Coast Guard Commandant
Following the death of Frederick C. Billard, he was appointed as Commandant of the Coast Guard by President Herbert Hoover on 14 June 1932. As Commandant during the Great Depression, he struggled with low budgets and limited appropriations. In response, Hamlet implemented a cost-cutting plan which called for decommissioning of vessels, closing of Coast Guard stations, manpower reductions, and a 25% reduction in expenditures.
Unfortunately, these measures led to calls to merge the Coast Guard with the United States Navy. With the support of Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral William V. Pratt, however, Hamlet succeeded in persuading President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Congress from taking such action.
Read more about this topic: Harry G. Hamlet
Famous quotes containing the words coast, guard and/or commandant:
“It cannot but affect our philosophy favorably to be reminded of these shoals of migratory fishes, of salmon, shad, alewives, marsh-bankers, and others, which penetrate up the innumerable rivers of our coast in the spring, even to the interior lakes, their scales gleaming in the sun; and again, of the fry which in still greater numbers wend their way downward to the sea.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Then the bird
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and the tree unrolls
the shadow that will guard it
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“What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.”
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