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. McDougal was activated and acquired by the Coast Guard on 7 June 1924. Designated CG-6, McDougal was commissioned on 28 May 1925, and joined the "Rum Patrol" to aid in the attempt to enforce prohibition laws.
In August 1929, McDougal and Tampa were dispatched to locate and sink the steamer Quimistan, which had been reported as abandoned and on fire in the Atlantic 1,100 nautical miles (2,000 km) east of Norfolk, Virginia. In April 1933, McDougal was one of the Coast Guard ships deployed to search for the U.S. Navy airship Akron when it crashed into the Atlantic on the night of 3/4 April. Later that same month, McDougal was dispatched to help the Italian steamer Voluntas when she had requested assistance on the 23rd, but was recalled when Voluntas rescinded the call for help.
After nearly eight years of Coast Guard service, McDougal was decommissioned at Philadelphia on 26 May 1933 and returned to the custody of the U.S. Navy on 30 June. On 1 November 1933, she dropped the name McDougal to free it for a new destroyer of the same name, becoming known only as DD-54. The ship was struck from the Naval Vessel Register on 5 July 1934, and, on 22 August, was sold for scrapping in accordance with the London Naval Treaty for the limitation of naval armaments.
Read more about this topic: USS Mc Dougal (DD-54)
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