounds of coal per hour.
Late in her career, with an all-white scheme. University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections. Oliver S. Van Olinda Photographs and Ephemera Collection. PH Coll 376, no UW22223
1898!
Rather than chopping as a whole to the Navy as the Coast Guard would do in WWI and WWII, President McKinley’s Secretary of the Treasury, John D. Long, implemented a plan to transfer control of 20 cutters “ready for war” to the Army and Navy’s control during the conflict with Spain.
Supporting the Army, from Boston to New Orleans, were seven small cutters with a total of 10 guns, crewed by 33 officers and 163 men, engaged in patrolling, and guarding assorted Army-manned coastal forts and mine fields.
A force of 13 larger revenue cutters, carrying 61 guns, staffed by 98 officers and 562 enlisted, served with the Navy. Eight of these cutters, including the famed little Hudson, served under the command of ADM Simpson off Havanna while the cutter McCulloch served with Dewey’s Asiatic Squadron for the conquest of the Philippines. Meanwhile, four other cutters (ours included) served with the Navy on the Pacific coast, keeping an eye out for potential Spanish commerce raiders, and filling in for the lack of Navy vessels along the West Coast at the time.
The four cutters patrolling the Pacific:
Arriving at San Francisco from Seattle on 7 April 1898, U. S. Grant and her crew were placed under Navy control four days later, on 11 April, operating as such through June.
Dispatched northward once again to search for a rumored Spanish privateer thought seeking to prey on the U.S. whaling and sealing fleet in Alaskan waters ala CSS Shenandoah-style, Grant found no such sea wolf and returned to the Treasury Department on 16 August, arrived back in Seattle on 18 September.
Back to peace
Returning to her peacetime duties and stomping grounds, Grant ran hard aground on an uncharted rock off Saanich Inlet just northwest of Victoria on 22 May 1901. Abandoned, she languished until her fellow cutters Perry and Rush arrived to help pull her off, patch her up, and tow her to Seattle for repairs.
Portside view of Revenue Cutter Grant at anchor without her foremast, likey after her wreck in 1901. Port Angeles Public Library. SHIPPOWR206
Fresh off repairs, in December she was part of the search for the lost Royal Navy sloop HMS Condor, which had gone missing while steaming from Esquimalt to Hawaii. Never found, it is believed Condor’s crew perished to a man in a gale off Vancouver.Grant recovered one of her empty whaleboats, along with a sailor’s cap and a broom, from the locals on Flores Island, with Tozier, the cutter’s longtime skipper, trading his dress sword for the relics. The recovered boat was passed on to the British sloop HMS Egeria, and Tozier’s sword was later replaced by the Admiralty, a matter that required an act of Congress for Tozier to keep.
Switching back to her role as a law enforcer, Grant was busily interdicting the maritime smuggling of opium and Chinese migrants from British Columbia to the Washington Territory in the early 1900s.
She also was detailed to help look for one of the last of the Old West outlaws, Harry Tracy, “the last survivor of the Wild Bunch.” After a shootout that left six dead in 1902, Tracy was at large in the region, taking hostages and generally terrifying the citizenry.
The Seattle Star, Volume 4, Number 113, 6 July 1902
By early 1903, with Tracy dead, it was announced the aging cutter would be sold.
The San Juan islander February 19, 1903
To tame the airwaves!
Grant, mislabeled as “USS” at Discovery Bay off Washington’s Strait of Juan de Fuca, October 1903. NOAA photo
Nonetheless, as part of a maintenance period, Grant was fitted by the Pacific Wireless Company while berthed in Tacoma with experimental Slaby Arco equipment to receive wireless messages. Regular use of wireless telegraphy by the Revenue Cutter Service was inaugurated by Grant on 1 November 1903. This was an important achievement for the service, as the Navy had only three ships with wireless equipment installed at the time.
Tozier’s initial wireless tests proved successful, allowing the Grant to keep in contact with the Port Townsend Customs House throughout its patrol area—a 100-mile radius from the cutter’s homeport. After testing and adjustment of the new equipment, the Grant was ready for its first practical use of wireless for revenue cutter duties. On April 1, 1904, the Grant switched on its wireless set and began a new era of marine radio communication between ship and shore stations.
The new wireless radio technology proved very effective in directing revenue cutters and patrol boats in maritime interdiction operations. However, it took another three years to convince Congress of the importance of “radio” (which superseded the term “wireless telegraph” in 1906) to both its law enforcement and search-and-rescue missions. In March 1907, Congress finally appropriated the $35,000 needed to fund wireless installations on board 12 cruising cutters.
However, Grant would not get a chance to use her new radio equipment much, and by 1906 she was reported condemned, although still in service.
The San Juan Islander, Volume 15, Number 49, 6 January 1906
Grant’s last official government duty, in February 1906, was to solemnly transport bodies from the Valencia accident from Neah Bay to Seattle for burial. The affair, the worst maritime disaster in the “Graveyard of the Pacific” off Vancouver Island, left an estimated 181 dead.
Epilogue
Grant was sold from government service in 1906 to a Mr. A.A. Cragen for $16,300, and then further to the San Juan Fishing and Packing Co. who rebuilt her as a halibut fishing steamer. The old cutter was wrecked for the last time in 1911 on the rocks of Banks Island.
As for her longtime skipper Tozier, while stationed in Seattle he became a renowned collector of local artifacts. As related by the Summer 1992 issue of ColumbiaMagazine:
The assignment gave Tozier the opportunity to put Grant into remote rivers and harbors where natives were as eager to trade the things they made and used as their forefathers had been to trade fur pelts. He became imbued with collecting fever, realizing that his was a rare opportunity to bring out from the wilderness, to be seen, preserved, and appreciate, the elements of a civilization that was rapidly being superseded by that of the white settlers.
Captain Dorr F. Tozier, USRC Grant, top row right. He brought the cutter around the Horn from New York in the 1890s and remained in command for 14 years. Here he is visiting Numukamis Village on Barclay Sound, Vancouver Island, BC. Photograph by Samuel G. Morse. 21 Jan. 1902. Courtesy of the WA. State Historical Society. # 1917.115.217
In all, once retired from the RSC in 1907, Tozier sold his collection of some 10,000 artifacts including 2,500 baskets, 100 stone chisels and axes, carved jade pipes, harpoons, war clubs, knives of copper, ivory, shell and iron, a war canoe, and “12 mammoth totems, each weighing between 600 to 20,000 pounds.” In all, the collection weighed 60 tons and required 11 large horse-drawn vans to move to the Washington State Art Association’s Ferry Museum in 1908.
A fraction of Capt. Tozier’s artifacts, c. 1905. Model canoe, house posts, sculptures, part of a house front, masks, and a replica of a copper. The collection was first exhibited at the Ferry Museum (Tacoma,) then removed to Seattle in 1909, and finally to the National Museum of the American Indian under the Smithsonian, WA. DC. This photo c. 1905 courtesy of the WSHS #19543.19
When the Ferry Museum was dissolved in the 1930s, the collection was scattered and spread out across the world, with some pieces making their way to the Smithsonian.
Speaking of museums, the last pistol owned by the Outlaw Tracy is on display at the White River Valley Museum in Auburn, Washington. Bruce Dern portrayed him in the 1982 film Harry Tracy, Desperado.
As for Grant’s name, neither the RCS nor its follow-on USCG descendant reissued it.
The Navy only felt the need to bestow the moniker post-1865 to a successive pair of unarmed Great War-era transports before finally issuing it during the centennial of the Civil War to a James Madison-class FBM submarine, USS Ulysses S. Grant (SSBN-631), which served from 1964 to 1992.
The Coast Guard, however, did mention our old revenue cutter in its last HF CW transmission, sent by station NMN from Chesapeake, Virginia, at 0001Z on April 1, 1995. As an ode to the first wireless message transmitted in 1844, “What hath God wrought,” the message concluded with, “we bid you 73 [best regards]. What hath God wrought.”
Specs:
Displacement: 350 tons Length: 163’ Beam: 25’ Draft: 11’ 4” Machinery: Barque rigged steamer, vertical steam engine, two boilers, one screw, 11 knots max Complement: 35-45 Armament: 4 x M1841 24-pounder guns, small arms (1871) 2 x Hotchkiss MK 1 37mm 1-pdrs, small arms (1891)
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In PATFORSWA, the Coast Guard’s now 20-year-long mission in the Persian Gulf/Straits of Hormuz/Gulf of Oman, a trio of its longest-serving patrol boats– 110-foot Island-class WPBs– have been quietly put to pasture.
Via USCG PAO:
Yesterday three Island-class patrol boats were decommissioned in a ceremony at Naval Support Activity Bahrain.
Rear Adm. Keith Smith, deputy commander of U.S. Coast Guard Atlantic Area, attended the ceremony and commemorated 102 years of combined active service by USCGC Maui, Monomoy, and Wrangell.
“For nearly two decades, these cutters and the Coast Guardsmen that crewed them have worked closely with our U.S. Naval Forces Central Command partners and served as the heart of Coast Guard operations in the Middle East,” said Smith.
Maui was originally homeported in Miami and conducted counter-narcotics and other law enforcement activities near the United States for 18 years.
Monomoy was previously homeported in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. The ship helped secure New York City’s harbor immediately following the terrorist attacks in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.
In 2004, Maui and Monomoy arrived in the U.S. 5th Fleet region where they have remained for the next 18 years in support of U.S. 5th Fleet maritime security operations.
Previously homeported in Portland, Maine, Wrangell conducted counter-narcotics and maritime patrol operations along the East Coast of the United States before deploying to the Middle East in 2003.
With the retirement of these three patrol boats, and the looming retirement next month of stateside sisters such as USCGC Cuttyhunk (WPB-1322), few of the 110s remain in inventory as the new and much more capable 154-foot Sentinel-class Fast Response Cutters (designated WPCs) are slated to replace the Island-class.
110 foot Island class cutters compared to the new 154-foot Sentinel (Webber) class FRCs
But that doesn’t mean PATFORSWA is going away. Six of the new Sentinel-class FRCs are headed there to replace the retired Islands on a hull-for-hull basis, with three already in theatre.
Coast Guard fast response cutters Glen Harris (WPC 1144), Wrangel (WPB 1332), Emlen Tunnel (WPC 1145), Maui (WPB 1304), transiting the Gulf of Oman Feb. 26
Coast Guard fast response cutters Glen Harris (WPC 1144), Wrangel (WPB 1332), Emlen Tunnel (WPC 1145), Maui (WPB 1304), transiting Gulf of Oman Feb. 26
Besides their stabilized MK 38 25mm gun and half-dozen M2 mounts, the FRCs headed to Bahrain are equipped with the CG-HALLTS system, a hailer that has laser and LRAD capabilities, as well as a special S-band Sierra Nevada Modi RPS-42 pulse doppler with full-time 360-degree coverage, and other goodies to include four Long Range Acoustic Devices (LRADs) on the O-1 deck. Additionally, the already experienced cutter and boarding crews of PATFORSWA have to go through 5-6 weeks of Pre Deployment Training (PDT) with the service’s Special Mission Training Center at Camp Lejune.
Born in Pascagoula, the class leader of the 418-foot Legend-class National Security Cutters, USCGC Bertholf (WMSL-750), joined the fleet in 2008 and since then, nine of the ships have replaced the circa 1960s 378-foot Hamilton-class high endurance cutters in the Coast Guard’s inventory. The service uses these light frigate-sized vessels in overseas deployments to the Med and West Pac, as well as in patrols of the North Pac– monitoring 900,000 square miles of the U.S. exclusive economic zone off the Alaskan coast– which can be demanding.
In other National Security Cutter news, shipbuilders at Ingalls just completed the longest translation on record for the shipyard with future USCGC Calhoun (WMSL 759) before officially launching the ship into the water in Pascagoula.
In November of 2020, the ninth NSC, Stone (WMSL 758)— named after the service’s famed first aviator— was delivered to the Coast Guard and proceeded to conduct an unprecedented 68-day shakedown patrol, which resulted in a drug bust within two weeks of sail away and an extensive illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing enforcement patrol off the coast of South America.
Calhoun, the 10th NSC, is scheduled to be christened at Ingalls Shipbuilding in June 2022 and is expected to be delivered in early 2023.
The 11th, and planned final (unless the USCG gets more money), NSC, USCGC Friedman (WMSL-760), will be delivered around 2024.
The crew of Coast Guard Cutter Stratton (WMSL 752) returned to Alameda Saturday after completing a 97-day Operation Blue Pacific Patrol in the South Pacific.
Built at Pascagoula, the 4,500-ton Stratton is the USCG’s the third Legend-class National Security Cutter
While underway on the 20,348-mile patrol, Stratton’s crew worked with Pacific nations, including Fiji, France, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, and Australia “on an array of missions and prioritized combating Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated fishing on the high seas or in partner nations’ exclusive economic zones,” including boarding 11 vessels and issuing 21 violations to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing– often with bilateral shipriders aboard from small Pacific island nations, a strong warning to China’s little blue men fleet of far-reaching trawlers that haunt such areas.
Among interesting facets of the patrol was the fact that Stratton’s crew used small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (contract Scan Eagle) to increase the ship’s capabilities and further extend the cutter’s patrol area.
“Stratton’s capacity for employing cutting edge technology like sUAS, gives the Coast Guard the upper hand in the fight against IUU fishing,” said CDR Charter Tschirgi, Stratton’s executive officer. “The vast area covered during patrols like these displays the reach the Coast Guard has and the length we will go to assist our partners in the Pacific.”
In another interesting evolution, while on patrol, Stratton’s crew participated in multiple joint exercises with the British River-class OPV HMS Spey (P234), the Aegis-class destroyer USS Sampson (DDG-102), fueling-at-sea with New Zealand’s replenishment vessel HMNZS Aotearoa, and joint steaming with the French Naval vessel Arago and Fijian patrol vessel Savenaca.
220130-N-CD319-1014 SOUTH PACIFIC OCEAN (Jan. 30, 2022) The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Sampson (DDG 102) participates in Divisional Tactics (DIVTAC) formations with U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Stratton (WMSL 752) and British Royal Navy ship HMS Spey (P 234). (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Tristan Cookson)
This included Stratton and Spey steaming in formation for ten days from Hawaii to Tahiti, something you don’t see every day.
Besides your typical maritime harassment seen in the area in the past few years– GPS jamming, AIS spoofing, communications jamming, electronic interference, and cyber-attacks– Lloyds and NATO warn shipping that “collateral damage or direct hits on Civilian Shipping in the North-Western Black Sea area are considered VERY HIGH.”
This includes mines, which the 2,100 dwt Estonian-owned, Panama-flagged cargo ship MV Helt may have sunk by last week off Odessa.
Word is that the Russians may have forced the vessel to act as a lane-clearer in the aspect that “any ship can sweep for mines…once.”
Millennial Spirit (IMO 7392610), a 2,200-ton Moldavian-flagged chemical tanker, was attacked on 25 February and burned for two days.
Namura Queen (IMO 9841299), a Japanese-owned Panama flagged 85,065-dwt kamsarmax, was hit on 25 February.
Yasa Jupiter (IMO 9848132), a Turkish-owned Marshall Islands-flagged bulk carrier, with 11 Filipino crew, was hit on 24 February but was able to make it to port in Turkey.
In other naval news from the Black Sea, it has been confirmed that the Ukrainian Navy scuttled their flagship and only frigate, the Krivak III-class Hetman Sahaidachny (U-130).
The lightly armed 3,500-ton OPV had been in a maintenance availability at Mykolaiv and was ordered wrecked to prevent her from falling into Russian hands.
The Ukraine Navy ship Slovyanks (P190)— formerly the 110-foot Island-class USCGC Cushing— is allegedly sunk, with the parents of several of her crewmembers posting pleas for information. According to a Russian report (so hold your breath) the Mayor of the city of Yuzhne, Volodymyr Novatsky, said the patrol boat was sunk on 3 March by an anti-ship missile of Russian naval aviation.
110 foot Islands Slavyansk and Starobilsk in better times. They are the former Bollinger-built Islands, ex-USCGC Cushing (WPB-1321) and ex-USCGC Drummond (WPB-1323).
The Ukrainians have managed to get one lick in, though.
On Monday night, Ukrainian Naval Infantry units reportedly hit the 1,800-ton Russian corvette, RFS Vasily Bykov off Odessa with a shore-based anti-ship missile (some chatter is that it was a GRAD rocket or even an ATGM instead). Heavily damaged and forced to retreat, it reinforces how dangerous it is to work in the littoral, even when you have control of the sea.
Russian corvette, RFS Vasily Bykov, has reportedly been heavily damaged by shore-based fires near Odessa this week.
In one report, Ukrainian small boats okie-doked the Russian Project 22160 patrol boat to chase them towards a camouflaged firing position, where he (Russian vessels are always “he”) was shelled and hit with at least one lucky shot. Dawn showed the vessel on fire offshore.
Lost in the backscatter this week as everyone was busy watching the largest conventional forces war (not fought in Asia) since 1945, is the fact that the U.S. Coast Guard likely broke the record for reaching the southernmost navigable waters on Earth and entered uncharted seas.
U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Polar Star (WAGB 10) transits away from the ice shelf near the Bay of Whales, Antarctica, Feb. 17, 2022. Polar Star navigated to the Southernmost navigable seas and entered uncharted waters, reaching the edge of the ice shelf. (U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Diolanda Caballero)
Via USCG public affairs:
MCMURDO STATION, Antarctica — U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Polar Star (WAGB 10) reached the southernmost navigable waters on the planet Feb. 17 while underway in the Bay of Whales, Antarctica.
Polar Star reached a position of 78 degrees, 44 minutes, 1.32 seconds south latitude at 12:55 p.m. New Zealand time, holding a distance of approximately 500 yards from the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf, further south than the current Guinness World Record holder.
While underway, Polar Star sailed in waters previously charted as part of the ice shelf that are now navigable waters. Today, portions of the Ross Ice Shelf deviate approximately 12 nautical miles from the positions depicted on official charts.
During Polar Star’s transit to and from the Bay of Whales, Polar Star surveyed 396 nautical miles of the ice shelf for potential future navigational use.
Crewmembers aboard the cutter are working with the staff at Guinness World Records to officially become the new record holders.
In 1908, Ernest Shackleton gave the Bay of Whales its name during the Nimrod Expedition on the basis of the numerous whales he and his crew sighted. Three years later, Roald Amundsen established a base camp in the bay, from which he set out on his successful endeavor to become the first person to reach the South Pole. Years later, U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Richard E. Byrd established Little America in the Bay of Whales during his first, second, and third Antarctic Expeditions, exploring more than 60% of the Antarctic continent.
“The crew of Polar Star is proud to follow in the footsteps of legendary Antarctic explorers like Shackleton, Amundsen, and Byrd,” said Capt. William Woityra, commanding officer of Polar Star. “Even today, more than a century later, we carry on that legacy of exploration, reaching new places, and expanding human understanding of our planet.”
Ukraine inherited a lot of assets from the old Soviet Black Sea Fleet in 1992 including the lion’s share of the personnel, armaments, and coastal facilities of the famed organization. However, over the course of two decades of continued neglect and atrophy, the once-mighty Fleet by 2014 largely just consisted on paper and, what still existed then largely was either captured/surrendered to the Russians or was destroyed in conjunction with the Russian seizure of Crimea, the hub of the old Black Sea Fleet and the modern Ukrainian Navy.
Armed with a single Mk 38 Mod 0 Bushmaster forward and two M2HBs, they dropped their coast guard flash and gleaming white paint for a more utilitarian haze grey in Ukrainian service.
P191 Starobilsk, ex-USCGC Drummond (WPB-1323), seen exercising with US destroyer USS Roosevelt (DDG80) in the Black Sea 29 Sept 2020
As the largest ship of the Ukrainian fleet, the Nerei/Krivak III/Menzhinskiy-class frigate Hetman Sahaidachny (F130), is widely reported to have been scuttled by her crew at Nikolayev last week, things don’t look good for the old Islands.
21 February 1942. The “Brave Rifles,” 3d Cavalry Regiment troopers at Ft. Myer lead their trusty mounts to the railroad for the trip to Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, one of the last evolutions involving a regiment of horse-mounted cavalry in U.S. service.
Once there, the mounts were turned in and the troops began training for World War II.
Note the spurs
The troopers seem to be wearing the M1926 pattern Winter Service Uniform with coats and black four-fold service neckties. Note the late-pattern Campaign service hats, which were put to pasture for general use after 1941. Notably, they are also seen with newly-issued M1 Garands, some carried “Russian style” i.e. slung over the body.
The old 1912 Pattern cavalry gear, which still included much leather equipment as well as a distinctive chain saber attachment and bandoleer, is long gone, replaced by the more modern M1923 gear. The enlisted men wear the tall russet leather lace-up cavalry boots which were authorized in 1930.
The M1918 Mounted Cartridge Belt with 1907 Equipment Suspenders; Double Magazine Pocket; the M1912 Mounted Holster, and the M1910 1st Aid Pouch can all be seen if you look hard enough.
The wear of service breeches was halted across the Army in 1937, except for those in mounted units.
Model 1913 Cavalry Saber (also known as the Patton Saber) was the last cavalry saber used by the U.S. Army, was withdrawn in 1935 on orders from MacArthur.
Of the men shown above, almost all of the officers and troopers of the 3d Cavalry– regular Army men– became cadres for National Guard divisions. The 3d was then filled with draftees and cadre from the 4th (horse) Cavalry and was reorganized into what became the 3d Cavalry Group (Mechanized) while its 1st Squadron became the 3rd Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron, and 2nd Squadron became the 43rd Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron, all centered around M8 Greyhounds.
Today, the Brave Rifles still exist, recently celebrating their 175th anniversary. They are based at Fort Hood and maintain an excellent regimental museum, from which these images are supplied.
As for the Cavalry’s horses? Many were turned over to the U.S. Coast Guard and used for Beach Patrol during the conflict, then sold at auction in 1945.
1943. Guardsman on patrol somewhere along the Atlantic coast is shown in the new uniform of the U.S. Coast Guard Mounted Beach Patrol.
Members of the Coast Guard’s mounted beach patrol cross an inlet during their patrol on the West Coast.
