United States Revenue Cutter Service Ship Pickering, later renamed to USS Pickering U.S. Navy Historical Center Photograph- -Released
1799 USRC Pickering (70 men) (having been transferred to the US Navy 20 May) captured the French privateer L’Egypte Conquiste (250 men) on this date during the Quasi-War with France.
1848 Captain Douglas Ottinger, USRM, was designated by the Secretary of the Treasury to supervise the construction of the first Life-Saving stations and the equipment and boats to be placed at them.
USRC Eagle under full sail, in a painting by Patrick O’Brien. She was a topsail schooner, standard in revenue cutters of her period.
1814 The crew of USRC Eagle, which had been driven ashore near Negros Head, New York in an encounter with the British brig HMS Dispatch, dragged the cutter’s guns up a bluff in an effort to continue the battle. The New York Evening Post gave an account of what happened next to the out-gunned cutter and its crew:
“During the engagement between the Cutter EAGLE and the enemy, the following took place which is worthy of notice. Having expended all the wadding of the four-pounders on the hill, during the warmest of the firing, several of the crew volunteered and went on board the cutter to obtain more. At this moment the masts were shot away, when the brave volunteers erected a flag upon her stern; this was soon shot away, but was immediately replaced by a heroic tar, amidst the cheers of his undaunted comrades, which was returned by a whole broadside from the enemy. When the crew of the Cutter had expended all their large shot and fixed ammunition, they tore up the log book to make cartridges and returned the enemy’s small shot which lodged in the hull. The Cutter was armed with only 6 guns, 4 four-pounders and 2 twos with plenty of muskets and about 50 men. The enemy being gone and provisions scarce the volunteers from this city left Captain Lee and his crew and arrived here on Thursday evening the 13th instant, in a sloop from Long Island. . .We have since learned that Captain Lee succeeded in getting off the Cutter and was about to remove her to a place of safety when the enemy returned and took possession of her. She was greatly injured, but it is expected that the enemy will be able to refit her to annoy us in the sound.”
Crews assigned to Coast Guard Air Station Sitka, the Coast Guard cutter Douglas Denman, Sitka Mountain Rescue and the Sitka Fire Department participate in the first day of a weeklong search and rescue exercise in Sitka, Alaska, May 9, 2023.
1977 The Coast Guard commissioned AIRSTA Sitka.
1989 An earthquake registering 7.1 on the Richter Scale hit Northern California, killing 67 people. Coast Guard units assisted state and local agencies in rescue and relief operations.
Types of Naval Mines
2014 U.S. and Canadian military personnel and government civilian agencies participated in Exercise Frontier Sentinel 14 (FS 14) from October 17-24, 2014. This full-scale exercise is the final phase of a three-part scenario that focuses on maritime homeland security. FS 14 was a combined U.S. Coast Guard Atlantic Area, Canadian Joint Task Force Atlantic, and U.S. Navy Fleet Forces Command exercise designed to test the coordinated response against a maritime threat to North American ports. “This exercise tests the ability of U.S. Coast Guard, Navy, Canadian forces, and civilian agencies to successfully respond to a complex maritime threat to the homeland,” said VADM William Lee, Coast Guard Atlantic Area commander. “Exercises such as Frontier Sentinel allow us to strengthen partnerships with our Canadian and Navy counterparts in a realistic setting, which will enable us to improve our interoperability, so we are prepared to respond to any and all maritime threats to the homeland.” Phases one and two of FS 14 occurred in August and September and focused on maritime threats in the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, including Halifax, Nova Scotia. Phase three of the exercise will focus on the coordinated detection, assessment and response to a mine threat in the Delaware Bay. The exercise is limited to specific areas in Delaware Bay and should not significantly impact vessel traffic or bay operations. Frontier Sentinel is an annual exercise series, initiated in 2006, established to improve the collaborative information exchange, planning and coordinated response between operational-level commands of the Tri-Party, which consists of U.S. Coast Guard, U. S. Fleet Forces Command, and Canadian Joint Task Force Atlantic, in response to security and defense threats in the maritime domain.
030321-N-4655M-029 The Arabian Gulf (Mar. 21, 2003) — Coalition Navy Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team members inspect camouflaged mines hidden inside oil barrels on the deck of an Iraqi shipping barge. The shipping barge was intercepted and inspected by Coalition Maritime Interdiction Operation (MIO) and Vessel Board Search and Seizure (VBSS) teams from the patrol craft USS Chinook (PC 9) in the early hours of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Operation Iraqi Freedom is the multi-national coalition effort to liberate the Iraqi people, eliminate Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and end the regime of Saddam Hussein. U.S. Navy photo by PhotographerÕs Mate 2nd Class Richard Moore. (RELEASED)
2015 The Coast Guard issued a certificate of inspection to the LNG-powered M/V Isla Bella. The 736-foot, 3,100 TEU, U.S.-flagged vessel is the first container ship in the world capable of operating on liquefied natural gas. Isla Bella was the first of two Marlin-class containerships built by NASSCO in San Diego for operation by TOTE Services in the Jones Act trade between Jacksonville, Florida and Puerto Rico.
1790 A contract was signed for the construction of the “first” of the 10 revenue cutters, Massachusetts, at Newburyport, Massachusetts.
1952 A Merchant Marine Detail was established at Yokohama, Japan to handle increased merchant marine problems occurring there as a result of the Korean Conflict.
Pan Am Flight 6 ditching in the Pacific Ocean, photographed from US Coast Guard Cutter Pontchartrain. Note that engine #4 appears to be feathered.
1956CGC Pontchartrain, on Ocean Station November, rescued the passengers and crew of Pan American Clipper Flight 6 after the clipper ditched between Honolulu and San Francisco. All 31 aboard survived with only minor injuries.
PanAmFlight6-Ditches. US Coast Guard Photo
USCGC Storis, a Arctic Patrol Cutter.
1992 CGC Storis became the first foreign military ship to visit the Russian port of Petropavlosk since the Crimean War. During the goodwill visit, Storis conducted joint operations with the Russian icebreaker Volga.
1846USRC McLane ran aground while attempting to tow three ships across the bar of the River Alvarado during the Mexican War in support of U.S. operations there. (McLane was refloated. This was part of the First Battle of Tabasco. Also involved was USRC Forward. McLane and Forward subsequently blockaded the port. Eleven cutters were assigned to cooperate with Army and Navy in the Mexican War. Cutters McLane, Legare, Woodbury, Ewing, Forward, and Van Buren were assigned to the Army. Cutters Wolcott, Bibb, Morris, and Polk were assigned to the Navy.)
1966 Coast Guard Port Security & Waterways Detail arrived for service in Vietnam.
2001 President George W. Bush announced that a letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle was laced with anthrax. This followed a number of other anthrax attacks in Florida and New York. The EPA requested Coast Guard assistance. Members of the Atlantic Strike Team (AST) deployed to Washington, D.C., while Gulf Strike Team (GST) members were deployed to Florida. Strike team members conducted entries into the affected areas, collected samples, and assisted in the cleanup of those areas. The AST members in Washington coordinated entries into the U.S. Capitol, Hart Senate Building, the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Government Printing Office, among others. The GST members took samples and provided decontamination stations at the American Media Inc. headquarters building and post offices in Boca Raton, Florida, the site of the first reported anthrax attack. (History of the National Strike Force)
The cost of ammunition for these systems actually looks trivial compared to the cost of missiles, but I am not really a fan of their use on cutters.
While it has been improved, the basic system goes back to 1973, plenty of time for adversaries to redesign their missiles to minimize its effectiveness.
The projectile is a high density, solid 12.7mm (.50″) sub-caliber discarding sabot round with no explosive content.
An enemy using anti-ship cruise missiles will endeavor to fire several missiles and have them arrive simultaneously. On a Navy DDG or FFG, they can begin countering cruise missiles as soon as they appear over the horizon or even earlier, as demonstrated recently in the Red Sea. Consequently, their Phalanx would only have to deal with rare leakers.
Cutters have, at best, a chance of bringing down a cruise missile with the 57mm. We don’t yet have a smart munition considered reliably effective against cruise missiles.
Phalanx’s effective range is reportedly 1,625 yards. A 600 knot anti-ship cruise missile covers that distance in less than five seconds. New generation supersonic missile cover that distance in far less time. The system does not move on to a second threat until the system’s radar recognizes that the first target is no longer a threat. It seems unlikely that Phalanx could engage more than one missile, much less more than two if they are timed to arrive simultaneously. There is also a good possibility that even if successfully engaged at very short range, missile debris might still impact the ship.
Replacing the Phalanx with SeaRAM, which has an operational range of 9 km (5.6 mi), would at least allow it to engage several targets simultaneously since it is a “fire and forget” system. The switch should be easy. The mount, footprint, and support requirements are the same with minimal changes required to the ship. Like Phalanx, SeaRAM is an autonomous system. It can also be used against surface targets.
Even with their superior long-range systems, the Navy began replacing one of the two Phalanx systems on some destroyers with SeaRAM in 2015. The Littoral Combat Ships which have a combat system similar to the National Security Cutters were equipped with SeaRAM or RAM from the beginning (2008).
There are no US Navy ships armed with only guns and CIWS.
Russia has chosen India over China for its non-nuclear icebreaker construction program. This decision comes as Russia seeks to develop its Northern Sea Route (NSR) and navigate the challenges posed by Western sanctions…In a significant move towards strengthening maritime cooperation, the Indian government is in talks with two shipbuilders—one state-owned and the other private—to construct four non-nuclear icebreaker ships valued at over Rs 6,000 crores ($750 million).
Does this really signify a preference for India over China? Not really, “…shipyards in China, South Korea, and Japan are fully booked until at least 2028.” India is probably eager for the business. Relations between Russia and India have been good for decades. While India has moved closer to the US in response to Chinese aggressiveness, India has maintained ties with Russia.
India has been developing their ship building industry, and logically they have the cheap labor that could make them very competitive, but they still lag far behind China, S. Korea, and Japan. That Russia is not building these ships in Russia is an indication of the weakness of their own shipbuilding industry.
I don’t think India has ever built an icebreaker. There is no indication of how large or powerful these icebreakers would be other than the price, four for $750M. (That is four icebreakers for about half the price of a Polar Security Cutter.) If this happens, it will be worth watching.
1801 Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin announced his decision to reduce the “Revenue Cutter Establishment…as near as circumstances will permit within its original limits” after the Quasi-War with France. During that conflict the service had acquired larger cutters with more numerous crews.
Photo of EM DOW’s sister cutter EM ROWE
1943CGC E.M. Dow grounded and was abandoned (in a category 2 hurricane) near Mayaguez, Puerto Rico. All hands were saved.
Callao (IX-205) as the armed German Naval Auxiliary vessel Externsteine off Greenland after being captured by the Coast Guard in October 1944. US Coast photo
1944 CGCs Eastwind and Southwind captured the Nazi weather and supply vessel Externsteine off the coast of Greenland after a brief fire-fight (three salvos from its 5″/38 guns one short, one over and one across the bow–no return fire from Externsteine). There were no casualties. The Coast Guardsmen christened their prize-of-war USS Eastbreeze and placed a prize crew on board. The prize crew was commanded by LT Curtiss Howard and consisted of 36 men, including some from Southwind. After sailing with the Greenland Patrol for three weeks, Eastbreeze sailed on to Boston where the Navy renamed it as USS Callao. The Externsteine/Eastbreeze/Callao was the only enemy surface vessel captured at sea by U.S. naval forces during the war. (USCGC Northland also seized the German-controlled NorwegiansealerSS Buskø on 12 September 1941.) Eastwind and Southwind had gone farther north and returned under their own power than any vessel ever before. (An interesting sidelight from the Wikipedia report of the capture, “On 2 October, a Grumman J2F Duck aircraft from USCGC Eastwind spotted a trawler camouflaged in a field of unconsolidated pack ice off North Little Koldewey Island, where the Germans had set up a weather station. The camouflaged ship was visible on the aircraft’s radar”–surprising the little float plane had radar!)
1947 CGC Bibb rescued all 62 passengers and seven crew members of the transatlantic flying boat Bermuda Sky Queen in the mid-Atlantic after the flying boat made an emergency landing near the cutter. The rescue was of the most dramatic rescues ever undertaken by the Coast Guard on the open ocean.
1961 After an Air Force B-52G [serial number 58-196??] with eight persons on board was reported overdue and possibly down in the Atlantic Ocean somewhere off Newfoundland, the Coast Guard commander, Eastern Area, coordinated the extensive search that resulted. Participating in it were 79 U.S. Coast Guard, Navy, Air Force, and Canadian aircraft, five U.S. Coast Guard cutters, and two merchant ships. Despite this search that lasted through October 18 and covered 286,225 square miles, no trace of the missing B-52 or its crew was found.
The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Eagle (WIX 327) passes USS Constitution, one of the six frigates ordered in 1794, in Boston Harbor during the ship’s July Fourth turnaround cruise as part of Boston Navy Week. Boston Navy Week is one of 15 signature events planned across America in 2012. The eight-day event commemorates the bicentennial of the War of 1812, hosting service members from the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard and coalition ships from around the world. (U.S. Navy photo by Sonar Technician (Submarine) 2nd Class Thomas Rooney/Released)
1775 This is the date that the Navy recognizes as it’s official birthday. The United States Navy traces its origins to the Continental Navy, which the Continental Congress established on October 13, 1775, by authorizing the procurement, fitting out, manning, and dispatch of two armed vessels to cruise in search of munitions ships supplying the British Army in North America. The legislation also established a Naval Committee to supervise the work. Altogether, the Continental Navy numbered some fifty ships over the course of the war, with approximately twenty warships active at its maximum strength. After the American War for Independence, Congress sold the surviving ships of the Continental Navy and released the seamen and officers. The Constitution of the United States, ratified in 1789, empowered Congress “to provide and maintain a navy.” Acting on this authority, Congress ordered the construction and manning of six frigates in 1794, and the War Department administered naval affairs from that year until Congress established the Department of the Navy on April 30, 1798. In 1972, however, Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt authorized recognition of October 13, 1775 as the Navy’s official birthday. There is no official motto for the U.S. Navy. However “Non sibi sed patriae” (Not Self But Country) is often cited as the Navy’s unofficial motto.
USCGC Southwind near port of USCG Base Berkley, after returning from a 27,000 mile tour of the Arctic.
1968CGC Southwinddeparted Baltimore, Maryland for a seven-month deployment to Antarctica and other world-wide destinations. By the time she returned to Baltimore on May 7, 1969 she had become only the second cutter in Coast Guard history to circumnavigate the globe.
Southwind had a varied carrier. From Wikipedia,
USCGC Southwind (WAGB-280) was a Wind-class icebreaker that served in the United States Coast Guard as USCGC Southwind (WAG-280), the Soviet Navy as the Admiral Makarov, the United States Navy as USS Atka (AGB-3) and again in the U.S. Coast Guard as USCGC Southwind (WAGB-280).
1988 The first U.S. merchant marine World War II veterans received their Coast Guard-issued discharge certificates. Congress gave the merchant mariners veterans’ status and tasked the Coast Guard with administering the discharges.
USCGC IDA LEWIS
1995CGC Ida Lewis was launched, the first of the new 175-foot Keeper class buoy tenders.
1897 Near Corson Inlet, New Jersey, a man and two women were endangered by the sea sweeping around their house 1/2 mile from the station. Life-savers answered their signal of distress and rescued them in the surfboat.
Coast Guard Announces Conditions of Entry for Vessels Arriving from Sudan to Enhance U.S. Port Security
Oct. 7, 2024
The Coast Guard has announced conditions of entry for vessels arriving from the Republic of Sudan in the Federal Register.
The Coast Guard has determined that the Republic of Sudan is not maintaining effective anti-terrorism measures in its ports and has issued a Port Security Advisory (PSA 1-24). Therefore, conditions of entry outlined in the Port Security Advisory will be required to be in place by vessels that arrive in the United States after visiting ports in the Republic of Sudan.
For information about this document email the International Port Security program at HQS-DG-lst-CG-PSA-1@uscg.mil.
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