May 25

1877  The training of first class of Revenue Cutter cadets began on the school-ship Dobbin at Curtis Bay, Maryland, with nine cadets, three officers, one surgeon, six warrant officers, and 17 crew members on board.

1963  The first of the new class of 210-foot cutters, CGC Reliance (WPC-615, later WMEC-615), was christened at Todd Shipyard, Houston, Texas.  The wife of the Commandant at the time, Mrs. Edwin J. Roland, was the sponsor for the cutter.  A news report published at the time noted: “The CGC RELIANCE, to be stationed at Corpus Christi, Texas, marks a significant milestone in the building program of the Coast Guard as it is the first cruising cutter of any size built for Coast Guard service in almost twenty years.”

2020  CGC Diligence departed Wilmington, North Carolina for the last time. The cutter spent the previous 28 years homeported on Wilmington’s historic downtown Riverwalk, along the bank of the Cape Fear River.

May 24

1830  Navy officers, under furlough from the Navy until April 1832, were given commissions in the Revenue Service.

1941  USCGC Modoc sighted the German battleship Bismarck while the cutter searched for survivors of a convoy southeast of Cape Farewell, Greenland.  There they were witnesses to an attack on Bismarck by nine Swordfish biplane torpedo bombers only hours after the Battle of the Denmark Strait where HMS Hood, the largest ship in the Royal Navy at the time, was sunk with only three survivors.

• An accurate telling of the incident here
• A less accurate, but first person story by two men who were on the Modoc

1977  The Coast Guard issued a request for female volunteers to serve afloat on board cutters as members of the cutters’ permanent crew.  Beginning in late-September of that year the first of 24 women chosen for afloat assignments began reporting on board the CGCs Gallatin and Morgenthau as members of their permanent crew.  Twelve women – two officers and 10 enlisted – served on board each cutter.

May 23

1928  CGC Haida and the USLHT Cedar rescued 312 passengers and crew from the sailing vessel Star of Falkland near Unimak Pass, Alaska after Star of Falkland had run aground in the fog the previous evening.  Both the cutter and the tender managed to save all but eight from the sailing vessel.  This rescue was one of the most successful in Coast Guard history and was also one of the few instances where the Coast Guard and one of its future integrated agencies worked together to perform a major rescue.

The Coast Guard cutter Haida and the lighthouse tender Cedar prepare to rescue the passengers and crew from the sailing vessel Star of Falkland near Unimak Pass, Alaska on May 23, 1928. The Star of Falkland, a commercial fishing ship, was returning for the fishing season from its winter port in San Francisco when it ran into high winds and fog and struck stern first on rocks at Akun Head near Unimak Pass. The 280 Chinese cannery workers and 40 crewmen spent a night of terror while the ship pounded on the rocks – eight passengers committed suicide. The next morning, the U. S. Lighthouse Service buoy tender Cedar and the Coast Guard cutter Haida arrived on the scene and managed to take all the passengers off Star of Falkland without loss of life.

1930  Lieutenant Commander Elmer F. Stone received a medal from Congress for extraordinary achievement in making the first successful trans-Atlantic flight in 1919.  Stone was the pilot of the Navy’s NC-4.

Commodore Edward M. Webster

1946  Commodore Edward M. Webster, USCG, (and here) headed the US Delegation to the International Meeting on Radio Aids to Marine Navigation, which was held in London, England.  As a result of this meeting, the principal maritime nations of the world agreed to make an intensive study of the World War II-developed devices of radar, LORAN, radar beacons, and other navigational aids with a view to adapt them to peacetime use.  This was the first time that the wartime technical secrets of radar and LORAN were generally disclosed to the public. [USCG Public Information Division News Release, 7 June 1946.]

1972  President Richard Nixon and the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, N. V. Podgorny, signed the “Agreement on Cooperation in the Field of Environmental Protection between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.”  Under the agreement, the U.S. Coast Guard was the lead U.S. agency, in association with the EPA and MARAD, for the Task Group on Prevention and Cleanup of Pollution of the Marine Environment from Shipping.

May 22

1920  An Act of Congress, which provided a system of general retirement for the civil employees of the US Government effective August 21, 1920, benefited those employees of the Lighthouse Service who were not covered by the retirement law of June 20, 1918, which provided retirement for certain classes of employees in the Lighthouse Service.

1926  An Act of Congress extended the benefits of the Public Health Service to apply to light keepers located at isolated points, who previously had been unable to avail themselves of such benefits, and made provisions for medical supplies and hospital services for the crews of the vessels of the Lighthouse Service, including the detail of medical officers.

1959  Two US Air Force jets collided near Ocean Station ECHO, patrolled at that time by the CGC Mendota.  A U.S. Air Force weather plane spotted both pilots in the water and, within two hours of collision, the Mendota rescued them.

1967  CGC Barataria conducted the first fire-support mission for the newly created Coast Guard Squadron Three in Vietnam.  This force initially consisted of five Coast Guard 311-footers used to support Market Time operations.

May 21

1849  Revenue Captain Douglas Ottinger reported completing the construction and furnishing of eight life-saving stations on the New Jersey coast between Sandy Hook and Little Egg Inlet, marking the beginning of Federal life-saving efforts.

1944  The Coast Guard-manned USS LST-69 was sunk as a result of explosions and fires in ships nested in the West Loch of Pearl Harbor. None of her crew were killed, but 13 were seriously injured.

The West Loch Disaster was a maritime accident during World War II at Pearl Harbor U.S. Naval Base in Hawaii. The incident, which occurred just after 3 p.m. on Sunday, 21 May 1944, began following an explosion in a staging area for Landing Ships, Tank (LSTs) and other amphibious assault ships in West Loch. A fire quickly spread among the ships being prepared for Operation Forager, the invasion of the Japanese-held Mariana Islands. Over the next 24 hours, six LSTs sank, 163 naval personnel died, and 396 were injured.

1951  The Coast Guard announced the formation, within the Washington, DC area, of a new Organized Reserve Training Unit (Vessel Augmentation).  The mission of this new unit was to develop a force of experienced personnel, well-trained in all shipboard billets, with particular emphasis on anti-submarine warfare, and the use of radar, radio, and other branches of electronics.  Training was to be directed towards readying personnel of the unit for immediate assignment to ships of the Coast Guard and Navy in the event of mobilization.

1986  Japan’s Maritime Safety Agency (MSA) vessel Settsu arrived in Juneau for three days of meetings with 17th District staff members, SAR talks, softball games (against the crew of CGC Morgenthau – the MSA crew won one game out of three), and comparing operational notes.  The 348-foot Japanese vessel was homeported in Kobi, Japan.

2013  The Commandant, ADM Robert Papp, released the Coast Guard’s Arctic Strategy report.  He noted that this strategy would “guide our efforts in the region over the next 10 years. This strategy is based on nearly 150 years of Coast Guard experience in maritime operations in the Arctic region, since the U.S. Revenue Cutter Lincoln first arrived in the new U.S. territory of Alaska in 1867. The U.S. Coast Guard Arctic Strategy documents our intent to pursue three key objectives: improving awareness, modernizing governance and broadening partnerships. Beyond these objectives, we will continue to build upon our Service’s long heritage of leadership in the Arctic, working with Federal, state, local and territorial partners to ensure maritime governance in the region.”

 

May 20

1882  The lookout of Station No. 10 (Louisville, Kentucky), 9th District, spotted two men and a skiff being swept toward the dam and falls of the Ohio River.  He sounded the alarm and “a boat at once shot out from the station, and reached the men in time to save them.  They were quite ignorant of rowing…and were at the mercy of the flood sweeping towards the dam.  They were terribly frightened and profuse in their thanks to their rescuers.”

1999  CGC Bear arrived in Rota, Spain.  She was deployed to the Adriatic Sea in support of Operation Allied Force and Operation Noble Anvil, NATO’s military campaign against the forces of the former Republic of Yugoslavia.  Bear served in the USS Theodore Roosevelt Battle Group providing surface surveillance and SAR response for the Sea Combat Commander, and force protection for the Amphibious Ready Group operating near Albania.  Bear provided combat escort for U.S. Army vessel’s transporting military cargo between Italy and Albania.  This escort operation took Bear up to the Albanian coastline, well within enemy surface-to-surface missile range.

May 19

1846  Secretary of Treasury Walker assigned Revenue Captain John A. Webster to control movements of vessels assigned to Army and to cooperate with the Navy in the War with Mexico.

1896  Congress authorized the Secretary of Treasury to patrol regattas.

1921  Congress passed the “Emergency Immigration Act of 1921” (ch. 8, 42 Stat. 5), a quota law that limited the number of migrants in any year to three percent of the number of residents from that country already residing in the U.S. as of 1910.