In honor of today’s anniversary of the founding of Alexander Hamilton’s Revenue-Marine in 1790, a force that evolved over time to the USCG, I penned a 2,000~ word piece on the service’s small arms over time.
More in my column at Guns.com
The 180-foot Balsam-class buoy tender USCGC Salvia (WAGL/WLB-400) gave 47 years to the Coast Guard, 28 to the Navy, and will continue to serve in a different purpose moving forward.
Laid down at Duluth, Minnesota’s Zenith Dredge on 24 June 1943 as a member of the Iris subclass, she commissioned 19 February 1944 at a cost of $923,995. She would spend the rest of WWII assigned to the 5th Coast Guard District, stationed at Portsmouth, Virginia, and used for general ATON duty under Navy orders.
USCGC Salvia, 1948.
From 1 November 1945 until her decommissioning in 1991, USCGC Salvia was homeported in Mobile, where the ship did a lot of buoy relocation for constantly-working Corps of Engineer dredges working from Pensacola to Gulfport. The vessel was known as “The Black Ghost of the Gulf Coast” or, unofficially and for logical reasons, “The Spit.”
Salvia seen sometime after the “racing stripe” became standard in 1967 and her decommissioning in 1991
Besides over four decades of thankless ATON work, the buoy tender conducted law enforcement duties as needed and was called to assist in SAR on several notable occasions in waters that are heavily traveled by fishing and commercial vessels.
As detailed by the Coast Guard Historian’s office:
From 20-23 April 1951, Salvia assisted following the collision between the tankers Esso Suez and Esso Greensboro.
From 59 April 1953, Salvia searched for the wreck of National Flight 47 off Mobile Point.
From 30 October-2 November 1958, Salvia assisted USS Instill (AM-252).
From 17-18 November 1959, the cutter searched for National Flight 967, famously lost between Tampa and New Orleans.
In late August 1965, Salvia provided men and equipment to fight a fire on the Liberian MV Arctic Reefer off Choctaw Point, Mobile.
From 7-8 December 1968, Salvia searched for survivors from the lost USCGC White Alder, saving three men.
Retired in 1991, Salvia was given to the Navy to be used as an unnamed salvage hulk in Little Creek.
Finally, the gutted and worn vessel was put up for auction by the GSA last year with a final realized price of $18,100. Ownership eventually passed to N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries’ Artificial Reef Program
Now, renamed “Brian Davis” she was sunk last week off the coast of North Carolina as a part of an artificial reef (Memorial project AR-368) in about 70 feet of water approximately 20 miles due east of Wilmington. The three-year project was funded by donations from the diving community as well as Coastal Recreational Fishing License funds.
The Seattle-based Coast Guard Cutter Mellon (WHEC 717) moors at U.S. Coast Guard Base Kodiak’s fuel pier in Kodiak, Alaska, July 10, 2020. Photo by Chief Petty Officer Matthew/USCG
The 378-foot Hamilton-class Coast Guard Cutter Mellon (WHEC 717) just completed her final patrol.
As noted by the USCG, Mellon and her “150-person crew left Seattle April 17 to conduct missions throughout the Aleutian Islands and the Bering Sea. During the patrol, the crew conducted 38 law enforcement boardings, four search-and-rescue cases, and enforced federal regulations governing Alaska’s $13.9 billion commercial fishing industry.”
She returned to her longtime homeport at Seattle earlier this month and is scheduled for decommissioning August 20, 2020, bringing an epic 52-year career to a close.
Laid down in 1966 at Avondale in New Orleans, she commissioned on January 9, 1968.
A modern ship with her helm controlled via a joystick, she carried a 5″/38 DP mount forward, a half-dozen ASW torpedo tubes, sonar, an 80-foot helicopter deck, and used a then-innovative CODAG engineering suite. Contemporary accounts held that she was able to reach a speed of “20 knots in less than 20 seconds and go from full ahead to full astern in less than one minute.”
The Hamilton-class cutters were one of the first naval vessels built with a combined diesel and gas turbine propulsion plant. At the time: “The twin screws can use 7,000 diesel shaft horsepower to make 17 knots, and a total of 36,000 gas turbine shaft horsepower to make 28 knots. The diesel engines are Fairbanks-Morse and are larger versions of a 1968 diesel locomotive design. Her Pratt-Whitney marine gas turbine engines are similar to those installed in Boeing 707 passenger jet aircraft.”
Mellon served regular weather station duty on Ocean Station November in the Northern Pacific– and even had a balloon shelter for such work, in addition to SAR, maritime fisheries patrol, and counter-smuggling duties.
Once, she even got involved in responding to a mutiny on the high seas.
As noted by the Coast Guard Historian’s Office:
Mellon saw extensive service during the conflict in Vietnam. She was twice awarded the Meritorious Unit Commendation as part of Task Force 115 (U.S. Navy Coastal Surveillance Force) which maintained close surveillance over 1,200 miles of Vietnamese coastline and 64,000 licensed watercraft.
The task force seized large quantities of war material, preventing it from reaching enemy hands. During her service in the waters adjacent to Vietnam, Mellon also conducted numerous naval gunfire support missions, rescue operations, medical civic action programs, and training programs for Vietnamese military personnel.
Mellon rescued passengers from the burning Holland-America luxury liner MS Prinsendam off the Alaskan coast in 1980 in conjunction with another cutter, pulling 510 passengers and crew members from lifeboats after they abandoned ship. Remarkably, and in vast contrast to the Titanic, this occurred with no deaths or serious injuries, and all passengers and crew from the Prindsendam accounted for.
Added to this tally over the years were mariners from the doomed Italian supertanker Giovanna Lollighetti, the MV Carnelian, and the downed crew of a C-130 surviving among the frozen scrub of Attu Island.
A regular on the Bearing Sea Patrol, Mellon’s sonarmen counted more sonar contacts with Soviet subs in the 1980s than many active-duty tin cans.
Updated for the Cold War, she was given frigate-level armament, trading her 5″ gun for a more modern 76mm OTO Melera Mk.75, picking up more modern air search radars, a “Slick-32” EW suite, and improved AN/SQS-26 bow-mounted sonar. She also got a modicum of anti-air protection from a CIWS and an anti-ship armament of 8 Harpoon cans. The idea was that if the balloon went up, the Hamiltons could easily chop over to add a few more hulls to the “600 Ship Navy” and help out with ASW and convoy duty.
Speaking of which, she was the only cutter in USCG history to fire a live Harpoon, during tests off Oxnard in January 1990.
PAC Ken Freeze, USCG
The Coast Guard certainly got their $14.5 million FY65 original costs out of her, and, as with most of her class, will surely go on to serve an overseas ally for another generation or two.
Her motto is Primus Inter Pares (First Among Equals).
U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Mellon (WHEC 717) crew and an Air Station Barbers Point MH-65 Dolphin helicopter crew conduct searches just before sunset 24 miles south of Oahu, March 18, 2019. (U.S. Coast Guard photo by Lt. j.g. Joshua Martin/Released)
When the 16 Reliance-class medium endurance cutters were ordered in the 1960s, they were the first cutter built as part of the Coast Guard’s post-World War II fleet revitalization and the first new USCG-designed seagoing cutter construction since the 1930s, with the 255-foot Oswego-class cutters and Wind-class icebreakers wartime Navy-oriented designs.
This black and white photo shows newly the commissioned Reliance (WMEC-615) with an HH-52 Sea Guard helicopter landing on its pad and davits down with one of its small boats deployed. Notice the lack of smokestack and paint scheme pre-dating the Racing Stripe or “U.S. Coast Guard” paint schemes. She has a 3″/50 forward as well as 20mm cannons for AAA work and weight and space for Mousttraps, a towed sonar, and Mk.32 ASW tubes, although they were never fitted. U.S. Coast Guard photo.
Humble 210-foot cutters, they had a lot of innovation for the period.
As noted by the Coast Guard Historian’s Office, they were the first class of cutter with a combined diesel and gas (CODAC) powerplant that “drove the cutter at speeds of up to 20 knots, so it could tow a 10,000-ton vessel or keep pace with Navy carrier fleets.” Other groundbreaking facets included the first use of air conditioning on a cutter and the first fleet of cutters designed with a flight deck for helicopter operations, a new-fangled device the USGC helped developed in the 1940s.
Built in four yards, 16 Reliance-class cutters joined the fleet in just four years, at a program cost of $54 million ($446M today), which is a deal in any decade.
In the 1980s, the 210s were given a mid-life upgrade in which their CODAC suite became diesel-only with a pair of pitch controlled main diesel engines capable of reaching a max speed of 18 knots, a midship exhaust stack, and her WWII-era armament landed for a 25mm direct-guided Mk.38 and two .50 caliber machine guns. Her flight deck, although shortened due to the new stack, was still capable of carrying and deploying an HH/MH-65 Dolphin helicopter, albeit without a hangar, and running HIFR on larger birds.
Coast Guard Cutter Reliance patrols the Western Caribbean in support of the Joint Interagency Task Force – South October 2014. The cutter’s crew worked with an aviation detachment from the Coast Guard Helicopter Interdiction Tactical Squadron based in Jacksonville, Fla., to detect and interdict suspected smugglers. (U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Clinton McDonald)
They even appeared in a number of films, with class member USCGC Dauntless (WMEC-624) showing up in the Peter Benchley/Michael Caine vehicle The Island as both a supporting actor and set for the last act of the movie.
(Check out from the 3:21 mark on)
With that being said, the 210s are in their last days and several have been decommissioned and given away as military aid. The aforementioned Galveston-based Dauntless and the Pascagoula-based USCGC Decisive (WMEC-629), the latter of which I toured several times for an article in Sea Classics magazine, transferred to Pensacola in 2017, where the service is gathering the last of the tribe “to better leverage efficiencies gained by clustering vessels of the same class.”
And such, Reliance, which has been based at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and the town of Kittery, Maine for the past 32 years, pulled stumps for P-Cola on Monday, set for her last chapter in U.S. maritime service, which will be from P-Cola.
The Coast Guard will soon build the “Heritage”-Class 360-foot Offshore Patrol Cutters, often recycling 210-class cutter names, to replace both the Reliances and the 270-foot Bear/Famous-class cutters.
Or at least that’s the plan, anyway.
In logical reaction to police brutality in Minnesota captured in an iPhone snuff film, Loreal is deleting the word “whitening” from its marketing but will surely still sell the same fish oil under a different name, cartoon characters have vanished like commissars in Stalinist photographs, and episodes of already dated sitcoms are being memory-holed from their streaming service time capsules.
Meanwhile, statues of everyone from Francis Scott Key– whose virtually unknown ditty could be replaced by a hippy song that came from the Yoko-era– to a Norwegian abolitionist who died trying to end slavery have been toppled.
In the latest episode of waking from the slumber of a lack of awareness to scrub something away that is now problematic, the historic 327-foot Secretary-class gunboat/high endurance cutter USCGC Taney (WPG/WHEC-37), known to many as the “Queen of the Sea,” has been quietly renamed, her stern nameplate torched off and her signage and gangplank fabric removed from where she sits as a museum ship in Baltimore.
Living Classrooms Board of Trustees, who controls Historic Ships Baltimore, voted over the weekend to change Taney’s name to Thurgood Marshall.
As a background, the vessel was named for Roger Brooke Taney, a controversial figure and racist by today’s standards who, besides serving as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Andrew Jackson’s Secretary of War and Attorney General, also filled in for “Old Hickory” as his Treasury Secretary– which is why the cutter was named after him, as the class of seven 327-foot cutters were all named for previous Revenue Service bosses (Bibb, Campbell, Duane, Alexander Hamilton, Ingham, Spencer, Taney), a department the USCG belonged to until 1967. Further, the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service had named a previous ship “Taney” in the 1830s, arguing that it was a historic ship name to one degree or another.
By all means, Taney the man is seen as unredeemable today, delivering the majority opinion in the Dred Scott case and penning some other very tough-to-read thoughts that no one in the past half-century has entertained as being acceptable.
Should the 1930s USCG have named their new vessel after him? Probably not, even by the standards of that era, but nonetheless they did and USCGC Taney went on to deliver tremendous service to the country.
She was at Pearl Harbor and Midway then escorted convoys across the Atlantic before coming back to the Pacific where she served as an amphibious command ship off Okinawa, ending WWII in Japanese Home Waters.
Taney at Pearl Harbor
USS Taney, CG (WPG-37) Taney, 327-foot Coast Guard combat cutter, is shown here wearing battle gray while on convoy escort duty in the Atlantic
A few years later she put on her war paint once again for Korea.
Not to be deterred, she continued to serve in the post-war Coast Guard, saving lives, delivering the rule of law across marine fisheries, combatting smugglers, and manning isolated ocean stations for the sake of the greater good. Oh yeah, and doing the whole Cold War thing, too.
Taney maintains surveillance of the Soviet refrigerator vessel Chernjakhovsk off northern California in May of 1965.
She went on to fire 3,400 rounds in NGFS in Vietnam while her crew assisted 6,000 souls ashore in civil support.
In the summer of 1973 Taney was fitted with a special storm-tracking, first in the world, Doppler Radar antenna housed in a distinctive bulbous dome fitted atop her pilothouse. She would spend most of the 70s on Ocean Weather Station (OWS) Hotel.
On weather station, every six hours or so, the NOAA folks would launch a weather balloon, which the cutter could track in CIC with its AN/SPA52 Air Search radar.
Thousands of men, and in her latter days, women, walked her decks and risked their lives against all manner of enemies both two-legged and sent by Poseidon. They did so for their shipmates and their country, not to honor Andrew Jackson’s T-SEC.
None of her crew ever met the man. Honestly, most probably never read the first word of any of his legal opinions or speeches. Nonetheless, they are now deemed guilty of Dred Scot-by-proxy by people who know nothing of their sacrifice.
While the oldest ship in the fleet in 1984, the Coast Guard filmed a recruiting commercial partially on her deck– narrated by James Earl Jones– highlighting diversity in the service.
After 50 years of service, Cutter Taney decommissioned on 7 December 1986– the 45th Anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack– and by Act of Congress was turned over to the city of Baltimore, Maryland–Roger Brooke Taney’s hometown, for use as a museum ship, and as such was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
No one could argue that Thurgood Marshall was not “a colossus of U.S. history.” First appointed to the federal bench by President John F. Kennedy– a Navy man– Marshall came to the court after arguing cases such as Brown v Education before the nation’s high court, which in many ways helped move civil rights forward for the nation. However, while Marshall is interred at Arlington due to his service as a jurist and in the early 1950s investigated charges of racism in the United States armed forces, he was not a military man and had no connection to the Coast Guard, Navy or the cutter that is preserved in Baltimore that now bears his name in retirement. About his closest tie to the sea service was that one of his grandfathers, Isaiah Olive Branch Williams, volunteered and served aboard the brig USS Santiago de Cuba during the Civil War and the frigate USS Powhatan after.
In the end, should the historic vessel have its name– from a man that is now considered despicable but nonetheless one that was carried into battle across three wars– erased from history and replaced with one of a man who, although a hero, never had a connection to said vessel, to atone for the nation’s guilt when it comes to race relations?
As noted by Jay Sea Archeology on the very subject of the Taney’s name :
A ship and more importantly, its crew makes her own history and being a ship, a form of transportation, makes it part of the context of larger world history. The vessel is preserved because of her own history and not that of her namesake and continues to educate to this day. This ship is not something to condemn, its something to be proud of.
But then again, I guess none of that matters anymore.
Some 500 people, many former crewmates, have signed a petition against the move.
Insert random George Orwell quote here __
It’s a small plot of land that’s never left unguarded. The Sentinels who guard the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier are a small and exclusive group. They stand their post 24 hours a day, 365 days a year regardless of the weather. Hear the Sentinel’s Creed and you’ll know why. DOD video edited by Air Force Staff Sgt. Jared Bunn
Besides Annapolis, the Coast Guard Academy, and the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, the Maritime Administration currently supports several four-year schools that produce merchant and USCGR/USNR officers. These six schools include the California State University Maritime Academy, Maine Maritime Academy, Massachusetts Maritime Academy, Great Lakes Maritime Academy, Texas A&M Maritime Academy, and the State University of New York Maritime College.
However, these schools have long used second- (or third- or fourth-) hand seagoing vessels that in some cases date back to the 1960s and do not reflect any modern merchant vessel afloat.
With that, there are changes afoot.
Behold the National Security Multi-Mission Vessel (NSMV). Note the Seahawk on deck
MARAD last week announced the selection of Philly Shipyard, Inc. of Philadelphia to construct the newest class of training ship; the National Security Multi-Mission Vessel (NSMV), after a decade-long push.
“The shipyard will construct up to five new ships to provide world-class maritime training for America’s future mariners at the state maritime academies. The NSMV will feature numerous instructional spaces and a full training bridge with space for up to 600 cadets to train in a first-rate maritime academic environment at sea. The NSMV will also be available to uniquely support federal government efforts in response to national and international disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes.”
Principle Dimensions
• Length 159.85 m (524’-5”)
• Beam 27.0 m (88’-7”)
• Depth 16.8 m (55’-1.5”)
• Design Draft 6.5 m (21’-4”)
Range
• 11,000+ miles at 18 knots
Propulsion, Speed & Consumption
• Diesel Electric –4 main engines divided
between 2 engine rooms
• Total Installed Power –14,280 kW Main
Engines (four 4,200 kW);
• Plus one, 900 kW
• Full Speed –18 knots with 15% sea
margin –4 engines
• Cruising Speed –12 knots with 2 main
engines in one engine room
• Uni-fuel for simplicity and operation in
the US ECA –MGO only
Accommodation
• Training Ship Mode –600 cadets, 100
officer, faculty, staff & crew
• Surge capacity for Humanitarian
Assistance/Disaster Response missions
• Food Storage for 60 days
• Fresh Water Storage for 14 days
Upon completion, the first NSMV vessel will be delivered to MARAD who will then provide the ship to SUNY Maritime for use as a training ship.
Now to reboot the MSC and get some strategic sealift vessels made in this century on the list.
While the Navy has generally used the M14 and, to a lesser extent, modified M500 shotguns and M16s, as line throwers, the Coast Guard remains old-school. Observe this photo from last month:
Chief Petty Officer Daniel Bonner, a boatswain’s mate aboard the Coast Guard Cutter Munro (WMSL 755), prepares to shoot a line-throwing gun to the crew aboard the Coast Guard Cutter Terrell Horne (WPC 1131) during a towing drill off the coast of Southern California as part of the underway portion of Tailored Ship’s Training Availability (TSTA), Feb. 19, 2020. The multi-week long TSTA consists of drills, inspections, and exercises, assessing and ensuring the cutter’s mission readiness. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Ens. Brooke Harkrader.
Yup, that’s an M1903 Springfield .30-06 bucket gun.
Another shot from a recent exercise with the Cutter Kimble this month.
The USCG has been running these since the 1940s, replacing even older M1871 Springfield .45-70 line throwers, dubbed Coston Shoulder Guns after the company that converted them.
Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Brandon Kittrell inspects the bolt action and slide catch of an M1903 U.S. Springfield Rifle at the Coast Guard Armory in Port Clinton, Ohio, Feb. 18, 2015. The rifle has been modified to shoot a rope to a vessel in distress during an emergency where out boats are unable to get alongside them. (U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Lauren Laughlin)
Every one of these old bucket guns I’ve run across has a serial number that dates to the 1920s when the service picked up several truckloads of them direct from the Army during Prohibition. They were converted in the 1940s after the service picked up newer M1 Garands during WWII.
Talk about getting your money’s worth.
PCU USS Delbert D. Black (DDG-119), a Flt IIA DDG-51-class destroyer in the last stages of her construction at Ingalls, recently got a chance to live fire of her Mk. 45 Mod 4 5-inch/62cal gun for the first time while out on a three day long builder’s sea trials in the Gulf of Mexico.
The released images look great.
“The Navy and our dedicated shipbuilders have continued to make strides towards delivering this exceptional capability to the fleet, and performed well during builder’s trials,” said Capt. Seth Miller, DDG 51 class program manager, Program Executive Office (PEO) Ships. “This ship continues the proud Aegis shipbuilding legacy and will provide the Navy with a 21st-century fighting edge.”
As the vessel is named for the first MCPON, formerly Master Chief Gunner’s Mate (GMCM) Delbert D. Black, the fact that her gunnery department is on point is no doubt welcome news. Of note, Black was aboard the battleship USS Maryland (BB-46) at Pearl Harbor and spent the next 26 years before making MCPON on every type of surface warfare ship imaginable including USS Doyle C. Barnes (DE-353), USS Gardiners Bay (AVP-39), USS Boxer (CVA-21), USS Antietam (CVA-36), USS Brush (DD-745), USS Carpenter (DDE-825), USS Norfolk (DL-1) and USS Springfield (CL-66).
As an interesting contrast shot of DDG-119‘s Mk 45 in relation in size to the Coast Guard’s largest cutter class, I caught this image of Black bow-to-bow with the building Legend-class National Security Cutter USCG Stone (WMSL-758) in the brackish water of the Pascagoula River a few weeks ago. Stone packs a Mk 110 57mm hood ornament, for reference.
Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1946 time 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
Warship Wednesday, Jan 22, 2020: Oh, Mr. Volstead, what have you done?
U.S. Coast Guard Historian’s Office
Here we see, a U.S. Coast Guard Loening OL-5L seaplane flying majestically over a pair of new-built 75-foot “six-bitter” patrol boats, likely around 1927 off Glouchester, Mass. While the Coasties only operated three OL-5s, they went much bigger on the contract for the 75-footers.
The so-called “noble experiment” that was perhaps always doomed to fail, Congressman Andrew Volstead’s championed 18th Amendment, which survived President Woodrow Wilson’s veto to bring about an official prohibition on liquor from sea to shining sea, became the law of the land on 17 January 1920– 100 years ago this month.
However, all it did was spark a new war, the so-called Rum War, which pitted federal law enforcement against often international smugglers and criminal syndicates of all sizes. Increasingly, this forerunner of the War on Drugs became an actual military campaign.
Rum Runners in Canada and in the Bahamas had the cry, “For some, there’s a fortune but others will die, come on load up the ship boys, the Yankees are dry.”
That’s where the Coast Guard came in.
Charged with policing “Rum Row,” the line of booze-laden ships parked just off the international limit with all the best Canadian whiskey, Cuban rum and bottles of European hooch rushed to the thirsty market, the USCG was rapidly expanded to sever the link between this liquor line and coastal bootleggers in fast boats, fishing luggers and skiffs. Some 10 million quarts of liquor left Nassau alone in 1922, headed to points West.
To do this, the service was loaned a whole fleet of mothballed Navy destroyers (20), subchasers (21), and Eagle boats (5) leftover from the Great War as well as being granted a sweeping raft of new construction. Between 1924 and 1926, the USCG doubled in size from 5,900 to 10,000 uniformed personnel, a manning crisis that caused the Coast Guard Academy to switch to a two-year program to speed up the pipeline for new officers.
The largest group of new vessels, at least in terms of hulls and manpower to sail them, were the 203 “cabin cruiser-style” patrol boats that are the subject of our tale.
At 75-feet overall length, these humble craft became known in service as “six-biters.”
“Old 75-foot patrol boat.” Photo No. 34363; photo dated 15 February 1928; photo by Joseph N. Pearce. USCG Historian’s office
Equipped with two 6-cylinder gasoline engines, they could make 15.7 knots with their powerplant wide open and sortie out for about a week or so until their eight-man crew ran out of groceries or the 1,000-gallon fuel tank started sounding hollow.
Initially, they were to be armed with a single 3″/23 caliber gun, considered good enough to fire a warning shot across the bow of a bootlegger. However, to save weight, these patrol craft instead were equipped with a single-shot one-pounder 37mm gun of about 1898 vintage. Nevertheless, the go-to weapons for their crews were small arms.
CG-222
To speed things up, these patrol boats were mass-produced in 1924 and 1925 by nearly 20 yards, both public and private, simultaneously with hull prices running between $18,000 and $26,000 per vessel. Their construction, of white oak frames and keel with fir and yellow pine planking and bulwarks, ensured their short lifespan but quick construction.
CG-283, note her crew hailing a ship forward
They were built to a design finalized by noted yacht maker John Trumpy. With simply too many cutters to name, they were numbered CG-100 through CG-302 and delivered on an average of four to five cutters per week.
Via U.S. Coast Guard Cutters and Craft of WWII by Dr. Robert Schenia.
The boats soon swarmed the coastline from Maine to the Florida Keys, along the Gulf Coast, and from Seattle down to San Diego while others served on the Great Lakes.
Six-Bitters and Destroyers at New London, 1926
SIx-Bitters tied up at Base 7 in Gloucester, 1928, NARA
Camden-produced Six-bitters at Cape May
The renewed offensive on booze escalated as the development forced the slower bootleggers, in other words, the part-timers using trawlers and sailboats, dropped out of the business and left the heavy lifting to professionals, and increasingly armed and squirrely smugglers.
Six-Bitters out of Base 7 at Gloucester, 1928, NARA
Six-Bitters leaving Base 7 at Gloucester, 1928 NARA
In one incident, with the Liberty-engined fast craft Black Duck and the 75-foot cutter CG-290, the bootlegger zigged when they should have zagged while blasting away from the slow patrol boat and got a blast of Lewis gun in the boathouse, killing two rumrunners and wounding another two.
Coast Guard Section Base, East Boston, 1929. Pictured are 75′ cutters (Six Bitters), 125′ cutters (Buck and a Quarters) and the captured rum runner, the Black Duck.
Rum Runner ‘Black Duck’ escorted by Coast Guard boats to Newport, RI harbor after CG-290 fired shots killing two of the crew, January 1930. Photo by Leslie Jones via Boston Public Library, Print Department.
Another incident, between the six-bitter CG-249 and the motorboat V-13997 while en route to Bimini, left the cutter’s skipper, BM Sidney C. Chamberlain, killed in a one-way shootout and two other Coasties wounded.
In a sign of the times, the master of V-139977 who pulled the trigger, James Horace Alderman was convicted of three counts of murder and piracy on the high seas, was captured and two years later was hung in the seaplane hangar at the Fort Lauderdale Coast Guard station. Alderman was the only man ever hung by the organization.
“Fort Lauderdale, Sec. Base Six, Dec. 6, 1926, The Commandant looking over the latest capture.” Photo No. B-6/4, #21; 1926; photographer unknown.
“U.S. Coast Guard 75-ft. Patrol Boat CG-262 towing into San Francisco Harbor her prizes, the tug ELCISCO and barge REDWOOD CITY, seized for violation of U.S. Customs laws.” Photo No. CPI-02-24-27 GEN.; 1927; photographer unknown.
$175,000 in liquor seized in Dorchester Bay by Coast Guard men from Base 5. Brought to US Customs Appraisers’ Stores. 18 Jan 1932. Note the 75, CG-171. Photo by Leslie Jones via Boston Public Library, Print Department.
These cutters of course also contributed to traditional USCG missions such as search and rescue and fisheries enforcement. In fact, once Prohibition was repealed in 1933, it became their primary tasking. This led to 52 of the vessels being quickly passed to the Army, Navy, and USC&GS for use as dispatch boats for coastal defense batteries, district patrol craft (YPs), and survey ships.
Coast Guard boat CG-139 at Boston June 1929, Boston Public Library Leslie Jones Collection
Coast Guard boat CG-242 at Boston 1928, note her 1-pounder. Boston Public Library Leslie Jones Collection
A quarter of very clean Coast Guard 75 footers on the Thames River, New London, CT 1934. Photo by Leslie Jones
Others suffered losses while in service. CG-114 was lost at sea in 1925 only weeks after she was completed. The “Great Miami” hurricane in September 1926 wrecked CG-247 and CG-248. A similar cyclone in 1928 claimed CG-188. CG-111, CG-113, CG-256, and CG-243 were lost in fires, groundings or collisions. C-245 went down in unexpected heavy seas within view of El Morro Fortress in 1935. CG-102, which at the time was serving as YP-5 with the Navy, accidentally caught a practice torpedo in 1938 and sank.
Yet others were sold off for their value as scrap.
By 1941 when the Coast Guard was chopped to the Navy’s service, Only 36 were still on the USCG’s list, although six that had previously been sold to the public were re-acquired and put back to use.
CG-172 at Key West in 1942, note her .50 caliber water-cooled gun in addition to her 1-pdr and dark scheme
As an update with the times and to acknowledge they were intended to fight U-boats and Japanese submarines, the lingering six-bitters picked up a 20mm/80 Oerlikon AAA gun or .50 caliber machine gun forward, and two depth charge racks aft. Likewise, most received QBE sonar listening sets and BK detection radars late in the war. They were used for inshore convoy escort, coastal anti-submarine patrol, and port security duties.
During the war, CG-74327, one of the renumbered six-bitters who started life as CG-211, was sunk in a collision with the Tench-class submarine USS Thornback (SS-418) of Portsmouth in November 1944, claiming the life of BM2 Ireneus K. Augustynowicz. CG-152, as YP-1947, similarly sank in a collision while in Navy service in 1943. CG-267, stationed in Guam in 1941 as YP-16, was scuttled to prevent capture by the Japanese. Sistership CG-275, serving at Guam as YP-17, was scuttled but later salvaged and used by the Japanese.
By 1946, the smattering of six-bitters still in the Navy and USCG service was transferred to MARAD and sold off. Many of the 75-foot craft went on to endure for another couple decades as yachts, fishing vessels, houseboats, and research ships. I cannot find an example of one that was still afloat today.
Still, the legacy of the rowdy wooden six-bitters is today upheld by the Coast Guard’s 87-foot Marine Protector-class patrol boats.
Specs:
(Coast Guard Historian’s Office)
Displacement: 37 tons designed, 42 tons (1945)
Length: 74.9 feet
Beam: 13.75 feet
Draft: 3.6 feet as designed, 5 feet (1945)
Machinery: Sterling 6cyl gas engines, 400 SHP, twin screws
Speed: 15.7 designed, although some made 17 when new.
Crew: 8 as designed, 13 in 1945
Armament:
1 x 37mm 1-pounder as designed, small arms
1x 20mm/80cal and/or 12.7mm machine gun, 2 depth charge racks in WWII.
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