Scientiæ cedit mare (the sea yields to knowledge) – U.S. Coast Guard Academy motto since 1902

Responding to a proposal by Alexander Hamilton, the nation’s first secretary of the treasury, the first U.S. Congress created the Revenue Cutter Service in 1790 as a “seagoing military service that would cruise the coasts, enforcing customs and navigation laws.” The legislation provided for the commissioning and support of 10 cutters and a professional corps of 40 commissioned officers.

President George Washington appointed the first of those officers, Capt. Hopley Yeaton, as master of a cutter in the newly created service, forerunner to the Coast Guard. As with Yeaton, the Revenue Cutter Service initially found its officers within the U.S. Merchant Marine and Navy, but it was not long before it became clear the Revenue Cutter Service’s needs differed from both of those. Yeaton was the first to propose formal training for future officers, who then were being trained at sea for the distinct needs of the new service.

In 1848, Capt. Alexander Fraser, the first officer promoted to commandant of the new service, took command of a new cutter, Lawrence, with orders to sail to San Francisco and the new frontier customs district. Finding most of his officers were political appointees with no experience at sea, Fraser realized the need for a formal course of instruction for future Revenue Cutter Service officers. To that end, he created an 11-month cruise as a school-at-sea, teaching newly minted Navy and Merchant Marine lieutenants the unique skills and disciplines required by the service.

“During times of challenge, the Coast Guard Academy remains an ‘anchor to windward’ – helping us point the way forward and keeping our leaders grounded when the gusts and gales of adversity stir up the seas of our times.” – President George H.W. Bush

Based on his experiences, Fraser also recommended establishment of a formal academy to prepare junior officers for service in the Revenue Cutter Service. But it would be another three decades before Capt. John Henriques was named to lead the first full-time, dedicated cadet training ship, the topsail schooner Dobbin, which had been rebuilt for use as a training vessel. That appointment in 1876 also earned Henriques recognition as the first superintendent of the Revenue Cutter School of Instruction, a position he held until 1883.

 

Training on Land and Sea

The Dobbin was homeported in New Bedford, Massachusetts, where the Revenue Cutter Service’s first land-based school also was established in leased buildings at the north end of Fish Island. Professor Edwin Emery assumed primary responsibility for the cadets’ formal academic training in mathematics, astronomy, English composition, French, physics, theoretical steam engineering, history, and constitutional and revenue law – among other subjects. Cadets also went through a significant physical fitness regimen, including rowing boats several miles before breakfast.

In May 1877, the new school’s first class of eight Revenue Cutter Service cadets reported to Baltimore, Maryland, to set sail on their initial two-year training cruise, during which the “swabs” (a term still used for first-year academy cadets) were immersed in the duties of a deck watch officer, with an emphasis on seamanship and celestial navigation. Henriques, believing cadets should at all times be dignified, courteous, and respectful, also banned gambling, drinking, and profanity.

In writing of his training experiences, Cadet Worth G. Ross, the school’s first graduate in 1879 and eventual Revenue Cutter Service commandant, wrote:

… the strictest obedience to every detail was enforced. … The cadets are given constant practice in raising shears, stepping masts, reefing, furling, shifting sails, and in sending yards up and down. Each takes his trick at the wheel and acquaints himself with the mysteries of the compass and steering gear. The marlin spike, slush and tar pots are the insignia of a thorough-going salt, and the young man who has never before encountered these things finds ample opportunity to do so on a practice cruise. At the end of an arduous cruise the cadet knows whether he is suited to the calling of the sailor, physically and otherwise.

In 1887, the new 115-foot barque-rigged clipper Chase, the first ship specifically built for the Revenue Cutter Service Corps of Cadets, replaced the Dobbin in New Bedford. Also serving as home to the cadets, the Chase had six staterooms, each with two berths, a wash stand, and lockers, often simultaneously housing two cadet classes, senior and junior. It also was equipped with a battery of four broadside guns.

During a subsequent expansion of the School of Instruction, the Chase was moved to Curtis Bay, Maryland, for what was intended to be a brief relocation, but was to become far more. In 1889, President Benjamin Harrison sided with members of Congress who argued there was needless duplication in running two maritime academies – the Navy at Annapolis, Maryland, and the Revenue Cutter Service at New Bedford – and issued an executive order closing the Revenue Cutter School of Instruction, despite pleas from the Revenue Cutter Service that two academies were justified by the significant differences in training and purpose of the two maritime services.

Their views were soon validated, especially as the acquisition of the new territory of Alaska – accessible only by sea – required Revenue Cutter Service ships and personnel to provide security and regulate expanding maritime commerce there. And as the nation’s growing global presence – almost entirely sea-based – reduced the number of Naval Academy graduates available to the Revenue Cutter Service, President Grover Cleveland ordered the School of Instruction re-opened in 1894.

 

Academy Resurrection and Expansion

With its renewed mission of turning out new officers trained to meet Revenue Cutter Service needs, substantial changes were made with the re-opening. Only ship’s officers were used as instructors, with the curriculum once again limited to professional and technical aspects of seamanship and the responsibilities of a Revenue cutter. And, effective with the Chase’s training cruise in 1895, the school also returned to ship-based training only, a period that became known as its “Gypsy Years.” And because the Chase was almost constantly at sea – cruising widely during the six warm-weather months and laying over in Southern ports in the winter – the floating academy never returned to New Bedford.

In 1900, the Chase set up permanent winter quarters in Curtis Bay, where a 64-acre land campus, with a dock for the Chase, also was established, with a carpenter shop, boat shed, storehouse, and classroom. Until 1906, the cadets continued to sleep and eat aboard the Chase.

In 1907 (through 1922), the school took possession of the former Navy training ship Itasca, a 190-foot barquentine-rigged cutter. Its commissioning launched a new, early 20th century training era, with more modern equipment and a triple-expansion steam engine that could power the cutter when sailing was not possible.

Nearly 125 years after Yeaton first proposed a full-time academy for the Revenue Cutter Service, despite the decade in which the New Bedford school was in operation, a series of developments occurred that led to the current line-up.

First, in 1903, the two-year school was expanded to three and the curriculum regrown to include not only seamanship and navigation, but also astronomy, mathematics, English, history, electricity, French or Spanish, gunnery, naval architecture, law and service regulations, steam engineering, hygiene, and signals. Cadets also fielded teams in football, baseball, and tennis, and established the cadet boat race on the Thames River.

What put the school closer to the status of the Naval Academy and West Point was the 1906 addition of engineer cadets to the corps. Mostly college graduates – and so older than the line cadets – the engineers followed a distinctly different curriculum. Over time, however, the school evolved to a primary focus on engineering, in line with the other academies. Today, the academy offers Bachelor of Science degrees in eight majors – civil engineering; mechanical engineering; electrical engineering; naval architecture and marine engineering; government; management; marine and environmental science; or operations research and computer analysis.

In 1910, the Revolutionary War-era Fort Trumbull was turned over to the Revenue Cutter Service by the War Department, to which the school was moved from Curtis Bay and where it remained through 1932. It was renamed the U.S. Revenue Cutter Academy. Although the New London, Connecticut, facilities were so decrepit the Army had abandoned the fort a decade earlier, Congress appropriated meager funds to update and improve it, which were used with what had become typical Coast Guard resourcefulness.

The future of the new academy and the Revenue Cutter Service itself was threatened only a few years later when President William Taft began investigating ways to reduce multifunctionalism among the nation’s multiple maritime services – which included a recommendation to eliminate the Revenue Cutter Service and redistribute its duties among the Navy, Live-Saving Service, and Lighthouse Service. Congress stopped appropriations and the cadet corps dwindled to only five cadets in 1914.

 

Creation of the U.S. Coast Guard And Academy

The future was saved when Taft’s treasury secretary, Franklin MacVeagh, made a counter proposal: merging the Revenue Cutter Service and Life-Saving Service. With strong bipartisan support in Congress, President Woodrow Wilson signed new legislation in 1915 consolidating the services into a new U.S. Coast Guard. At the same time, the Revenue Cutter Service Academy was renamed the U.S. Coast Guard Academy.

In 1922, ship-based training was transferred to the Hamilton, a 205-foot, barquentine-rigged cutter that had served as a gunboat in the Spanish American War. The coal-fired, triple-expansion engine-powered vessel was renamed for the father of the Revenue Cutter Service, now considered father of the modern Coast Guard.

With the purchase of 40 acres of land for expansion of the academy in 1930, the cadets moved into new living quarters and classrooms in 1932, when the U.S. Coast Guard Academy expanded to a full four-year curriculum, the same as its sister military academies at Annapolis, Maryland, and West Point, New York. Today, with the later addition of more acreage and buildings, the U.S. Coast Guard Academy at New London, Connecticut, occupies more than 100 acres of rolling hills on the west bank of the Thames River and serves a corps of some 900 cadets.

“At the Coast Guard Academy, we develop leaders of character. Our mission is grounded in leadership,” according to Rear Adm. Sandra L. Stosz, the academy’s 40th superintendent.

Much of the academy’s 200-week course of instruction covers the 11 core missions of the Coast Guard:

• Ports, waterways, and coastal security
• Drug interdiction
• Aids to navigation
• Search and rescue
• Living marine resources
• Marine safety
• Migrant interdiction
• Marine environmental protection
• Ice operations
• Defense readiness
• Other law enforcement

 

Minority Cadets

The first Asian-American (and Chinese-American) cadet, Jack Jones, graduated with the Coast Guard Academy’s Class of 1949. Kwang-Ping Hsu (Class of 1962) was the academy’s first Chinese-born graduate, followed four years later by the first African-American graduate, Merle Smith. The first female cadets – 38, of whom 14 graduated in the Class of 1980 – reported to the academy in 1976. Hispanics and American Indians also have a long history of Coast Guard service, including the academy, although exact dates and names are in dispute.

While the other federal service academies require a congressional nomination for admission, Coast Guard Academy applicants are chosen by merit competition only, without consideration of gender, ethnicity, or political influence.

The 2013-14 academy corps of 902 cadets represented 45 states and 16 foreign nations and comprised 28 percent minorities and 34 percent women.

“At the Coast Guard Academy, we develop leaders of character. Our mission is grounded in leadership,” according to Rear Adm. Sandra L. Stosz, the academy’s 40th superintendent. “The Institute for Leadership [IFL] enables us to take leader and leadership development to the next level of excellence by providing the capacity, assessment, and research capability necessary to prepare our cadets and officer candidates for the demands they will face as junior officers in an increasingly complex and changing environment.”

 

The Academy at War

World War I

While normally part of a civilian department, the Coast Guard was placed under command of the U.S. Navy at the start of World War I. To meet the urgent need for officers, Coast Guard cadets were graduated early and sent to sea. Following the Armistice of 1918, the Coast Guard Academy resumed a three-year program. Though the number of cadets had dwindled to 19, the coming decade would see major changes for both the Coast Guard and the academy.

The Rum War

When Prohibition became law under the 18th Amendment in 1920, the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcohol became illegal in the United States – and smuggling by sea quickly became widespread. Seeking to maximize profits and reduce confiscation of illegal alcohol, organized crime began using sophisticated methods to subvert law enforcement. At the national level, the Treasury Department was given primary responsibility for enforcement, leaving the Coast Guard charged with stopping sea-based smuggling. Although unofficially referred to as the “Rum War,” the service’s efforts during Prohibition were the foundation of its law enforcement role – and added new courses to the academy curriculum.

World War II

The April 1940 invasion of Denmark by Nazi Germany had a major, if unexpected, impact on the academy. The square-rigged Danish training ship Danmark was sailing in American waters at the time and its captain, Knud Hansen, sought refuge in Jacksonville, Florida, for his ship and crew. When the United States entered the war, Hansen placed the Danmark and its crew at the disposal of the U.S. government “in our joint fight for victory and freedom.”

Danmark was assigned as the Coast Guard Academy’s primary training ship, with Hansen, his officers, and much of his crew remaining aboard to supervise the training of some 3,000 Coast Guard cadets under sail, greatly enhancing the cadets’ knowledge of the seafaring arts. As before, the Coast Guard was transferred to the Navy during World War II, with its expanded missions leading to the rapid training of officers – both regulars and reservists – who went on to serve in the Battle of the Atlantic, the Greenland Patrol, the Aleutians, the South Pacific, and the invasions in Europe. The new academy graduates and their fellow officers and crews soon earned international acclaim for successfully fulfilling one of the most dangerous wartime maritime missions – escorting critical convoys across the North Atlantic, where they were primary targets of German U-boat “wolf packs.”

On Sept. 26, 1945, Danmark returned to the restored Danish government with full honors, having helped the academy reconnect the Coast Guard with its sailing heritage. But the loss of the Danish training ship was soon filled as part of defeated Germany’s postwar reparations – and began a new tradition that remains in force today.

The academy’s Candidate for Reserve Commission (CRC) Program also trained citizen sailors, turning out as many as 200 officers a month. A fleet of 83-foot boats was in continuous operation, training cadets and reservists in shiphandling, seamanship, piloting, communications, and gunnery. The passenger liner Cobb was converted for cadet training, as was the 185-foot three-masted schooner Atlantic, while numerous small craft dedicated to academy training filled the Thames River.

More acreage also was acquired for academy grounds to support the war effort, on which a mess hall, academic building, drill hall, lecture hall, infirmary, armory, library addition, and four barracks were built.

To address the demand for officers afloat, members of the Class of 1942 received their commissions six months early. The classes of 1943 through 1947 all graduated a year early.

Post-World War II

Following World War II, the Coast Guard returned to the Treasury Department and the academy to its four-year curriculum, with a renewed emphasis on engineering, science, math, and professional studies.

On Sept. 26, 1945, Danmark returned to the restored Danish government with full honors, having helped the academy reconnect the Coast Guard with its sailing heritage. But the loss of the Danish training ship was soon filled as part of defeated Germany’s postwar reparations – and began a new tradition that remains in force today.

The German barque Horst Wessel, a magnificent 295-foot-long tall ship built in 1936 as a training ship for the German navy, was commissioned into service with the U.S. Coast Guard on May 15, 1946. Renamed Eagle, it was sailed from Bremerhaven, Germany, to New London by a combined German and Coast Guard crew. As an academy training vessel, Eagle was used to emphasize seafaring arts for underclassmen and leadership development for upperclassmen.

Rear Adm. J. Scott Burhoe, (Ret.), 39th superintendent of the Coast Guard Academy and current president of the Fork Union Military Academy, summed up the evolution of the academy since its Revenue Cutter Service at-sea training and how it has improved the development of the service’s leaders: “There is nothing more important than educating, developing, training, and inspiring cadets to be leaders of character. …”

The Coast Guard transferred from the Treasury Department to the new Department of Transportation in 1967. Reflecting the service’s revised role, the academy curriculum expanded to include economics and management, with eight academic majors offered.

Post-9/11

During the terrorist attacks on New York City’s Twin Towers on Sept. 11, 2001, the normal lines of communication were lost. Recent academy graduates joined a Coast Guard communications team in Boston, forming a remote command center that helped coordinate the evacuation of lower Manhattan. That day also marked a major change in the scope and nature of the Coast Guard mission. Less than two years later, the Coast Guard was transferred from Transportation to the newly created Department of Homeland Security.

Even before that move, the academy began preparing new officers for the Coast Guard’s evolving role in homeland security, with intelligence-gathering becoming a new and urgent focus. For example, the academy developed a program – including two labs – for Geospatial Information Systems (GIS), using satellite data to build precise 3-D images of shorelines and cityscapes. Today, cadets attend classified, secret-level briefs to discuss geospatial issues with imagery recently collected – but not yet publicly released – on potential terrorist targets and appropriate security measures.

That is but one post-9/11 change in academy instruction, which also reflected the Coast Guard’s renewed call to war, sending ships and crews to the Persian Gulf to protect harbors and shipping from insurgents and al Qaeda terrorist attacks.

The Coast Guard’s core humanitarian mission also saw academy-trained officers leading the first federal life-saving efforts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, even though nearly half the New Orleans Coast Guard Sector personnel lost their own homes in the storm. Overall, the service rescued or evacuated more than 33,500 hurricane victims, leveraging available resources to focus on a primary core mission – saving lives.

Rear Adm. J. Scott Burhoe, (Ret.), 39th superintendent of the Coast Guard Academy and current president of the Fork Union Military Academy, summed up the evolution of the academy since its Revenue Cutter Service at-sea training and how it has improved the development of the service’s leaders:

“There is nothing more important than educating, developing, training, and inspiring cadets to be leaders of character. Without the Institute for Leadership we would have educated, developed, trained, and inspired cadets of character … but they would learn to be leaders in the same ad hoc fashion that they did for the first 100-plus years of the USCGA. It is clear that leaders were developed … but no one could explain how … or ensure it could be duplicated. The IFL’s work is making this possible and increasing the likelihood that it will continue.”

This article first appeared in the U.S. Coast Guard 225th Anniversary: A Special Edition of Coast Guard Outlook.