A Brief History of the U.S. Coast Guard
In the United States there exists five
branches of military service: the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, U.S. Air
Force, U.S. Marine Corps, and the U.S. Coast Guard.
The Coast Guard originated August 4, 1790,
when the first Congress of the United States passed Alexander
Hamilton's "Revenue Act." Under its authority, there
was created the first Federal armed service: the Revenue Marine,
later known as the Revenue Cutter Service. Its purpose was to
suppress smuggling and to enforce the provisions of the Revenue
Act, and for this reason, it was placed under the Treasury
Department. Hamilton urged that its officers be commissioned and
that the service be established with the full honor of the
military tradition. Thus, he maintained, "will not only
induce fit men the more readily to engage, but will attach them
to their duty by a nicer sense of honor."
President Washington issued the first
commission to Hopley Yeaton, of New Hampshire, to command "a
cutter in the Service of the United States of America." This
was the first commission issued to a seagoing officer under the
Constitution. From the start, the revenue Cutter Service was a
fighting unit. Until 1798, when the Navy was organized, the six
revenue cutters built by authority of the Act of 1790, were our
only public warships. They performed valiant service during our
undeclared war with France, 1799-1800, and the Service has
maintained its reputation as a combatant force in every
subsequent war in which the United States has been engaged,
including Viet-Nam and the Persian Gulf War.
Towards the end of the Eighteen
Century, the rising tide of the humanitarian movement reached the
hazardous profession of the mariner. In 1774, the Royal Humane
Society was established in Great Britain for the purpose of
saving lives at sea., The idea spread rapidly, especially among
maritime nations. As early as 1785, the Massachusetts Humane
Society was founded. This organization built houses of refuge
along the coast for shipwrecked mariners, and in 1807, began to
put lifeboats in them. It was, however, another forty years
before the Unites States Government became sufficiently
interested to create an official service for the purpose.
In 1848, Congress appropriated
$10,000 to build eight small boathouses along the beach of New
Jersey. This marked the beginning of the Life-Saving Service. In
1878, the Service was reorganized and established as a regular
unit in the Treasury Department. On January 28, 1915, the
Life-Saving Service was merged with the Revenue Cutter Service
and the combined organization was given the new name of United
States Coast Guard. On March 17 of the same year, the
"United States Coast Guard" made its first rescue at
Coast Guard Station Cape Lookout, North Carolina.
In colonial days, several of the
American Colonies established lighthouses as aids to navigation.
The first was the Boston Light, built in 1716. In those days it
was nothing more than a whale-oil lamp, without chimney,
protected by glass windows. By 1789, there were a dozen
lighthouses in the Thirteen States. In that year the first
Congress under the Constitution took over the existing
lighthouses and authorized the construction of the first federal
lighthouse at Cape Henry, Virginia. From 1789, then, the
Lighthouse Service may be said to have begun.
During the next decade the number
of lighthouses increased to two dozen, and during the early part
of the nineteenth century, they were constructed at a rapid rate,
but they were limited of limited service until the advent of
Fresnel lenses. This type of lens, by means of a series of glass
eschelons, gathered the rays from the oil lamp into a horizontal
beam, and by means of prisms projected the beam many miles. The
first Fresnel lens to be installed in the United States was at
the Navesink Lighthouse in 1841. From then on, the service grew
by leaps and bounds.
In the course of the nineteenth
century, the Lighthouse Service also set out an ever-increasing
number of buoys, lights, and beacons as further aids to
navigation. From the start, the Service was a part of the
Treasury Department, but in 1903 it was transferred to the
Commerce Department. On July 1, 1939, by executive order, the
Lighthouse Service was withdrawn from that department and
incorporated with the United States Coast Guard.
With the prospect of war approaching, Congress
deemed it necessary to augment the U.S. Coast Guard with a
civilian stand-by force. Although officially set as a boater
assist group, its underlining purpose was probably that of a
"Home Guard" type of force, similar to that organized
in England, since it was made up of primarily former Coast Guard
personnel.
On June 23, 1939, Congress passed Title 14 of
the U.S. Code, establishing the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary.
Initially, the organization was called the Coast Guard Reserve.
With the entrance of the United States into World War II, the
civilian Coast Guard Reserve was renamed the Coast Guard
Auxiliary, with the Coast Guard Reserve being formed as a
military reserve force.
After the entry of the United States into World
War II, the Coast Guard was temporarily assigned to the War
Department (now called the Defense Department), and was under the
jurisdiction of the Department of the Navy for the duration of
the war. (The Coast Guard, or select units therein, is always
transferred to the Department of the Navy during times of war.)
Members of the Coast Guard Auxiliary who
volunteered to serve as Temporary Members of the Coast Guard
Reserve, augmented the Coast Guard with off shore and harbor
patrols, freeing up the regular Coast Guard for regular naval
duties, some of which included manning landing craft during all
the major invasions, including the Normandy Invasion, . Women
joined the Coast Guard as SPARS in 1942. By the time World War II
ended, there were more than 10,000 SPARS officers and enlisted
women. The title SPARS comes from the initial letters of the
Coast Guard's Latin motto and its meaning in English: Semper
Paratus -- Always Ready.
U.S.S. LST-21
Today the Coast Guard is assigned to the Department of
Transportation. Although always an armed service of the United
States, its primary function is that of a lifesaving / law
enforcement agency during peacetime. The Coast Guard enforces all
federal laws governing ships (even the smallest motorboat) in all
United States waters and tributaries, and on the high seas. It
also enforces revenue, customs, immigration, quarantine, and
conservation laws, and has the responsibility of maintaining all
the aids to navigation (ATON) on federal waterways.
For more information on the vessels pictured
above, click on the vessel's name.
For additional information on Coast Guard history, click here.
[History]....................[Life Saving Service]....................[Lighthouse Service]....................[WWII]....................[Today]
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