Today, August 4, is the birthday of the U. S. Coast
Guard, which came into existence 222 years ago, in 1790.
I have a couple of reasons for an interest in the USCG:
1. My current employment is temporary contract work
on real property assessment of US Coast Guard assets.
2. I am descended from lighthouse keepers, career
men in the U.S. Light House Service which merged with the U.S. Coast Guard in
1939. My paternal grandfather spent his childhood polishing the endless brass
implements, instruments, and tools associated with lighthouses and grew up to
hate brass. He went into a landlubber line of work – pharmacy – featuring
chrome, which doesn’t tarnish. His brothers, however, stuck with the
lighthouses.
On August 4, 1790, George Washington signed the Coast
Guard into existence when he signed the 1790 Tariff Act, ordering ten revenue cutters
and establishing ports and districts throughout the states for the collection
of duties imposed on imported goods. This small fleet, an armed maritime law
enforcement service called the United States Revenue Marine, worked under the
Department of the Treasury.
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| USRC Gallatin (built 1831), 1855 photo |
During the unrest between France and the United States
between 1798 and 1801, the Revenue Marine worked alongside the brand-new U.S.
Navy. created by the Naval Act of 1794 authorizing the construction of ships of
war. (Although the Constitution provided for the government to build and
maintain a navy, the small navy established during the American Revolution disappeared
by 1790. For nearly a decade, until the Navy’s new warships slid down the ways
in 1797, the Revenue Marine was the country’s only maritime defense.)
The Revenue Marine’s duties also included arresting America-bound
ships engaged in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, illegal in the U.S. after 1807.
The Revenue Marine was renamed the Revenue Cutter Service
by act of Congress on July 31, 1894.
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| My great-uncle Fred Morong, District Machinist USLHS |
After the Titanic
struck an iceberg in April 1912, the
International Ice Patrol was created to monitor icebergs in the North Atlantic.
The US part of this job fell to the USCG, a service which they maintain to this
day.
It wasn’t until January 28, 1915, when President Woodrow
Wilson signed a Senate bill (S.2337) that these two services were combined into
what is called today the U. S. Coast Guard, still under the Treasury Dept. in
time of peace, but under the U.S. Navy in time of war.
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| CGC Escanaba in North Atlantic heavy seas, 1965 |
The
Coast Guard motto is “Semper Paratus” (Latin for “always ready”). Captain
Francis Saltus Van Boskerck, USCG, wrote the words to this march in 1922; the music
came five years later.
In 2003, the U.S. Coast Guard became part of the Department
of Homeland Security, where it is the largest branch of this department. It has seven basic missions: Search and
Rescue, Aids to Navigation, Ice Breaking and Ocean Science, Marine Inspection,
Law Enforcement, Military Readiness, and its motto, Semper Paratus: Always
ready!
Happy Birthday, United States Coast Guard! Semper Paratus!
SOURCES
US Coast Guard: History http://www.uscg.mil/history/h_index.asp
Wikipedia: United States Life-Saving Service http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Life-Saving_Service
Wikipedia: United States Revenue Cutter Service http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Revenue_Cutter_Service
Photos also from USCG website.
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