WINTER CRUISING

Photo: U.S. Coast Guard
In 1919 and 1920, the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Manning conducted "Winter Cruising" between Great Egg Harbor, New Jersey, and Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. Cutters on the patrol were at sea almost continuously from December to March. The practice dated to 1832, when U.S. Treasury Secretary Louis McLane issued written orders to revenue cutters. Thus was born today's Coast Guard search and rescue mission.

VESSEL SAFETY

Photo: U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary

The U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary's courtesy vessel safety checks and the U.S. Coast Guard's sweeping maritime safety duties trace their origins to a series of accidents in the 1800s involving a then revolutionary technology - steam power.

In the wake of series of deadly boiler fires and explosions, Congress passed the Steam Boat Inspection Act of 1838 to "provide better security of the lives of passengers on board vessels propelled in whole or in part by steam."

Modifications to that early congressional action - and mounting safety issues - led to the creation of the U.S. Steamboat Inspection Service in 1871. That agency's successor was fully integrated into the Coast Guard in 1946.

Today's auxiliary's Vessel Safety Check effort was established in 1947 to augment the Coast Guard's expanded safety duties. A safety check is voluntary and free of charge for recreational boaters and ensures a boat is in compliance with federal and state boating laws. Annual decals are awarded for boats meeting requirements. 

In addition to safety checks, the auxiliary's "V-Directorate" coordinates the Program Visitors initiative, a corps of "safety ambassadors." 

The auxiliary offers safe boating training, too, through its Public Education Directorate, the "E-Directorate." Courses range from boating fundamentals to advanced topics. Virtual and in classroom settings. 

Additionally, the auxiliary's "P-Directorate" promotes maritime safety.

On a much, much larger scale, today's active duty and reserve U.S. Coast Guard personnel inspect U.S.-flagged commercial vessels and ensure compliance with domestic regulations and international standards - including ship materiel condition and construction.

The Coast Guard also sets standards for maritime safety equipment.

History teaches that progress often comes at a cost.

Between 1830 and 1840, 1,733 people died in steamboat explosions, fires and accidents, according to a Dec. 21, 1840 report to the 26th U.S. Congress, second session, the deadliest of which was the loss of 150 people aboard the steamer Lexington, off Long island, on Jan. 13, 1840.

On Oct. 23, 1844, the three boilers propelling the steamboat Lucy Walker exploded on the Ohio River near New Albany, Indiana, with an estimated death toll of 100 or more. 

The worst was yet to come.

On April 27, 1865, three of four boilers on the side-wheeled steamboat Sultana exploded on the Mississippi River near Memphis, claiming 1,167 lives - the worst maritime disaster in U.S. history. Designed for 376 passengers, Sultana was carrying 2,128 souls, most of whom were Union soldier released by the Confederates at the end of the Civil War. The likely cause of the disaster was faulty boiler repair.

This huge tragedy - and others on a smaller but still deadly scale - illustrated the shortcomings of early laws and safety efforts. 

On the engineering side, the physics and mechanics of boilers were not well understood in the early and mid-1800s, and designers did not know the tensile, compressive, or shear strengths of metals. On the political side, Congress was hesitant to enact laws infringing on state's rights and commerce.

The 1871 law creating the Steamboat Inspection Service established a Supervisory Inspector General, extended licensing requirements for masters and chief mates, provided for revocation of licenses, authorized periodic inspection, and granted officials the authority to prescribe nautical rules of the road.

DOGS OF WAR

 

Photos: U.S. Coast Guard (middle), documentary film screen shots (top and bottom) 

The U.S. Coast Guard trained 3,000 "War Dogs" for World War Two beach patrol duty as enemy submarines prowled our shores.

The canines were subject to strict physical standards, age limits and rigorous drills with their Coast Guard handlers at training schools at Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, and Hilton Head, South Carolina.

The dogs were subjected to a seven to 10-day orientation followed two weeks of basic training. "Heel" was the first command they learned followed by "sit," "down," "cover," "stay," "jump," "get him" and "let go," according to the U.S. Coast Guard at War, Volume XVII. 

Handlers took complete charge of the dogs, from feeding to petting - and no one else was permitted to befriend the four-legged Coasties. Once trained, the dogs patrolled at night on leash.

As the threat of invasion ebbed, the Coast Guard war dog program wound down, with the schools closing in 1943.

AUXILIARY WW2 RESCUES

Potrero del Llano 

Empire Mica

By Vinny Del Giudice

During World War Two, U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary patrols - augmenting cutters and shoreside lifesaving stations - rescued crews of merchant vessels torpedoed by U-boats off the Atlantic Coast.

In two notable responses, auxiliarists saved 22 crewmembers of the burning Mexican tanker Potrero del Llano off Port Everglades on May 14, 1942, according to the official report "U.S. Coast Guard at War, Volume XIX.".

Weeks later, on June 29, 1942, auxiliary vessels rescued 13 members of the sunken British tanker SS Empire Mica in a lifeboat off Florida.

During the first half of 1942, U-boats sank 240 Allied freighters, tankers and escorts off U.S. shores – a loss of 1.25 million gross registered tons, according to the Navy Times - and many merchant mariners died.

The coastal region from Canada to Jacksonville, Florida, out to 200 miles, was officially known as the Eastern Sea Frontier. The Gulf Sea Frontier included the Florida coast and Gulf of Mexico.

The treacherous waters off the Carolinas were informally dubbed "Torpedo Alley." U-boats sank 400 of ships there during the entire war, claiming 5,000 lives, according to Wikipedia.

The then remote coast off the lighthouse at Cape Canaveral, Florida, was a favorite Nazi hunting ground, and there was U-boat activity in the Gulf of Mexico, with the sinking of a passenger liner off Louisiana.

Ships silhouetted by coastal city lights made easy targets and military demands for blackouts met local resistance, especially in resort cities.     

According to the research paper "Bravo Zero: The Guard Auxiliary in World War II" by C. Kay Larson, what's believed to be the largest wartime rescue by the Coast Guard Auxiliary and Coast Guard Reserve occurred on July 8, 1942. The American tanker J. A. Moffett Jr. was torpedoed eight miles off the Florida Keys and 30 or more mariners were brought to shore in a crammed and overloaded boat.

The "Bravo Zero" research paper also notes that during a two-week period in the spring of 1942, the auxiliary rescued 151 survivors of U-boat attacks.

An auxiliary boat was also credited with saving the sole survivor of the sinking of the steam tanker W.D. Anderson. The crewman dove overboard from the burning ship's fantail near Jupiter Light, Florida, on Feb. 23, 1942.

To say U-boats were swarming the Atlantic coast was no exaggeration in the early days of the war. On the evening of Jan. 14, 1942, the commander of U-123 observed Manhattan’s illuminated skyline from an entrance to New York Harbor called the Lower Bay.

“I cannot describe the feeling with words, but it was unbelievably beautiful and great,” Captain Reinhard Hardegen wrote in a memoir. “I would have given away a kingdom for this moment if I had one. We were the first to be here, and for the first time in this war a German soldier looked upon the coast of the U.S.A.”

It was Hardegan who claimed the first pray of the German offensive against North America when on Jan. 11, 1942 U-123 sank the British freighter SS Cyclops south of Nova Scotia with the loss of more than 80 lives.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt called the U-boats "rattlesnakes of the sea."

To counter the U-boats, the U.S. Navy established the Tenth Fleet to gather intelligence and coordinate anti-submarine forces. The Tenth Fleet had no ships of its own - just desks, telephones and files at the old Navy Department building on Constitution Avenue in Washington, DC. And it was a success.

Of the 1,162 U-boats constructed for World War Two, 785 were destroyed and the remainder surrendered or scuttled, according to britannica.com. An estimated 28,000 U-boat crewmembers died. 

The U.S. Merchant Marine lost 8,651 men during the war, with one in 26 merchant mariners dying vs one in 114 members of combined U.S. naval forces, including the Coast Guard, according to Wikipedia.

W.D. Anderson crewman rescued by U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary boat in 1942.

DESTROYER BOOZE PATROL

Photo: U.S. Coast Guard
Destroyer McCall arriving in Boston Harbor in 1928.

On Prohibition patrol on Jan. 14, 1928, the U.S. Coast Guard destroyer McCall came upon an unusual sight - a rum-running schooner ablaze off Nantucket carrying an illicit cargo.

The Gaspé Fisherman's crew had abandoned ship in dories. McCall retrieved the smugglers and then turned to rake their flame-gutted derelict with gunfire, sending it to the bottom, the Naval History and Heritage Command said. 

The British-flagged schooner operated out of Nova Scotia, and "for three years, McCall and her compatriots monitored this well-known rumrunner," the command said. The crew was interrogated by immigration officers while in custody.

On the day of the fire, Gaspé Fisherman was said to be carrying champagne. 

The McCall, designated CGD-14, and 30 other mothballed U.S. Navy destroyers were loaned to the Coast Guard during the Rum War. President Calvin Coolidge's frugal administration considered refurbishing the vessels more expedient than building new cutters to squeeze smugglers.

The destroyers underwent substantial repair and restoration at the Navy yards in Philadelphia and New York before being pressed into anti-smuggling service. They had seen considerable action during World War I and were neglected and rusting while in reserve status.

The commander of one of the destroyers was quoted as describing his loaner as an "appalling mass of junk."

The service also received 200 cabin cruisers and 100  small boats - generally new. 

Coast Guardsmen used to cutter duty underwent a crash course in learning the ins and outs of destroyer operations. Most enlisted members assigned to cutters were new recruits as the Coast Guard staffed up to enforce prohibition laws. It was strictly a seat-of-the-pants show.

The first to join the Coast Guard fleet was the Beale in 1924. It was designated CGD-9.

The destroyers were capable of running at more than 25 knots. however, bootleggers could outrace them with more maneuverable small boats.

"The destroyers’ mission, therefore, was to picket the larger supply ships ("mother ships") and prevent them from off-loading their cargo onto the smaller, speedier contact boats that ran the liquor into shore." the U.S. Coast Guard Historian's Office said. 

They were scrapped after Prohibition ended.

Photo: U.S. Coast Guard
Beale, the first destroyer to enter U.S. Coast Guard service. 

On Jan. 19, 1919, Congress ratified the 18th Amendment, banning the manufacture, sale and transport of alcoholic beverages. On Oct. 28, 1919, Congress passed the Volstead Act, delegating responsibility for policing Prohibition to the Treasury Department, effective Jan. 16, 1920. The U.S. Coast Guard operated under the auspices of the Treasury at the time, as did the Prohibition Bureau.

AUXILIARY AT TEXAS CITY

Photo: U.S. Coast Guard 

U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Iris, a lighthouse tender, at Texas City Disaster.

Photo: Texas State Library
Aerial view illustrates scale of disaster.

Photo: Texas History
U.S. Coast Guardsmen work water turret atop cutter at Texas City.

By Vinny Del Giudice

The U.S. Coast Guard cutter Iris raced to Texas City, Texas, after the SS Grandcamp, a freighter laden with ammonium nitrate fertilizer, caught fire and exploded at her berth on the morning of April 16, 1947 - leveling the industrial port and killing more than 500 people.

U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary flotillas from Galveston and Houston augmented active duty Coast Guard personnel, with 40 members of the Galveston flotilla assigned to duty aboard cutter Iris during the course of the recovery effort, according to a May 1, 1948, report by U.S. Coast Guard Headquarters, Washington, D.C. 

The community's first line of defense was obliterated when the blast, which erupted at 9:15 a.m., killed 27 members of Texas City Volunteer Fire Department. Three volunteer firefighters from Texas City Heights also died in the explosion.

The fire alarm was turned in about an hour earlier, and firefighters had stretched hose lines and played water on the freighter as it belched smoke in shades of yellow, orange and gold. 

Cutter Iris arrived at the Texas City waterfront at 10:40 a.m. and took on the injured and dead. The Galveston auxiliarists also manned smaller Coast Guard boats, "increasing the personnel on these boats to official strength," according to a Coast Guard investigation of the disaster, dated Sept. 24, 1947.

The Houston auxiliarists provided their personal vessels for relief work.

Texas City's telephone operators were on strike that morning, causing a delay in summoning help from other communities. As word spread, fire engines, ambulances, doctors, nurses and morticians answered. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers responded, too, with stores of relief supplies and a field kitchen.

Associated Press reporter William C. Barnard described Texas City as "a city of flames, torn steel, and smoking rubble, a city where the dead are uncounted and the living are too dazed and weary to cry." The United Press said "no casualty figure could be much better than a guess" in the immediate aftermath.
At 1:10 a.m. the next day, there was another explosion, this time aboard the freighter SS High Flyer, damaged in the initial blast and also carrying ammonium nitrate.
The cutter Iris (WLB-395) was a lighthouse tender commissioned in 1944. Iris served Galveston - about 15 miles from Texas City - from 1944 until 1972 when it was assigned to Astoria, Oregon.

 In 1987, Iris responded to another disaster of historic proportions - the grounding of the oil tanker Exxon Valdez in Prince William Sound, Alaska, according to the U.S.  Maritime Administration. Iris also responded to a 1970 oil rig fire in the Gulf of Mexico, southeast of Galveston. 
  

Photo: Texas History
U.S. Coast Guard tugboat fights fires at Texas City Disaster in April 1947.

Photo: IAFF Local 1259 Texas City firefighters, the first line of defense, dockside to SS Grandcamp.

Photo: Texas History View of Texas City blast from Galveston, about 15 miles away.

Photo: Texas History S.S. Grandcamp ablaze moments before catastrophe.

Photo: Moore Memorial Public Library Ruins of the Monsanto Company building near Texas City docks. Monsanto was a chemical manufacturer.

Photo: IAFF 1259 Firefighters from Houston arrive in Texas City.

Photo: Moore Memorial Public Library Aerial view of the Port of Texas City before the disaster.

KEEP CALM. I'M A COASTIE.

Photo: National Archives

The U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary is the volunteer civilian branch of the U.S. Coast Guard with flotillas from Maine to Saipan as well as land-locked posts, such as Colorado.

It was established June 23, 1939 as the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve. On Feb. 19, 1941, the service adopted its current name when a separate Coast Guard military reserve was established in the buildup to World War Two. Commandant Russell R. Waesche was instrumental in the creation of the reserve and the auxiliary.
 
The U.S. Coast Guard, itself, is the nation’s oldest continuously operating naval service, created by Congress as the Revenue-Marine on Aug. 4 1790, at the request of Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton to collect customs duties. Its name was changed to the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service in the late 1800s.

Through a merger of the Revenue Cutter Service and the U.S. Life-Saving Service, the modern Coast Guard was established Jan. 28, 1915 as a humanitarian, safety and security service. Cutters also played a role in every major U.S. war since 1790. "Coasties" landed Army troops at Normandy, and Marines at Iwo Jima and Okinawa during World War Two.

The U.S. Lighthouse Service merged into the Coast Guard in 1939. The Bureau of Marine Inspection and Navigation - formerly the Steamboat Inspection Service - joined in 1942.

The first commandant of the combined Coast Guard was Ellsworth Price Bertholf, who also served as captain-commandant of the Revenue Cutter Service. He retired in 1919.

Today, the Coast Guard consists of an active duty and reserve force augmented by civil service employees and the auxiliary. It maintains a fleet of coastal and seagoing cutters, patrol ships, buoy tenders, tugs, icebreakers, small boats, specialized craft, helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft.

Auxiliary members staff their personal vessels and aircraft for patrols. They also participate in a variety of other activities, from disaster response specialists to Coast Guard-trained culinary specialists and vessel examiners - among others.

During World War Two, volunteers performed coastal defense, search and rescue and port security. After the war, they focused on safety patrols, public education and vessel examination. In 1996, Congress passed legislation expanding auxiliary’s role to assist in any Coast Guard mission, except direct law enforcement and military operations, as authorized by the commandant.

The Denver flotilla and other Colorado auxiliary units have provided personnel for Coast Guard hurricane relief and recovery efforts in Louisiana and Texas, and supported the Department of Homeland Security on the U.S.-Mexico border.

On the auxiliary's 85th anniversary in June 2024, U.S. Coast Guard Commandant Linda Fagan said the service's "steadfast volunteerism has helped the Coast Guard achieve mission success since 1939."

AUXILIARY U-BOAT ENCOUNTERS

Photo said to be U-333

Editor's Note: The U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary helped patrol our shores in World War Two as German U-boats terrorized shipping lanes. This is a fascinating excerpt from the John A, Tilley's book “The United States Coast Guard Auxiliary: A History, 1939-1999."

By John A. Tilley

Actual encounters with Nazi U-boats during World War Two attained a status in U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary lore similar to sightings of the Loch Ness Monster.

The 45-foot cruiser Diane, owned by Mr. Willard Lewis, spotted a submarine late one night off Hillsboro Light, on the east coast of Florida. Lewis and his single crewman looked at each other, simultaneously shouted "Let's go," and steered for the enemy. Asked later what he hoped to accomplish by ramming a steel submarine with a wooden motorboat, Lewis explained, “I aimed at her conning tower, . . . and I might have messed up something." The Diane missed the U-boat by about forty feet.

Shortly thereafter Lewis took command of the 40-foot cabin cruiser JayTee, patrolling out of Ft. Lauderdale. His crew consisted of a character named "Uncle Bill," whose last name no one knew. On the morning of May 6, 1942, Lewis got orders via radio to search for survivors from a tanker that had just been torpedoed. [The American Petroleum Transport Company's steam tanker Halsey]. Before the Jay-Tee could reach the reported position, it sighted a U-boat wallowing on the surface. It probably was U-333, which was trying to repair a damaged hydroplane after an encounter with two Coast Guard cutters and a destroyer.

With the Jay-Tee in hot pursuit (despite the fact that its armament consisted of a Colt .45 pistol), the U-boat tried to dive, but porpoised to the surface. It submerged again, and Lewis began to circle, wondering what he should do next. Suddenly there was a sickening crash and the Jay-Tee rose several feet out of the water. Lewis and Uncle Bill looked over the side and discovered that the U-boat was surfacing directly beneath them. After a few seconds it dived again, leaving the Jay-Tee with a cracked keel and a streak of grey paint on its bottom.

The Germans apparently regarded the patrolling yachts and motorboats as a nuisance (any boat with a radio could report a submarine's position, thereby robbing it of the element of surprise), but not much of a threat. One U-boat supposedly surfaced deliberately alongside a converted fishing boat of the Coastal Picket Force. The German captain emerged onto his bridge and, in perfect English, shouted "Get the hell out of here, you guys! Do you want to get hurt? Now, scram!"

ALL HANDS - PART 2

Members of the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary in Colorado conduct Maritime Observation Mission Patrols on boats, PWCs and paddle craft on lakes and reservoirs.

 

Photo: US Coast Guard Petty Officer 1st Class Nick Ameen. Franz Azuolas, a U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliarist, handles a line during helicopter operations training off the coast of Atlantic City, New Jersey, on Aug. 7, 2013.

Photo: U.S. Coast Guard
U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliarists Robert Colby and Lee Rieser guarding perimeter around burning oil tanker Jupiter on Sept. 16, 1990 on the Saginaw River at Bay City, Michigan. Colby and his wife, Jean, took five members of Jupiter's crew aboard their 21-foot console and provided first aid. They were awarded the Coast Guard's Gold Livesaving Medal for their valiant service.

hoto: U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary members spent the weekend of April 23-24, 2022 attending culinary training aboard the Barque Eagle at Coast Guard Station New London, Connecticut. The Auxiliary Culinary Assistance (AUXCA) program enhances mission readiness by providing food service support to active duty and auxiliary units.

Photo: PA3 Veronica Bandrowsky Auxiliarist David Martinez of Flotilla 21 aboard U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Point Brower. Martinez and other Auxiliarists took turns as In-port Officer of the Day of the 82-foot cutter at Station San Francisco on Sept. 3, 2002.

Photo: US Coast Guard Auxiliarist Victor Connell, a physician, examines an active-duty member at U.S. Coast Guard Training Center Petaluma.

On shore patrol in Colorado. No job too small for hard-working auxiliarists.

Photo: U.S. Coast Guard Michael Kappas (foreground) and Rusty Pumphrey, along with other auxiliarists, augmented U.S. Coast Guard active duty and reserve members during Hurricane Harvey in September 2017.

Photo: U.S. Coast Guard Chief Tom Sperduto U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliarist Anthony Schwally on radio watch at Long Island's U.S. Coast Guard station Eatons Neck on Jan. 10, 2007.

"Clean, Drain, Dry" just doesn't apply to kayaks, canoes and other vessels, but to personal equipment too. District 8 Western Rivers Paddlecraft Coordinator Darrel Kerr demonstrates at Cherry Creek Reservoir in Colorado

Auxiliarist Linda Parker installed as vice commander of Denver Flotilla 084-o1-04 in 2022. District 8 Commodore Jeff Geddes presenting.

Military Child Month is celebrated in April.