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. Tucker was activated and acquired by the Coast Guard on 25 March 1926, as part of a second group of five to augment the original twenty.
Designated CG-23, Tucker was commissioned on 29 September, and joined the "Rum Patrol" to aid in the attempt to enforce prohibition laws. She served as the flagship of Division 4 of the Destroyer Force through October 1927, when she was transferred to Division 1. On 4 April 1933, the greatest disaster which aeronautics had experienced up to that time occurred off the New Jersey coast. The Navy airship Akron crashed in a storm killing 73 men, including Rear Admiral William A. Moffett, Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics. Tucker received word of the crash and sped to the scene. Upon arrival, she found that the German motorship Phoebus had rescued four men from the sea—one of whom died shortly after being rescued. The survivors were transferred to Tucker and were disembarked at the New York Navy Yard.
After the United States Congress proposed the Twenty-first Amendment to end prohibition in February 1933, plans were made for Tucker to be returned to the Navy. On 26 May, Tucker arrived at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, and was decommissioned ten days later, on 5 June. Tucker was transferred back to the Navy on 30 June. On 1 November, Tucker was renamed DD-57 in order to free the name Tucker for a new destroyer of the same name. For a time, DD-57 served as a Sea Scout training ship at Sandy Hook, New Jersey. She was struck from the Naval Vessel Register on 24 October 1936. DD-57 was sold on 10 December and reduced to a hulk on 23 December.
Read more about this topic: USS Tucker (DD-57)
Famous quotes containing the words united states, united, states, coast, guard and/or career:
“I do not know that the United States can save civilization but at least by our example we can make people think and give them the opportunity of saving themselves. The trouble is that the people of Germany, Italy and Japan are not given the privilege of thinking.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“An inquiry about the attitude towards the release of so-called political prisoners. I should be very sorry to see the United States holding anyone in confinement on account of any opinion that that person might hold. It is a fundamental tenet of our institutions that people have a right to believe what they want to believe and hold such opinions as they want to hold without having to answer to anyone for their private opinion.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“The city of Washington is in some respects self-contained, and it is easy there to forget what the rest of the United States is thinking about. I count it a fortunate circumstance that almost all the windows of the White House and its offices open upon unoccupied spaces that stretch to the banks of the Potomac ... and that as I sit there I can constantly forget Washington and remember the United States.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“On the Coast of Coromandel
Where the early pumpkins blow,
In the middle of the woods
Lived the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.
Two old chairs, and half a candle,—
One old jug without a handle,—
These were all his worldly goods:
In the middle of the woods,”
—Edward Lear (1812–1888)
“One should never intend to do harm to others, but should always guard against the harm others might do to him.”
—Chinese proverb.
“He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)