'HELL ROARING' MIKE

Photo: NOAA

Hoisting an antlered and arguably confused cargo aboard a revenue cutter

Photo: U.S. Coast Guard

"Hell Roaring Mike" Healy posing with reindeer

By Vinny Del Giudice

They called him "Hell Roaring Mike" Healy - a feisty captain in the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service who patrolled the forbidding Alaskan frontier during the late 1800s. "Reindeer Mike" may have been more fitting.

The cutter service, a forerunner of the Coast Guard, almost solely provided for the health and welfare of Alaska's people on behalf of the federal government from the time the future state was purchased from Russia in 1867 to the establishment of a formal territorial government in 1912.

Commanding the cutter Bear, the hard-drinking Healy won the admiration of natives and settlers for his toughness, practicality and devotion to duty. He wasn't a traditional officer and gentlemen, though, as his "Hell Roaring Mike" moniker illustrated, having once turned to canon fire during a hostage taking.

According the National Archives, a New York newspaper described the captain as "a good deal more distinguished . . . in the waters of the far Northwest than any president of the United States or any potentate of Europe. . . . If you should ask in the Arctic Sea, Who is the greatest man in America?' the instant answer would be, Why, Mike Healy.'" 

In perhaps his greatest humanitarian accomplishment, Healy - at the urging of a missionary named Sheldon Jackson - helped avert famine in one locale, using his revenue cutter to import reindeer from Siberia to feed and cloth native Alaskans whose fishing and hunting stocks had been depleted by commercial interests.

The reindeer also helped expand industry and - to some extent - transportation, too. Via sled of course.

It was the start of something big. The Revenue Cutter Service brought in hundreds more reindeer over the years - and they, of course, multiplied naturally - providing a lifeline for Alaskan society and a foundation for economic development, thanks to the foresight of "Hell Roaring Mike" Healy.

BERING SEA PATROL

Photos: National Archives

Photo: Wikipedia

Photo: University of Alaska Farbanks

Native Alaskans dancing for the crew and the camera aboard the U.S. Revenue Cutter Bear, assigned to the Bering Sea Patrol.


By Vinny Del Giudice

The U.S. Revenue Cutter Service loosely governed much of Alaska after the 1867 purchase from Russia - its cutters deterring poachers, its officers acting as a judiciary, its shipboard surgeons caring for the infirm in scattered settlements.

This commitment to humanitarianism was called the Bering Sea Patrol.

Alaska was considered a federal district until the 20th Century. A far-flung work in progress. Official territorial status was finally conferred in 1912. The U.S. Treasury Department, which operated the cutter service, was tapped to collect revenue in the interim and its ships performed varied duties in the wilderness along the way - from the mundane to the dramatic. The federal capital was at Sitka, today home to a Coast Guard station.

In 1897, in one of the most remarkable feats in Alaska's history, members of the crew of the Revenue Cutter Bear embarked on a 1,500-mile, three-month trek by land to deliver provisions to whaling ships trapped by ice at Point Barrow. In another sterling performance, cutter Captain "Hell Raising" Mike Healy went to aid of natives facing starvation, importing reindeer from Siberia at the urging of a local missionary.

Day-t0-day, the cutter and crews of the Bering Sea Patrol chased down seal poachers crossing over from Russia, protected fisheries, operated as dockside courthouses, offered food and opened sickbays to native Alaskans and mariners. They policed villages, stopped smugglers, confiscated bootlegger liquor, conducted scientific research, collected navigational data, mapped the coastline and scouted potential sites for lighthouses and coaling stations.

The parent Treasury Department's commitment to the vast land mass continued when the Revenue Cutter Service was merged into the Coast Guard with the U.S. Life-Saving Service in 1915. Heroic Coast Guardsmen went to the aid of Alaskan families devastated by the flu pandemic of 1918-1919, buried the dead and established an orphanage. Life-saving stations protected shipping. Early wireless enhanced communications.

Alaska achieved statehood in 1959 and today the Coast Guard's 17th District encompasses the state - maintaining a major air installation at Kodiak Island as well as other outposts, and protecting more than 3.8 million square miles and a tidal shoreline of 47,000 miles. Yes 47,000 miles - more than all the lower 48 states. The mission remains wide-ranging.

Image: U.S. Coast Guard


CUTTER TAHOMA

Photo: NOAA

While on Bering Sea patrol, the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Tahoma ran aground on an uncharted rock off the Aleutian Islands on Sept. 20, 1914, according to the Coast Guard Historian's Office. "The crew took to her boats and were later rescued by the steamer Cordova and the Coast and Geodetic Survey steamer Patterson," the historian's office said. There were no serious injuries.


REVENUE CUTTER PERRY

The U.S. Revenue Cutter Perry ran ground in Alaska's Pribilof Islands on July 27, 1910, and all hands were saved.


PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE

Photo: U.S. Public Health Service

Circa 1915: "Public Health Service officers aboard the Coast Guard Cutter Bear. Since 1879 medical officers of the Service have been assigned to Coast Guard vessels. Many of the early assignments were on expeditions to Alaska, the Arctic, and on training cruises from the Coast Guard Academy. The Bear was built in Scotland in 1873 and was especially designed for navigating through ocean ice. After being acquired by the Federal Government in 1884, the Bear served in the Arctic for nearly 40 years on various rescue, assistance, investigation, and patrol missions" - U.S. Public Health Service

BREECHES BUOY

Photos: Gendisasters, U.S. Coast Guard, Wikipedia, Mendocino Coast Model Railroad & Historical Society

The U.S. Life-Saving Service, a forerunner of the Coast Guard, perfected use of the Breeches Buoy rope system to transfer people from ship to shore in an emergency, such as a ship stranded on the rocks.

Think of the Breeches Buoy as a souped-up life ring on a clothes line with pulleys, as depicted in the bottom illustration. The rescue line to the ship - called the "shot line" - was launched by a small canon on the beach called a Lyle Gun. The second illustration sketches the complete Coast Guard system.

In the third image, Winslow Homer's  1884 painting "Life Line" depicts a breeches buoy rescue. The top image, meantime, shows the March 3, 1947 rescue of the crew of the collier SS Oakey L. Alexander by Coast Guardsmen at High Head, Maine. 

The original rescue rope system was developed by British Captain William Manley in the early 1800s.

Breeches Buoy rescues were common along the treacherous Outer Banks of North Carolina, according to the National Park Service at Cape Hatteras. 

"It was every ship captain’s responsibility to have his vessel and crew prepared in the event of a disaster and instructions were distributed that explained what to do in a rescue attempt by the US Life-Saving Service," the park service said in an online article.

"The most important of thing those on the wreck had to know was to pull in the shot line when it reached their vessel. The lifesavers attached another line with a pulley on it to their end of the shot line but they could do nothing more until this was pulled out by those on the wreck and secured to a mast.

"There were times when the captain or the men on the wreck did not meet this critical responsibility due to fatigue or ignorance. Many shipwreck tragedies could have been averted if only this necessity had been realize."

There were countless just-in-time rescues over the decades.

The U.S. Navy submarine H-3 ran aground in heavy fog at Humboldt Bay, California, on Dec. 16, 1916. It was a very close call for the crew in rough seas. Gas had built up in the engine room. Thankfully,  the officers and enlisted men were brought to shore via a Breeches Buoy operated by U.S. Coast Guardsmen from the Humboldt Bay Lifesaving Station, according to Wikipedia and a dispatch from the International News Service.

PETE THE POOCH

 

"Pete the Pooch, Able Seaman, isn’t like other dogs. To him a bollard serves one purpose. About it you make a line fast when a ship is being moored. Pete, LeHavre’s mooring expert, knows all about ships and the way to moor them. He’s handled many vessels in his war-time life, such as this Coast Guard 83 foot cutter about to be tied up. Pete goes into the sea after the line, brings it to ashore and then makes the vessel fast. It’s all in the day’s work of a sea-dog" - U.S. Coast Guard photos and caption, World War Two

COLLEEN CAIN

Photo: U.S. Coast Guard

By Vinny Del Giudice

On Jan. 7, 1982, Lieutenant Colleen A. Cain, the U.S. Coast Guard's first female helicopter pilot, died in the crash of an HH-52 chopper at Hawaii's Molokai Ridge, responding to an emergency at sea. 

Cain, 29, was the co-pilot of the orange-and-white craft, CG-1420. She received her wings in 1979 as Coast Guard Aviator #1988. 

The pilot, Lieutenant Commander H. W. Johnson, 34, and a crewman, Aviation Machinist Mate 2nd Class David L. Thompson, 23, also died responding to the distress call from the Pan Am, a 74-foot fishing boat taking on water off Maui.

Weather conditions were abysmal.

Their helicopter lifted off at 4 a.m. into torrential rains and heavy winds from Air Station Barbers Point. Radio contact was lost about 5:15 a.m. The wreckage was located that afternoon on a steep slope at an elevation of 2,200 feet. Cain and Johnson were pinned in the wreckage. Thompson's body was located nearby. 

The fishing boat was assisted by others and towed to shore.

Coast Guardsman Michael Fratta, who was on duty at the air station, recalled that day in a post on the Airborne Public Safety Association website, written in 2010:

"I was a non-rate seaman standing security watch the evening of her final flight. My recollection of the weather that night is still vivid in my mind. The winds were howling and it was pouring rain, as they taxied to the heli-pad for takeoff. I could hardly believe the crew was prepared to take their single engine helicopter offshore in these extreme conditions."

In 1981, Cain, who hailed from Burlington, Iowa, was awarded the Coast Guard's Achievement Medal for resuscitating a 3-year-old boy injured in a boating accident, according to a dispatch by United Press International.

Johnson, of Orange, California, was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, seldom given in peacetime, for a 1976 rescue, UPI said. Thompson was from Sequim, Washington.