12, 1923 – Title “Commandant” authorized. He was to be selected from the active list of line officers not below the grade of Commander.

17, 1832 – Secretary McLane discontinued the practice of using Naval Officers in Revenue Marine – Ordered vacancies filled by promotion.

20, 1914 – International Ice Patrol Convention signed.

27, 1915 – Coast Guard formed by consolidating Life Saving Service and Revenue Cutter Service.

February

16, 1926 – Congress authorized the Secretary of Treasury to acquire a site at New London, CT, without cost to the United States, and construct thereon buildings for the United States Coast Guard Academy at a total cost not to exceed $1,750,000.

19, 1941 – Coast Guard Reserve established. Auxiliary created from former Reserve.

March

01, 2003 – The Coast Guard ended 36 years of history with the Department of Transportation entering the Department of Homeland Security.

03, 1905 – Congress authorized the Secretary of Treasury to acquire a suitable site in the state of Maryland upon which to establish a depot for the Revenue Cutter Service; subsequently becoming the Coast Guard Yard.

03, 1931 – The Star Spangled Banner made U.S. National Anthem.

21, 1791 – Hopley Yeaton of New Hampshire commissioned as “Master of a Cutter in the Service of the United States for the Protection of the Revenue”. This first commission of a seagoing officer of the United States was signed by George Washington and attested to by Thomas Jefferson. Yeaton was assigned to the Cutter SCAMMEL stationed out of Portsmouth, NH.

29, 1898 – LTs Jarvis, Bertholf, and Surgeon Call of the BEAR reach Point Barrow after a 2000 mile “mush” from Nunivak Island (17Dec1897) driving reindeer as food for 97 starving whalers caught in Arctic ice.

April

01, 1967 – Coast Guard ended 177 yr. history with Treasury Dept., entered Dept. of Transportation.

07, 1969 – USCG CPOA formed.

12, 1979 – First female Commanding Officer of ANY military vessel ever: LTjg Beverly G. Kelley (now CAPT Kelley), USCGC CAPE NEWAGEN on Maui, HI. [Your Webmaster, QMCM Joe D’Elia, was the XPO]. CAPT Kelley assumed command of the USCGC BOUTWELL (WHEC-719) on 13Jul00.

12, 1861 – Cutter HARRIET LANE fires 1st shot from a naval vessel in the Civil War across the bow of NASHVILLE, Charleston Harbor.

May

09, 1862 – Cutter MIAMI landed President Lincoln on Confederate soil the day before the fall of Norfolk for reconnaissance.

11, 1898 – Cutter HUDSON towed USS WINSLOW from certain destruction under Spanish forts at Cardenas, Cuba. Gold Medal of Honor conferred on LT Newcomb by Congress and Silver and Bronze Medals on his officers and crew – the ONLY medals bestowed by Congress during the Spanish-American War.

17, 1919 – LT Elmer Stone, USCG co-piloted Navy NC4 in first Trans-Atlantic flight.

18, 1920 – USCG personnel were granted the same pay, allowances, and increases as the Navy.

23, 1930 – Former Coastie Elmer Stone received the Congressional Medal of Honor for extraordinary achievement in making the first successful Trans-Atlantic flight.

June

11, 1941 – The amendment to the act creating USCG Jan. 28, 1915) provided that “The Coast Guard shall be a military service and constitute a branch of the land and naval forces of the United States at all times”.

13, 1942 – John Cullen, Seaman 2/c discovered Nazi saboteurs landing on the beach at Amagansett, Long Island.

13, 1943 – USCGC ESCANABA torpedoed off Ivigtut, Greenland with only two survivors.

15, 1949 – 248 unidentified victims of the explosion of the USCG-manned SERPENS in 1945 at Guadalcanal were buried in Arlington National Cemetery in what was described as the largest recommittal on record.

18, 1878 – The Life Saving Service was created by an act of Congress.

23, 1939 – Congress created the Coast Guard Reserve.

July

09, 1943 – Coast Guard manned ships land first troops in Sicily.

23, 1947 – The Women’s Reserve of the Coast Guard Reserve (SPARS) was inactivated.

August

01, 1799 – Secretary of Treasury describes the ensign and pennant authorized to be flown by revenue cutters as “consisting of 16 perpendicular stripes (one for each state in the Union at that time) alternate red and white, the Union of the Ensign to be the Arms of the United States in dark blue on a white field.”

04, 1790 – Congress authorized the building of the first “ten boats” establishing the Revenue Marine. The history of the Coast Guard begins.

04, 1949 – Congress approved Public Law 207, which revised, codified, and enacted into law Title 14 of the United States Code, thus setting forth for the first time a clear, concise statutory statement of the duties and functions of the U. S. Coast Guard.

25, 1971 – The Secretary of Transportation announced the awarding of a contract to the Lockheed Shipbuilding and Construction Co. of Seattle, WA “to build the world’s most powerful icebreaker for the U. S. Coast Guard,” the POLAR STAR, the first of the Polar Class of an icebreaker.

29, 1916 – Congress authorized Treasury to establish ten Coast Guard air stations but appropriated only $7000 for an instructor and assistant. Appropriation for their construction and for planes was not made until 1924.

31, 1819 – Cuter ALABAMA and LOUISIANA captured the Mexican privateer BRAVO in the Gulf of America (formerly the Gulf of Mexico.) Later they destroyed Patterson’s Town on Breton Island, a notorious pirate’s den, putting an end to organized piracy on the Gulf Coast.

September

12, 1941 – The Norwegian sealer BUSKOE was seized by cutter NORTHLAND in MacKenzie Bay, Greenland with Nazi agents to establish radio stations. First naval capture – World War II.

14, 1716 – The Boston Lighthouse on Little Brewster Island in Boston Harbor, MA (which was the first lighthouse established in America) was first exhibited.

27, 1942 – Douglas A. Munro, Signalman 1/c gave his life in helping evacuate Marines at Guadalcanal. Awarded Medal of Honor posthumously. Last words: “Did they get off?”

28, 1850 – An Act of Congress provided for a systematic coloring and numbering of all buoys for, before this time, they had been painted red, white, or black, without any special system. The act “prescribed that buoys should be colored and numbered so that in entering from seaward red buoys with even numbers should be on the starboard or right hand; black buoys with odd numbers on the port or left hand.”

30, 1899 – First Navy wireless message sent via Lighthouse Service Station at Highlands of Navesink, NJ

30, 1949 – The rank of Commodore on the active list of the Coast Guard, established in 1943 as a wartime measure, was terminated by the President under provisions of an Act of Congress approved 24 Jul 1941.

October

16, 1790 – Contract entered into for the construction of the first of 10 revenue cutters, the MASSACHUSETTS, at Newburyport, MA.

17, 1814 – Crew of the cutter EAGLE driven ashore near Negros Head, L.I. in an encounter with English brig DISPATCH. Dragged guns up the bluff and continued battle, using log books for cartridges and returning the enemy’s small shot that was lodged in the hull.

25, 1941 – South Greenland Patrol expanded to include 3 cutters of the Northeast Greenland Patrol – forming the Greenland Patrol.

November

17, 1973 – “Largest Icebreaker in the Western World”, the USCGC POLAR STAR is launched.

23, 1942 – SPARS ( Coast Guard Women’s Reserve) organized.

December

01, 1944 – The Secretary of Navy, at the request of Joint Chiefs of Staff, established the Air-Sea Rescue Agency, an inter-department and interagency body, for the study and improvement of rescue work with the Commandant of Coast Guard as head.

07, 1941 – Cutter TANEY’s screen of anti-aircraft fire prevented Japanese planes bombing Pearl Harbor from destroying the Honolulu power plant.

17, 1897 – The Overland Expedition from BEAR started from Nunivak Island to rescue whalers at Point Barrow.

17, 1903 – Kill Devil Life Saving Station personnel assisted the Wright brothers at their first airplane flight in Kitty Hawk, NC.

24, 1955 – Being the first rescue unit to reach the flood disaster scene in northern California, a CG Helicopter hoisted 138 persons to safety within 12 hours – the first 58 utilizing the light of a small handheld searchlight from positions of peril among chimneys, TV antennas, and trees. In all, the Coast Guard assisted Federal, State, and local agencies in saving over 500 persons by helicopters and boats.