US Coast Guard

US Coast Guard (USCG), created in 1915 when Congress directed the amalgamation of the Revenue Cutter Service, the Steamboat Inspection Service, the Bureau of Navigation, and the Lifesaving Service into a single agency under the Treasury Department. In the process, the new service inherited all of the responsibilities of its several parts, dating back to 1790. From the Revenue Cutter Service, the guard became responsible for enforcing all US maritime laws and suppressing piracy, and so is authorized to make civil arrests. The Inspection Service contributed the inspection of shipping to ensure compliance with American regulations concerning construction, operation, crew skills and conditions, and ship safety. The guard acquired the Bureau of Navigation's responsibility for the identification and marking of navigation hazards and channels, and, from the Lifesaving Service, the maintenance and operation of the many shore stations equipped with small craft for rescuing mariners in distress. AMVER is now part of its lifesaving organization. It was the American agency involved in supporting the International Ice Patrol established after the loss of the Titanic.

The principal task of the Coast Guard effort during the inter-war years was the enforcement of US Prohibition laws, 1920–33. To help it intercept major ‘rum runners’, it was loaned six destroyers by the US Navy, 1930–2, to beef up offshore patrols. These were returned in mid-1934 and decommissioned.

In 1939, the Lighthouse Service was absorbed into the Coast Guard organization, thereby adding the maintenance and operation of more than 1,000 lighthouses and lightships to its responsibilities. Over the succeeding 60 years, some were eliminated and most of the remainder automated. At the start of the 21st century, only the Boston Light, dating from 1715, remained under human operation.

During the Second World War (1939–45), in keeping with a role inherited from the Revenue Cutter Service, the Coast Guard was transferred to the control of the Navy Department for the duration of the war. While its lesser units were involved in port security and coastal patrols, its high-endurance cutters became convoy escorts, as they had done in the First World War (1914–18). Coast Guardsmen were also assigned to the navy's amphibious forces to man the many landing craft coming into service.

In the succeeding half-century, the Coast Guard, in addition to its ongoing responsibilities, has been deeply involved in enforcing the 320-kilometre (200-ml.) Exclusive Economic Zone, in the maritime aspects of environmental protection, in stemming the tide of illegal immigrants, particularly in the Caribbean area, and in the war against drugs, an effort as labour intensive as its earlier efforts during Prohibition.

The guard, too, has acquired a proportionally larger role in assisting the US Navy as a result of the great reduction in the latter service. Guardsmen were actively involved in Vietnam in the interdiction of coastal shipping, and in both Gulf wars, specializing in port security and control of shipping. Shifted from the Treasury Department to the Transportation Department, when that department was created in 1967, the Coast Guard again changed masters to the Department of Homeland Security, formed in 2002.

Bibliography

Johnson, R. , Guardians of the Sea (1987).www.uscg.mil/history

Tyrone G. Martin