JANUARY 21

Gunner's Mate First Class Willis Jerry Goff, a crewman on board the cutter Point Banks on patrol in Vietnam, was awarded the Silver Star for "his heroic courage and gallantry in action while engaged in armed conflict against North Vietnamese and Viet Cong aggressors in the Republic of Vietnam on Jan. 22, 1969." He and fellow Point Banks crewman Engineman Second Class Larry D. Villarreal volunteered to man the cutter's launch to rescue a group of nine South Vietnamese soldiers who were trapped along a beach by two Viet Cong platoons. Under continuous enemy fire, they made two landings on the beach to rescue successfully all of the South Vietnamese soldiers.

EN2 Larry D. Villarreal was awarded the Silver Star Medal on February 18, 1969, at Department of Transportation Headquarters in Washington, D. C. and Mr. Willis Jerry Goff was awarded the Silver Star Medal on April 19, 1969 at Cat Lo, RVN; both awards were for extraordinary heroic action while serving in the Republic of Vietnam.

His citation read, in part: ". . .with courageous disregard for their own safety, Petty Officer Goff and his fellow crewmember were able to rescue nine South Vietnamese Army personnel who would have met almost certain death or capture without the assistance of the two Coast Guardsmen. Petty Officer Goff's outstanding heroism, professionalism, and devotion to duty and to his fellow man were in the highest traditions of the United States Naval Services."

JANUARY 28

The Coast Guard Act of 1915 was passed by Congress and subsequently signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson on the January 28, 1915. The act created the United States Coast Guard as a new service outwardly modeled on the structure of the U.S. Navy and under the command of the Department of Treasury.

Ellsworth Price Bertholf was named the first commandant of the modern Coast Guard and first flag officer in Service history.

The Coast Guard was created from the merged United States Life-Saving Service and the United States Revenue Cutter Service, which had been established in 1790 to prevent smuggling until the reestablishment of the Navy in 1798.

Although placed under the U.S. Treasury Department, the Coast Guard was temporarily transferred to the Navy Department during World War I and again during World War II. In 1939, the Coast Guard also integrated and incorporated the United States Lighthouse Service and, in 1942, the Bureau of Marine Inspection and Navigation. In 1967, the Coast Guard was placed under the United States Department of Transportation. Following the tragic events of September 11, 2001, the Coast Guard was placed under the Department of Homeland Security.

Back to Top

The Shipwreck that Changed the Coast Guard Forever

Story and artwork by Petty Officer 2nd Class Corinne Zilnicki

When the clock tolled 12 a.m. on February 12, 1983, the 605-foot cargo ship Marine Electric trekked northward 30 miles off Virginia's Eastern Shore, plowing slowly through the gale-force winds and waves stirred up by a winter storm.

An able-bodied seaman relieved the watch and peered forward, noticing for the first time that the ship's bow seemed to be riding unusually low in the water. Dense curls of green ocean rushed over the bow, some of them arching 10 feet over the deck before crashing back down. The crew had been battling 25-foot waves for hours, but until now, the bow had bucked and dipped as normal.

Now it seemed only to dip.

Over the next two hours, the waves intruded with increasing vigor. The entire foredeck was swallowed in 6 feet of water. The main deck was completely awash.

At 2:30 a.m., the ship's master, Phillip Corl, summoned his chief mate, Robert Cusick, to the bridge and shared his fears: the bow was settling, they were taking on too much water, and the crew was in real trouble.

At 2:51 a.m., the captain made the first radio distress call to the Coast Guard.

"I seem to be taking on water forward," Corl said. "We need someone to come out and give us some assistance, if possible."

By the time assistance arrived, the Marine Electric had listed, rolled violently to starboard, and capsized, hurling most of its 34 crew into the 37-degree water. Chaos ensued.

Chief mate Cusick surfaced with a gasp, managed to get his bearings, and spotted a partially-submerged lifeboat nearby. After swimming through towering waves for 30 minutes, he pulled himself into the swamped boat and started thrashing his legs to stay warm.

"All the time I kept looking out and yelling out, 'lifeboat here,' just continually yelling out to keep myself going," the chief mate said. "Then I waited and prayed for daylight to come."

The Coast Guard had long since dispatched an HH-3F Pelican helicopter crew from Air Station Elizabeth City, North Carolina, and directed the crews of several cutters to the Marine Electric's position, but the tumultuous weather conditions slowed the rescuers' progress.

Naval Air Station Oceana had to recall available personnel before launching a helicopter crew, including rescue swimmer Petty Officer 2nd Class James McCann.

At 5:20 a.m., the Coast Guard helicopter crew was the first to arrive on scene. They had expected to find the Marine Electric's sailors tucked into lifeboats and rafts, but instead, they found a blinking sea of strobe lights, empty lifeboats, and bodies strewn below.

The Navy aircrew arrived and deployed McCann, who tore through the oil-slicked waves, searching for survivors. He managed to recover five unresponsive sailors before hypothermia incapacitated him.

The Coast Guard crew scoured the southern end of the search area and discovered one man, Paul Dewey, alone in a life raft. They dropped the rescue basket so he could clamber inside, then hoisted him into the helicopter. About 30 yards away, they spotted Eugene Kelly, the ship's third mate, clinging to a life ring, and lowered the basket to retrieve him.

Cusick remained huddled in his lifeboat until the sailors aboard the Berganger, a Norwegian merchant vessel whose crew was helping search the area, sighted him and notified the Coast Guard. The helicopter crew retrieved him in the rescue basket, then took off for Salisbury, Maryland, to bring the three survivors to Peninsula Regional Medical Center.

Meanwhile, more Coast Guard and Navy rescue crews converged on the scene to search for survivors. Coast Guard Capt. Mont Smith, the operations officer at Air Station Elizabeth City, had piloted a second Pelican helicopter through turbulent headwinds for over an hour in order to reach the site.

He and his crew scanned the debris field below for signs of life. The people they saw were motionless, and it was difficult to determine whether they were simply too hypothermic to move, or deceased. Smith spotted one man and hovered over him, squinting through the whipping snow, trying to decide what to do.

"We all felt helpless," Smith said. "There was no way to know if the man was dead or alive. We had to try something."

Petty Officer 2nd Class Greg Pesch, the avionics electrical technician aboard the helicopter, volunteered to go down on the hoist cable. After some deliberation, Smith agreed. Pesch's descent in the rescue basket was a harrowing one.

"The whole world seemed to be churning," Smith said. "I struggled to maintain a smooth hoist, but I know it was erratic."

Once in the water, Pesch grappled with the basket, trying to hold it steady as he guided the unresponsive man inside. It took several attempts, and then he scrambled into the basket himself and ascended back to the helicopter alongside the victim.

The aircrew spotted another potential survivor, and although Pesch attempted to descend again, the hoist cable spooled back on itself on the drum. The crew was forced to abort their mission and departed for nearby Salisbury Airport, where the man they had pulled from the water was pronounced dead on arrival by paramedics.

Dewey, Kelly and Cusick were the only men pulled from the ocean alive that morning. Their 31 shipmates had either succumbed to hypothermia or drowned. All told, Coast Guard, Navy, and merchant vessel crews recovered 24 bodies from the scene of the capsizing. Seven were never found. It is likely the ship's engineers were trapped belowdecks when the vessel capsized.

"Throughout Coast Guard history, the missions of the service have been written in blood," said Dr. William Thiesen, historian, Coast Guard Atlantic Area. "Such was the case with the loss of the Marine Electric. This tragic event led to stricter marine safety regulations and the establishment of the Coast Guard's premiere rescue swimmer program."

Back to Top

On this day in 1944, Coast Guardsmen participated in the invasions of Eniwetok and Engebi, Marshall Island. Throughout the fall of 1943 the Coast Guard played a significant role in the Allied drives through the Southwest and Central Pacific. The Allies eyed the Marshall Islands as a staging area to neutralize this threat, and at the same time put them a step closer to Japan.

While it may not be measured on the same scale as WWII’s epic clashes and campaigns—Stalingrad, the Battle of the Bulge, Guadalcanal, Anzio—the Battle of Eniwetok was a relatively minor engagement. Lasting roughly one week, American casualties were reported in the low hundreds (Japanese casualties were in the low thousands); the operation was not an end in itself, but served as a crucial step forward toward the goal of taking the Marshall Islands in setting up a later assault on the Mariana Islands to the north.

But for the American troops who landed on tiny Engebi Island in the Eniwetok Atoll in February 1944, after air strikes and naval gunfire had pummeled the shores, the engagement, considered to be minor, held all the violence and danger of a far larger, more "historic" clash. 

During the height of a winter nor’easter on February 18, 1962, two World War II era tankers, SS Fort Mercer and SS Pendleton, split in half placing the lives of their 84 crew members in jeopardy. Motor lifeboat crews from Cape Cod and Nantucket Island stations responded, as well as cutters Eastwind, Unimak, Yakutat, Acushnet and McCulloch, and various aircraft from nearby air stations. Together they rescued 70 persons from the foundering ships. Thirty-two of those were saved by one motor lifeboat alone.

After a busy day of rounding up fishing vessels that had slipped their moorings in foul weather in Chatham Harbor, Massachusetts, Petty Officer 1st Class Bernie Webber, Petty Officer 2nd Class Andy Fitzgerald, Seaman Ervin Maske and Seaman Richard Lively returned to the station to warm up and relax, believing that they had put in a pretty full day. It was only beginning… Upon arrival to the station, they were directed to get underway, cross the Chatham bar in the venerable CG-36500 and look for survivors from the Pendleton.

The rescue of 32 survivors from the Pendleton was successful and such an epic story that in 2016, Disney released the major motion picture, The Finest Hours, starring Chris Pine.

1822 Timber Act. Congress created a ship timber reserve for the U.S. Navy and authorized the President to use whatever forces necessary to prevent the cutting of live-oak on public lands. This task suited the shallow-draft revenue cutters and they were used extensively. This marks the start of the Service’s environmental mission.

That crucial element of the Coast Guard's mission will be exhibited in the Protectors of the Environment wing.

On February 23, 1837, Congress called for an inspection of the coast from Chesapeake Bay to the Sabine River "with regard to the location of additional light-houses, beacons, and buoys." Captain Napoleon L. Coste, commanding the Revenue Cutter Campbell, was dispatched. He reported that the first addition to aids to navigation on this entire coast should be at Egmont Key, Tampa Bay.

On February 25, 1799, The Revenue Cutter Service became responsible for enforcing quarantine laws at sea. “That the quarantines and other restraints, which shall be required and established by the health laws of any state…respecting any vessels arriving in, or bound to, any port or district thereof, whether from a foreign port or place, or from another district of the United States, shall be duly observed by the masters and crews of the several revenue cutters…”

The Signal flag Lima, called the Yellow Jack is flown in harbor when a ship is under quarantine.

Back to Top

Beginning in 1794, Congress made it illegal for US citizens to engage in the international slave trade. Revenue cutters were charged with enforcing this law. On March 25, 1822, the U.S. Revenue Cutter Alabama captured three slave ships. By 1865, revenue cutters had captured numerous slavers and freed almost 500 slaves.

Back to Top

On Thursday, June 25, 1812, just one week after President Madison signed the declaration of war against Great Britain, the Norfolk, Virginia-based Revenue Cutter THOMAS JEFFERSON captured the British schooner Patriot bound from Guadeloupe to Halifax with a cargo of sugar. Termed “Prize No. 1” by the press, this was the first maritime capture in the War of 1812.

The Jefferson’s captain, William Ham, had worked his way through the ranks starting as a mate on cutters in 1791, before receiving his master’s commission in 1804. His first mare commission was the first commission signed by President George Washington and his master’s commission the second signed by President Thomas Jefferson. Ham commanded the cutter throughout the war and for several years thereafter.

Back to Top

Erasmus “Rasmus” Scarborough Midgett (1851–1926) was a surfman with the United States Life-Saving Service on Hatteras Island in North Carolina who single-handedly rescued ten men from the sinking barkentine Priscilla, a 643-ton vessel out of Baltimore, Maryland.

Rasmus was on patrol for the Gull Shoals Life-Saving Station on August 18, 1899. He left southward at 3:00 a.m. on horseback. Facing hurricane-force winds at sea, the Priscilla bottomed out and grounded about the same time Rasmus left for his patrol. Three-fourths of a mile from the station, Rasmus saw items washed ashore, which indicated a shipwreck.

After traveling two more miles on his patrol and finding more debris, Rasmus heard what sounded like faint voices. He held his lantern high over the ocean and saw a ship had keeled over and the mast had fallen across the ship. Men clutched to what was left of the ship about 100 yards from Midgett.

The San Ciriaco storm had sustained winds of 100 mph and Rasmus knew it would be three hours before he could get help from his fellow Gull Shoals Station’s surfmen. The Priscilla was badly breaking up; so Midgett decided to try rescuing the men immediately.

The surf was violent, breaching the narrow stretch of sand between the ocean and Pamlico Sound. Midgett followed each wave as it receded, getting as close to the wreck as possible on each run, yelling instructions to the shipwrecked crew. He told them that when he called, one man should jump to him off the debris and head towards shore. As soon as Rasmus had a chance, he again ran forward into the receding wave, calling for a man to jump. He helped the man reach the shore, pulling him through the waves.

Midgett repeated this exhausting feat six more times, each time dragging a man to safety, but he faced yet another problem. Three men still on the ship were too exhausted to swim towards shore. Midgett, undaunted by what lay ahead, entered the violent surf, boarded the wreck, and one by one, carried each exhausted man to the beach. Rasmus directed the seven men who were still able to walk to begin heading towards the station. Midgett himself cared for the remaining three, including the Captain of the Priscilla, Benjamin E. Springsteen. Giving his own coat to Captain Springsteen, Rasmus then made certain the three injured men were safe from the raging surf. He then rode back to get help from the life-saving crew at Gull Shoals station.

Keeper Pugh was on the beach at Gull Shoals when Rasmus came into sight. Upon hearing Midgett’s amazing story, Pugh ordered two of the surfmen to harness horses to their carts and go after the disabled men. He directed the other surfmen to prepare a room for Captain Springsteen and his surviving crew.

For his heroic action, which ranks among the Coast Guard’s top ten rescues of all time, Midgett was awarded the Gold Lifesaving Medal from the Secretary of the Treasury. The inscription read on one side: “To Rasmus Midgett for rescuing single-handed ten men from the Priscilla, August 18, 1899” and on the other: “In Testimony of Heroic Deeds in the Saving of Life from the Perils of the Sea.

Back to Top

Six U.S. Navy Cyclone-Class patrol coastal warships were assigned to Operation Noble Eagle on November 5, 2001. This was the first time since World War II that U.S. Navy ships were employed jointly with the U.S. Coast Guard to help protect our nation's coastline, ports, and waterways.