Cape Class Patrol Boat - History

History

The 95 foot patrol boat was originally developed as shallow draft ASW boat and as a replacement for the aging, World War II vintage, wooden 83 foot patrol boats that were used mostly for search and rescue duties. With the outbreak of the Korean War and the requirement tasked to the Coast Guard to secure and patrol port facilities in the United States under the Magnuson Act of 1950, the complete replacement of the 83 foot boat was deferred and the 95 foot boat was used for harbor patrols. The first 95 foot hulls were laid down at the Coast Guard Yard in 1952 and were officially described as "seagoing patrol cutters". Because Coast Guard policy did not provide for naming cutters under 100 feet at the time of their construction they were referred to by their hull number only and gained the "Cape-class" names in 1964 when the service changed the naming critera to 65 feet. The class was named for North American geographic capes.


The Cape class cutters were replaced by the 110-foot (34 m) Island class patrol boats beginning in the late 1980s and many of cutters were transferred to nations of the Caribbean and South America after they were decommissioned by the Coast Guard.

Read more about this topic:  Cape Class Patrol Boat

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    There is no history of how bad became better.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.
    John Dos Passos (1896–1970)

    The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.
    Karl Marx (1818–1883)