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N7KTP > NAVNET 02.08.05 04:45l 99 Lines 5673 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 44023_N7FSP
Read: GUEST
Subj: U.S. COAST GUARD
Path: DB0FHN<DB0MRW<OK0PKL<OK0PPL<OK0NAG<9A0BBS<PP5AQ<PY4VE<PY2ZE<PY2DML<
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Sent: 050801/1558z @:N7FSP.#SEA.#WWA.WA.USA.NA West Seattle, WA. on 145.010
215 years of continuous, ambiguous sea service
By J. Overton -- CNRNW Public Affairs
"The Navy stopped, the Marines stopped, but the Coast Guard has
been going non-stop for 200 years, and you people are not going to stop
it now."
So Chief Atkins, my company commander, would tell my fellow
recruits and me when we had done something he felt particularly
incompetent. He usually followed this declaration by mandating many,
many pushups in the snowy sand of the Coast Guard's recruit training
center in Cape May, N.J. I haserendipitously joined the Coast Guard
in 1990, its bicentennial year, and was reminded of this most every day
of my two-month boot camp.
A few of us recruits, idiot children that we were, knew before
enlisting that the Coast Guard did claim to be the nation's oldest
continuous sea service. But despite its advanced age, it's also the
nation's most misunderstood service. As this "other" armed service
turns 215 this week, a subjective lesson on its history and tradition
will help.
While there was a Continental Navy and Marine Corps during the
Revolutionary War, they were disbanded after hostilities with Great
Britain ended. States kept their own militias in various degrees of
readiness, and there was a small federally funded army.
But many politicians and citizens felt that a "standing" Navy
would drain the public treasury and encourage imperialism and
involvement in foreign conflicts. The newly independent United States,
however, had no source of revenue to refill its drained treasury except
that from collecting duties on incoming goods, and it had very limited
means to collect that money.
Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton proposed the U.S.
build a fleet of "cutters" (a type of small sailing ship, and the
designation for vessels performing law enforcement duties in Great
Britain) to enforce treasury laws and collect revenue at sea. On August
4, 1790, recognized as the Coast Guard's birthday, Congress authorized
the building of ten cutters (Coast Guard ships over 65 feet are still
called cutters) to protect the new nation's revenue. Misunderstanding
about this new service started early, as no one could settle on a name:
it went by the "system of cutters", "Revenue Service," and "Revenue
Marine." It was placed under the Treasury Department.
The Coast Guard usually defines its current missions as national
defense, homeland security, search and rescue, law enforcement, marine
science, and environmental protection. The Revenue Marine's mission,
which from Hamilton's instructions seems narrow, branched out to
include most of these early on. Assigned to enforce laws and collect
customs, cutters would obviously fight piracy and smuggling, inspect
foreign vessels, explore and chart sea lanes, and if aware of a vessel
in distress, any able ship was obligated to lend assistance.
A Federal Navy was authorized in 1794, but in 1798 the undeclared
"Quasi War" with France began, and the new Navy had no ships ready to
meet the French. Revenue Marine cutters, however, were available, and
used to fight French warships on the open seas and protect the American
coast from enemy raids. This agency, whatever it was called, was
already in its first decade an armed service providing national defense
and homeland security.
In the 1800's, this Coast Guard forerunner was involved in the war
of 1812, Seminole War, Mexican War, Civil War, and Spanish American
War. But in large "traditional" wars their exploits make them sound
like the world's second-best Navy. Then as now, the Coast Guard's real
niche was in Operations other than War, the fuzzy areas of law
enforcement, diplomacy, low-intensity conflict, and humanitarian aid.
In the 1850's Puget Sound area, cutters and sailors delivered medicine
to settlers and natives, led Army infantry units in land battles with
native tribes, arrested poachers and smugglers, ferried troops during
the "Pig War" negotiations, and, of course, helped distressed mariners.
The U.S. Coast Guard came into being in 1915, with the combination
of the Revenue Cutter Service (the name finally settled on in the
1860's), and the Life-Saving Service.
Over the rest of the century, and into this one, the Coast Guard
absorbed other agencies and roles, and changed cabinet departments a
few times. In 1939, the Lighthouse Service became part of the Coast
Guard. In 1946, the Bureau of Marine Inspection became part of the
Coast Guard (hence the inspection sticker on passenger vessels like
ferries and cruise ships). In World Wars 1 and 2 the USCG was placed
under Navy Department control. In 1967, the Coast Guard was transferred
to the newly created Department of Transportation, and in 2003, to the
newly created Department of Homeland Security. But it still falls under
the Department of the Navy during times of declared war, or when
directed by the President.
Even the name Coast Guard causes confusion. Cutters and aircraft
have for a long time strayed far from the United States shore. Coast
Guard polar icebreakers, all based in Seattle, routinely go to both
poles and occasionally around the world, and cutters and Coast
Guardsmen are currently serving in the Mediterranean, Persian Gulf,
Caribbean, and many points in between. But "Coast Guard" is certainly
catchier than "system of cutters," if just as ambiguous.
Coasties are fewer, if not prouder, than Marines, and not as apt
to decorate their vehicles and homes with reminders of their service.
But the Coast Guard has its own distinguished history, traditions,
quirks.
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