Based on the Coast Guard Historian’s timeline, https://www.history.uscg.mil/research/chronology/
With inspiration from Mike Kelso

The engraving on the Mont Blanc monument reads: “The Dec. 6 1917 Halifax Explosion hurled this 1140 lb. anchor shaft 2.3 miles from the S.S. Mont Blanc to this park.” This photo is of a cultural heritage site in Canada, number 2582 in the Canadian Register of Historic Places. Photo credit: Vonkiegr8 via Wikipedia

1917  The French freighter Mont Blanc, loaded with 5,000 tons of high explosives, collided with the Norwegian steamer Imo in the harbor of Halifax, Nova Scotia.  The resulting fire detonated the munitions, killing 1,635 people and leveling much of Halifax and its environs.  Coast Guardsmen from USCGC Morrill landed to provide assistance.  This disaster led to the creation of captains of the ports for the major U.S. ports.  The Coast Guard was tasked with the new duty.

USRC/USCGC Morrill (commissioned 1889, decommissioned 1928)

1918  Surfman L. E. Ashton of Station No. 305 in Nome, Alaska, departed his station with a dog sled and team loaded with medical supplies along with one other surfman on an expedition to assist natives who were suffering from influenza at Cape Prince of Wales, 160 miles from Nome and at villages between the two settlements.  He arrived at Cape Prince of Wales on 13 December, where he found 122 natives sick and 157 dead of the illness.  He converted the schoolhouse into a hospital and the post office into a dispensary and “otherwise perfected an organization by means of which he was able to care for all the sick.”  He began burying the dead January 11 and by February 20 when “the epidemic had spent its force” he returned to his station in Nome, arriving there on March 1, 1919.

Photo: skeezePixabayCC0 1.0

More from “The Most Epic Things the United States Coast Guard Has Ever Done,”

The worldwide flu pandemic of 1918 infected 500 million total, killing somewhere between 50 and 100 million people. Though it wasn’t understood why at the time, this particular strain of flu had proven especially deadly to those in Asian countries, and in isolated areas around the Pacific. We know today that this is because those of European descent have evolved a naturally greater resistance to certain diseases than those in areas that had not had much contact with the outside world.

So, when the flu hit the Inuit natives around Nome, Alaska, it was practically a death sentence. Surfman L. E. Ashton, of Station No. 305 couldn’t just sit back and watch his native neighbors die. So, on his own initiative, Ashton set out with little more than a dog sled, medical supplies and some food on a 150-mile journey to Cape Prince of Wales on the Bering Strait. His goal was to distribute supplies and care for people in the eight villages along his way. An ambitious task; especially when you realize he left on December 6th. In Alaska. When he arrived at Cape Prince a week later, he treated the 122 people who were fatally sick, and helped to bury the 150 dead.

But Ashton didn’t go straight home to warmth. He dog-sledded through the wilderness for the next three months, risking his life in some of the coldest and most brutal conditions on Earth. Ashton delivered much-needed medication to eight different far-flung settlements in Western Alaska, saving dozens, if not hundreds, of people.

USS Lamson (DD 367) on fire in Ormoc Bay on 7 December 1944, after she was hit by a kamikaze. The tug assisting with firefighting is probably ATR-31.

1944  Coast Guardsmen participated in the landings at Ormoc, Philippine Islands.

1946  The number of Coast Guardsmen on active duty had been dropped to 22,156 in order to meet budgetary requirements.  Many lifeboat stations had to be placed in a limited caretaker or inactive status and some vessels tied up because they lacked complements .

photo (c) Yoeglis; Bermuda-Kindley Field (BDA); 06 December 1952

1952  Coast Guard search and rescue facilities at the Naval Base in Bermuda were instrumental in rescuing four survivors and recovering 17 bodies from a Cubana Douglas DC-4, registered CU-T397, which crashed on take-off from the airport at Kindley Field, Bermuda.

The Coast Guard Cutter Douglas Munro (WHEC 724) is moored at the cutter’s homeport of Kodiak, Alaksa, April 24, 2021. The Douglas Munro was decommissioned during a ceremony following 49-years of service to our nation. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Chief Petty Officer Matt Masaschi

1999  CGC Munro intercepted the vessel Wing Fung Lung loaded with more than 250 Chinese migrants headed for the Guatemala/El Salvador border.  After refusing permission to board, Munro tracked the vessel for three days when lookouts spotted flares over the ship.  When the Munro’s small boat approached, panicked migrants began jumping into the water.  They were pulled to safety and returned to the Wing Fun Lung while boarding parties finally went aboard the crowded vessel.  Someone apparently tried to scuttle the vessel and the boarding teams were able to stop the flooding and dewater the engine room.  The threat to the Munro crewmen on the vessel was made worse because the migrants had not been fed or had water for more than a day.  They were at the point of total rebellion, according to the Munro’s boarding team members.  Other boarding teams from CGC Hamilton then arrived and helped to control the situation.  The vessel was finally taken into Puerto Quetzal, Guatemala, where the migrants were taken into custody by INS agents.  The master of the vessel was arrested.

2013  CGC Mackinaw, loaded with more than 1,200 Christmas trees as 2013’s “Christmas Ship,” arrived at Navy Pier for a two-day event re-enacting an annual Chicago tradition dating from the late 1800s and early 1900s.

2013  Coast Guard Sector Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, commenced Operation Taconite for the winter season.  The annual operation was designed to prevent developing ice from hindering commercial navigation in the ports of Duluth, Minnesota; Superior, Wisconsin; and Thunder Bay, Ontario.  Operation Fall Retrieve, the annual operation to remove aids to navigation on the Great Lakes in preparation for the winter icing of the lakes, concluded soon after the start of 2013’s Operation Taconite.  Coast Guard Sector Detroit prepared to launch Operation Coal Shovel, the annual ice-breaking operation in the eastern Great Lakes region.

Based on the Coast Guard Historian’s timeline, https://www.history.uscg.mil/research/chronology/
With inspiration from Mike Kelso

December 3

Joseph Francis Life-Car. Image credit: Smithsonian National Museum of American History.

1852  The merchant ship Georgia grounded in a gale off Bonds, New Jersey with 290 persons on board.  The life car was used to affect their rescue and all survived.

Old Harbor U.S. Life Saving Station is a historic maritime rescue station and museum, located at Race Point Beach in Provincetown, Massachusetts. It was originally located at Nauset Beach near the entrance to Chatham Harbor in Chatham, Massachusetts.

1883  The schooner Pallas with a crew of three men encountered strong head winds and heavy seas off Cape Cod, Massachusetts.  About half past 5 in the morning, abreast of Nausett lights, she sprung a leak and became unmanageable.  Being close to the breakers, the crew was fearful they would be washed overboard as soon as she struck and took to their boat.  Fortunately, they were discovered by the Nausett Station keeper, pulling vigorously to keep away from the surf.  The surfboat was launched and the three men rescued.  They were brought ashore by the life-saving crew, though not without a thorough drenching because the station boat was nearly swamped on the bar.  The schooner meanwhile drifted into the surf, three quarters of a mile north of the station and soon broke up.

1982  MSO St. Louis took charge of the response when the Mississippi, Missouri, and Illinois rivers flooded their banks.  In all over 100 Coast Guardsmen took part in the relief efforts that covered an eight-state area.

GULF OF MEXICO – Petty Officer 3rd Class Suren Chandrasena, a boatswain’s mate, watches as Coast Guard Cutter Bertholf’s Over-The-Horizon small boat departs to receive personnel from Coast Guard Cutter Chandeleur, June 18, 2008. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Michael Anderson

2001  Coast Guard forces, including the cutters Chandeleur (WPB-1319) and Farallon (WPB-1301), as well as aircraft from Air Station Miami and boat crews from Station Miami Beach rescued 185 Haitian migrants from the grossly overloaded 31-foot sailboat Simapvivsetz off Old Rhodes Key, Florida.

USCGC Polar Star. USCGC photo.

2013  CGC Polar Star departed Coast Guard Base Seattle for Antarctica in support of Operation Deep Freeze for the first time since 2006 with the task of resupplying the National Science Foundation Scientific Research Station in McMurdo, Antarctica.  During the summer of 2013, Polar Star conducted sea trials in the Arctic to test all of the ship’s equipment and train the crew prior to embarking to Antarctica.  During the summer trip, Polar Star spent weeks in the Beaufort Sea north of Barrow, Alaska, testing propulsion machinery, conducting emergency drills, and qualifying crewmembers in individual watch-stations.  The cutter was recently out of a three-year, $90 million overhaul, part of the Coast Guard’s plan to reactivate the heavy icebreaker.

December 4

Mesquite aground on her final voyage

1989  USCGC Mesquite ran aground near Keweenaw Point in Lake Superior.  She was deemed damaged beyond repair and was sunk as an artificial reef.  There was no loss of life.

Based on the Coast Guard Historian’s timeline, https://www.history.uscg.mil/research/chronology/
With inspiration from Mike Kelso

Gurnet Point Station. Plymouth Lighthouse, Plymouth, Massachusetts, USA showing the one remaining tower built 1842 in the earthworks of Civil War Fort Andrew.

1883  The schooner Champion with a crew of two men stranded on Dick’s Flat, Plymouth Harbor, near Duxbury Pier lighthouse, at about 6 am. The shoal where she struck was about three miles west-southwest of the Gurnet Point Station (Second District), and the crew of the station were not sure she was aground until about 10 o’clock.  The life-saving crew therefore arrived on board a little before 2 o’clock in the afternoon.  They found one of the men, the captain, at the pumps and the other bailing from the hatch.  The vessel was leaking badly.  The two men on board were wet, cold, and very glad of the assistance of the life-saving crew.  The keeper, at the captain’s request, took charge.  The pumps were manned while another gang went to work bailing.  When she began to right with the incoming tide, they shifted the booms over and canted her the other way, so as to bring the leaky seams out of the water to chinse them with oakum and nail canvas over all to stop the leaks.  After doing this and getting most of the water out, they carried out an anchor into the channel, set all sail and by heaving hard on the hawser, they brought her on an even keel.  She was hauled off the shoal at about 4 o’clock and got safely under way.  As the weather looked bad, the captain concluded to remain in port for the night and accordingly anchored.

2012  BMCS Terrell Horne, III, CGC Halibut’s Executive Petty Officer and Boarding Officer, was killed in action while carrying out law enforcement operations near Santa Cruz, California. The Coast Guard posthumously awarded BMCS Horne the Coast Guard Medal for his heroism that night.  His citation read, in part: “…Shortly after midnight, Senior Chief Petty Officer Horne deployed in HALIBUT’s cutter boat with three other crew members to investigate a vessel loitering in the area without navigation lights.  Upon approaching the unlit vessel and identifying themselves as law enforcement officers, the vessel ignored commands to stop and instead rapidly accelerated directly toward them.  The boarding team immediately maneuvered to avoid the oncoming vessel and fired side arms in self-defense.  When impact with the oncoming vessel became unavoidable, Senior Chief Petty Officer HORNE, disregarding his own safety in order to protect a fellow crewmember, forcibly pushed the coxswain from the helm, directly exposing himself to the oncoming vessel.  The violence of the subsequent collision forcibly ejected him from the boat, and despite immediate recovery from the water and application of first aid by his shipmates, he succumbed to the severe injuries received during the incident.  Senior Chief Petty Officer HORNE demonstrated remarkable initiative, exceptional fortitude and daring in spite of imminent personal danger.  His courage and devotion to duty are in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Coast Guard.”

PERU, 10.06.2023, Courtesy Photo, USCG District 11
The crew of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Terrell Horne conducts a patrol in the Eastern Pacific Ocean in support of Operation Southern Shield 2023, October 2023. The Coast Guard recently completed the first high-seas boardings and inspections off the coast of Peru under a newly adopted multi-lateral agreement to monitor fishing and transshipment operations within the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organization (SPRFMO) Convention Area. (U.S. Coast Guard photo)

Based on the Coast Guard Historian’s timeline, https://www.history.uscg.mil/research/chronology/
With inspiration from Mike Kelso

Revenue Cutter Spencer before conversion to Lightship R

1844  Captain Alexander Fraser, head of the Revenue Marine Bureau, reported to Congress on the failure of the service’s first steam cutters Spencer and Legare.

Admiral Russell R. Waesche, Sr., USCG

1916  Second Lieutenant Russell R. Waesche was designated as the first Communications Officer for the Coast Guard, an office established at Coast Guard Headquarters.  The office was renamed Chief, Communications Division, soon thereafter. Waesche went on to serve as Commandant 14 June 1936 to 31 December 1945. He was the longest serving Commandant in Coast Guard history.

SB-29 “Super Dumbo”, a variant of the B-29 Superfortress, with an air-droppable EDO A-3 lifeboat rigged underneath. Fifteen B-29s and one B-29A were adapted for air rescue duty after World War II. Nicknamed “Super Dumbo” and designated SB-29. When a downed aircrew was spotted in the water, the lifeboat was released from the aircraft. The lifeboat, which descended by parachute, was equipped with watertight compartments, self-righting floatation bladders, an inboard engine, food and water.  The SB-29 remained in service throughout the Korean Conflict and into the mid-1950s. Photo: US Air Force

1944  The Office of Air-Sea Rescue was set up in the Coast Guard. The Secretary of the Navy, at the request of the Joint Chiefs of Staff early in 1944, established the Air-Sea Rescue Agency, an inter-department and inter-agency body, for study and improvement of rescue work with the Commandant of Coast Guard as its head.