USS Ericsson (DD-56) - United States Coast Guard Career

United States Coast Guard Career

On 17 January 1920, Prohibition was instituted by law in the United States. Soon, the smuggling of alcoholic beverages along the coastlines of the United States became widespread and blatant. The Treasury Department eventually determined that the United States Coast Guard simply did not have the ships to constitute a successful patrol. To cope with the problem, President Calvin Coolidge in 1924 authorized the transfer from the Navy to the Coast Guard of twenty old destroyers that were in reserve and out of commission. Ericsson was activated and acquired by the Coast Guard on 7 June 1924.

Designated CG-5, Ericsson was commissioned on 28 May 1925, and joined the "Rum Patrol" to aid in the attempt to enforce prohibition laws. On 11 April 1926, she captured the rum-runner Atalanta. During her time in the Coast Guard, Ericsson's gunners were awarded the USCG Gunnery Trophy for Destroyers for 1925–26 and 1926–27. Ericsson was decommissioned at the Philadelphia Navy Yard on 30 April 1930, and returned to the U.S. Navy on 23 May 1932. She was scrapped and her salvaged material sold on 22 August 1934 in accordance with the London Naval Treaty.

Read more about this topic:  USS Ericsson (DD-56)

Famous quotes containing the words united states, united, states, coast, guard and/or career:

    I incline to think that the people will not now sustain the policy of upholding a State Government against a rival government, by the use of the forces of the United States. If this leads to the overthrow of the de jure government in a State, the de facto government must be recognized.
    Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)

    The United States is the only great nation whose government is operated without a budget. The fact is to be the more striking when it is considered that budgets and budget procedures are the outgrowth of democratic doctrines and have an important part in developing the modern constitutional rights.... The constitutional purpose of a budget is to make government responsive to public opinion and responsible for its acts.
    William Howard Taft (1857–1930)

    On the whole, the great success of marriage in the States is due partly to the fact that no American man is ever idle, and partly to the fact that no American wife is considered responsible for the quality of her husband’s dinners.
    Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)

    The Boston papers had never told me that there were seals in the harbor. I had always associated these with the Esquimaux and other outlandish people. Yet from the parlor windows all along the coast you may see families of them sporting on the flats. They were as strange to me as the merman would be. Ladies who never walk in the woods, sail over the sea. To go to sea! Why, it is to have the experience of Noah,—to realize the deluge. Every vessel is an ark.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Ye Mariners of England
    That guard our native seas!
    Whose flag has braved a thousand years
    The battle and the breeze!
    Thomas Campbell (1774–1844)

    I’ve been in the twilight of my career longer than most people have had their career.
    Martina Navratilova (b. 1956)