Early History
The Coast Guard's predecessor service, the Revenue Cutter Service, was founded 4 August 1790, when the Tariff Act permitted construction of ten cutters and recruitment of 100 revenue officers. From 1790, when the Continental Navy was disbanded, to 1798, when the United States Navy was created, the Revenue Cutter Service provided the only armed American presence on the sea. Revenue Marine cutters were involved in the Quasi-War with France from 1798 to 1799, the War of 1812, and the Mexican-American War.
Another predecessor service, the U.S. Lighthouse Service, was organized by statute in 1910. The predecessor to the Lighthouse Service was the United States Lighthouse Board established in 1852.
In 1794, the Revenue Cutter Service was given the mission of preventing trading in slaves from Africa to the United States. Between 1794 and 1865, the Service captured approximately 500 slave ships. In 1808, the Service was responsible for enforcing President Thomas Jefferson's embargo closing U.S. ports to European trade.
The Coast Guard's role in environmental protection dates back more than 185 years to the 1822 Timber Act that tasked the Revenue Cutter Service with protecting government timber from poachers.
During the American Civil War, the Revenue Service cutter Harriet Lane fired the first shots of the war at sea at the steamer Nashville during the siege of Fort Sumter. A Confederate Revenue Marine was formed by crewmen who left the Revenue Cutter Service. Upon the order of President Lincoln to the Secretary of the Treasury on 14 June 1863, Federal cutters were assigned to the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron.
In the 1880s through the 1890s, the Revenue Cutter Service was instrumental in the development of Alaska. Captain "Hell Roaring" Michael A. Healy, captain of the USRC Bear, greatly assisted a program that brought reindeer to Alaska to provide a steady food source. Healy had the reputation as a rough sailing master and was court-martialed several times, but was restored to rank again and again. In the winter of 1897–1898, the reindeer and lieutenants in the Revenue Cutter Service participated in the Overland Relief Expedition to help starving trapped whalers. During the Snake River gold rush of 1900, the Revenue Cutter Service returned destitute miners to Seattle from Alaska.
The Coast Guard took its unofficial motto, "You have to go out, but you don't have to come back," from the 1899 regulations of the United States Life Saving Service, which stated:
- "In attempting a rescue the keeper will select either the boat, breeches buoy, or life car, as in his judgment is best suited to effectively cope with the existing conditions. If the device first selected fails after such trial as satisfies him that no further attempt with it is feasible, he will resort to one of the others, and if that fails, then to the remaining one, and he will not desist from his efforts until by actual trial the impossibility of effecting a rescue is demonstrated. The statement of the keeper that he did not try to use the boat because the sea or surf was too heavy will not be accepted unless attempts to launch it were actually made and failed, or unless the conformation of the coast—as bluffs, precipitous banks, etc.—is such as to unquestionably preclude the use of a boat."
These regulations were repeated in the 1934 Coast Guard regulations.
Read more about this topic: History Of The United States Coast Guard
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