Last week’s post about the USCGC Waesche (WMSL 751) serving as a Forward Afloat Staging Base off Alaska during NORTHCOM’s Exercise Arctic Edge 2025 reminded me of the service’s long-standing tradition of such operations.
It actually predates the Coast Guard itself.
City Point (1895-1913)
Due to the shifting waters near the falls of the Ohio River, the Louisville Lifeboat Station (Lifesaving Station No. 10), put into service in 1881, was afloat.
The Louisville Lifeboat Station
Successful, its 1902 replacement was of the same pattern as was its 1929 steel-hulled successor, and remained in USCG service in 1972. Today, it is preserved as the only surviving floating lifesaving station of the United States Life-Saving Service.
This sets the stage for the more blue water City Point Station.
The original USLSS City Point Station, circa 1896-1913, Nathaniel L. Stebbins photographic collection PC047.02.4110.16294
Dialing it back to 1895 (the USCG was formed in 1916), a U.S. Lifesaving Service station was originally described as a “floating station in Dorchester Bay, Boston Harbor,” was authorized as the region had suffered the loss of forty lives on the water, usually in the summer months, from 1890 to 1894. Congressman Michael J. McEttrick introduced a bill in Congress, which was finally passed, and the station was secured, and it was dubbed the “City Point Station.”
From the USLSS 1895 Annual Report:
And duly installed, as noted from the service’s 1896 report:
The anchored wooden-hulled station, approximately 100 feet long and 33 feet abeam, was home to a 10-man crew and housed a pair of naphtha-powered launches, a dighny, and a heavy surfboat.
Equipped with a generator, they had electric wiring and a large searchlight and signal lights up top.
An innovative feature was an early well deck or “harbor room” in the stern.
As further detailed by The Toomey-Rankin History of South Boston, circa 1901:
An appropriation of $7,000 was made for the construction of the station itself, and in a short time the strange craft was growing under the hands of workmen at Palmer’s shipyard at Noank, Conn., and for 50 days the work progressed, at the end of which time the station was completed, and towed from Noank, Conn., to Boston, and on its arrival Sunday, August 3, 1896, was moored to Loring’s wharf to await fitting out.
It is needless to say that the station, being an innovation, attracted much attention. Visitors saw it as it is today, except for the doors, which were afterward cut on each side of the harbor room. Its form is that of a huge flat iron, the forward end, or bow, coming to a point, while the rear or stern is cut off short. It is 100 feet long,33 feet beam, 6 feet deep, and draws about two feet of water, and is a double-deck affair, the upper deck being about 15 feet above the waterline.
The feature of the station is the harbor at the stern, or what might be called the main entrance to the station. This harbor in which the two naphtha launches of the station are kept, is formed by having an opening 30 feet long and 17 feet wide, cut from the stern directly into the center of the station, leaving on three sides about eight feet of deck room, while the entire harbor is sheltered by the upper deck, which extends to the end of the station.
From the harbor, or launch room, a hallway extends the entire length of the station, off of which are several rooms; on the left is the kitchen, dining room and the crew’s quarters, and on the right the captain’s office, his bed room and the store room, the space at the bow being devoted to the windlass and anchors with which the station is held in position.
Leading from this hallway on the right is a small flight of stairs to the upper deck, and in addition to this are the two other flights, leading from the harbor room, one on the port and one on the starboard side. The upper deck is completely clear with the exception of a lookout, which sets about 30 feet from the bow in the center of the deck, with a flight of steps leading to it. It is surrounded by a railing and is connected with the launch room and the captain’s room by speaking tubes.
Rising from the deck is a flagpole, upon which the national emblem is displayed during the day and a lantern at night. At the stern, on huge davits, hangs the heavy surf boat, in a position to be lowered at an instant’s notice. Davits on the port and starboard sides hold smaller boats. In the harbor are the launches, one of which is 28 feet, with a speed of ten knots, and the other 25 feet in length, with a speed of eight knots.
Towed into position each April/May and then towed back to its winter berth near Chelsea Bridge in October/November, the station was manned by the same crew for the duration of the summer with no relief. The 10 men consisted of a station captain and nine surfmen (one of whom was also paid as a cook), with three of the latter on duty round the clock.
Completed too late to get much practical use in 1896, its first full season deployed was in 1897, where its crew helped 115 small craft in distress and rescued 23 persons, who were taken back to the station for care.
1898 saw 19 persons rescued, 129 persons rendered assistance, and 58 boats saved.
The year 1899 set a new record of 33 persons saved and 183 assisted while coming to the rescue of 97 boats, the latter valued at $63,285, or nine times the initial outlay to build the station.
From a period Roland Libbey article on City Point in the Boston Globe
From a period Roland Libbey article on City Point in the Boston Globe
City Point had its naphtha-powered launches replaced by steam launches in 1900 and was extensively rebuilt in 1913 “to replace a structure that is old and unsuited to present-day needs.”
She would be joined by other bases in the 1920s.
A half dozen floating bases during Prohibition
Speaking of which…
In 1924, with the “Rum War” afoot and the now USCG with a serious need to push assets further offshore to intercept bootleggers speeding out to usually British or Canadian-flagged “blacks” (so named as they ran at night sans flags or lights) anchored just off the three-mile limit on “Rum Row,” the service acquired five new floating bases– Argus, Colfax, Moccasin, Pickering, and Wayanda.
Four of these new bases (Argus, Colfax, Pickering, and Wayanda) were concrete boats originally commissioned for the Army Quartermaster Service for troop and supply transport between Army bases along the coast. The Army had built 16 such flat-bottomed vessels, powered by twin gasoline (!) engines, then quickly disposed of them.
The Army QM Corps concrete riverboats, Colonel J. E. Sawyer and Major Archibald Butt, at a dock in New Bern, North Carolina, in 1920.
The other two, the reconstructed City Point and the new Moccasin, had wooden hulls. All but City Point had propulsion plants.
U.S. Coast Guard, City Point station, Boston, by Leslie Jones, Boston Globe
U.S. Coast Guard, City Point station, Boston, circa 1916-1939 by Leslie Jones, Boston Globe
U.S. Coast Guard, City Point station, Boston, by Leslie Jones, Boston Globe
U.S. Coast Guard, City Point station, Boston, by Leslie Jones, Boston Globe
All had extensive cabin structures topside and served as moored motherships for the service’s 36 and 38-foot picket boats, much closer to Rum Row than the coastal bases.
The 38-foot cabin picket boat. USCG Photo
The Boston-based City Point of the era was a wooden-hulled floating platform that was rebuilt in 1913 at Greenport, New York, and was 109′ 6″ by 33′ by 3′ 6″.
Colfax was the former Army QM vessel General Rufus Ingalls and was 150 feet long, 28 feet wide, and 13 feet deep.
Argus was originally the concrete-hulled Army QM vessel Major E. Pickett. Her dimensions were: 128′ 5″ x 28′ x 12′. Commissioned as Argus on 1 December 1924 at Rockaway Inlet, New York, and was moved to New London, Connecticut, in May of 1925, she was the flagship of the Coast Guard Destroyer Force.
Pickering was the former Army QM Brigadier General O. A. Allison, and was a concrete boat built to the same plan as Major E. Pickett/Argus in 1921 for the War Department. After her acquisition by the Coast Guard, she was stationed at Atlantic City, New Jersey, as of October 1924.
Wayanda was the former Army vessel Colonel William H. Baldwin, a 128-foot ‘crete boat like Pickering and Argus. She was purchased on 21 October 1924 from the John W. Sullivan Company in New York. She was stationed at Greenport, New York, as of 26 November 1924.
Moccasin was the former wooden-hulled Liberator, 102′ 6″ by 47’9″ by 10′, that was built in 1921 at Lybeck, Florida. She was purchased from Gibbs Gas Engineering Company on August 20, 1924, and commissioned on November 17, 1924. She served in Miami, Florida.
With Prohibition winding down, the Coast Guard started ridding itself of these floating bases by the late 1920s, and only the concrete Baldwin/Wayanda and the wooden-hulled City Point II outlived the Volstead Act.
Wayanda was last listed in Coast Guard records in 1934, while the second City Point only disappeared from the list of USCG stations after the 1939 season.
In the meantime, the cutter Yocana served as a mothership to clusters of picket boats during the 1937 floods on the Mississippi.
A dozen Coast Guard picket boats 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
Other examples
Of course, the service’s large blue water cutters have filled the role of offshore mothership several times since then, with its CGRON3 in Vietnam clocking in to feed, bunk, and refuel both USCG 83-foot patrol boats and Navy Brown water assets such as PBRs and PCFs, as well as the sustained offshore surveillance of Grenada in 1983-84 (Operation Island Breeze).
Point class refueling from USCGC Dallas in Vietnam 2
More recent mothership ops have been seen with the long-distance deployment of FRCs to the Persian Gulf in 2022 and in response to 2017’s Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.
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