First Ten Revenue Service Cutters - Duties of The Revenue Cutters

Duties of The Revenue Cutters

Although little documentation exists regarding any of the first ten cutters' activities - most of the correspondence and logbooks from the era were destroyed by fire when the British Army burned Washington, D.C. during the War of 1812 and another fire in the Treasury Department in 1833 - these government vessels undoubtedly carried out a myriad of tasks. Many of these duties were spelled out in letters from the Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, to the various collectors of customs, who were in direct charge of the cutters and their crews. The duties specifically assigned to the cutters and their crews as legislated by Congress and expounded by Hamilton included:

• Boarding incoming and outgoing vessels and checking their papers (ownership, registration, admeasurement, manifests, etc.);
• Ensuring that all cargoes were properly documented;
• Sealing the cargo holds of incoming vessels;
• Seizing those vessels in violation of the law.

They were also tasked with a number of other duties that were not related to protecting the revenue. These included:

• Enforcing quarantine restrictions established by the federal, state or local governments;
• Charting the local coastline;
• Enforcing the neutrality and embargo acts;
• Carrying official (and unofficial) passengers;
• Carrying supplies to lighthouse stations;
• Other duties as assigned by the collector.

Their primary purpose, however, was to protect the revenue of the United States by deterring smuggling. That meant sailing out of the port to which they were assigned and intercepting vessels before they came too close to the shore. It was here, well out of the harbor but within sight of the coast, that smugglers unloaded part of their cargoes into smaller "coaster" vessels or directly onshore to avoid customs duties. The collectors usually had smaller boats that could check vessels as they sailed into port. Therefore these ten cutters were not harbor vessels; they were designed to sail out to sea, survive in heavy weather, and sail swiftly so that they might overtake most merchant vessels. They were the United States' first line of defense against attempts to circumvent duties, the major source of income during this period.