The Art of the Impossible: From the Revenue Cutters to the Noble Train of Artillery
World War Wednesday-The Birth of the Coast Guard
I decided to another on the World War One era because its the Coast Guard’s anniversary I’ll post on WWII later this week to keep us on schedule.
As Europe bled itself in the winter of 1915, the United States Congress decided to update Alexander Hamilton’s plan for the American coastal service.
The United States Revenue Cutter Service was the first federal maritime law enforcement agency. Established by Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, it was created to fix the money problem. President George Washington gave Hamilton the task of putting the new federal government in a good financial position. Hamilton went to Congress with a plan, proposing tariffs—which are taxes on foreign goods imported into the United States—to both raise revenue and create a price cushion for American goods produced by the USA’s then underdeveloped industry.
Before the revolution, the colonies acted as a natural resource supplier for British industry, but after independence, the Americans needed to manufacture for themselves. Competing with the British would not be easy, and tariffs served an important role in kicking off American production independence.
Now, to pull this off Hamilton would need agents who could enforce tariff laws and combat smuggling, which was a critical law and order issue. The American coastline is long, giving wanna be smugglers their choice of locations to make landfall while avoiding the customs agents at the official harbors. Smuggling was rampant, it had cost the British revenue during the colonial era, and if the federal government did not crack down it would do the same to the USA.
So Hamilton and the country would need men on the sea able to fight crime. Initially referred to as the Revenue-Marine, it was officially renamed the Revenue Cutter Service in 1863. Hamilton proposed an initial fleet of ten cutters, ships that were small and fast, to patrol the coast and ensure taxes were collected. Because it predated the recreation of a United States Navy in 1794, the Revenue Marine was considered the oldest seafaring service of the United States after the Continental Navy was disbanded after the Revolution. The service would perform important roles during the 19th century, such as when the Cutter Service vessel Harriet Lane, was the first ship of the Union to fire a shot during the Civil War as it tried to reach Fort Sumter.
Coastal safety would always been a concern in a country with long coastlines. In the 1840 Congress began to turn its attention to a rescue service and these efforts became the United States Life-Saving Service. With a mandate to rescue shipwrecked mariners; it evolved from the 1848 Newell Act—which provided federal funding for equipment but relied on volunteers—into a professional agency in 1878, which established paid crews and a centralized administration as sister service to the Cutters in the Treasury Department.
From 1878 until 1915 it only had one General Superintendent, Sumner Increase Kimball of Maine. On January 28, 1915, given some their overlapping duties and to have a fairer and more streamlined pension system, the USLSS was combined with the United States Revenue Cutter Service to form the current United States Coast Guard, a branch that has served the country well with its complex mix of civilian and military duties. To this day Coast Guard vessels are called cutters.
In the history of the United States military two traits stand out: the ability to adapt to new threats and the logistical genius to overcome impossible odds. Americans embrace adaption readily, a trait developed as a country always on the move. The creation of the Coast Guard was a happy coincidence as these men would be needed when the Germans brought unrestricted submarine warfare to the wide Atlantic theater of the Great War. From the Coast Guard and the miraculous Noble Train of Artillery in 1776 Americans have shown themselves able conquer distance to secure victory.
In late January 1776 Henry Knox achieved an impressive feat of logistical genius when he got the cannons through for the Fortification of Dorchester Heights. Henry Knox was a romantic who had run off with a woman from a loyalist family. He fell in love after she walked into his bookshop in the original American nerd romance. General George Washington needed a nerd with heart. He was given a hard duty, Knox had to overcome nature to save his hometown of Boston.
In 1775, the Continental Army, led by General George Washington, trapped the British Army inside Boston. However, the siege was a stalemate: the Americans had no heavy artillery to threaten the British ships or fortifications, and the British were secure in the city. The Red Coats could resupply themselves at will from the sea, and simply ignore Washington until they had the forces required to march out and smash the colonials.
However, the forts of Ticonderoga and Crown Point in New York—which had been captured by Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys of Vermont, and Benedict Arnold’s Connecticut and Massachusetts men in May 1775—were full of liberated British artillery. Now, the general needed someone to get the cannons nearly 300 miles to Boston, in the winter.
Good luck with that.
Knox arrived at Ticonderoga in December and selected 59 pieces of artillery. He went to work. Knox organized teams of oxen and horses and hired local men for the job. They built 42 heavy sledges to haul the guns over the snow and ice. And then Knox moved them all from Ticonderoga, down the Hudson River valley, across the frozen river. Sixty tons of military hardware, across the ice, the river ice cracking several times and still they persevered. This American Hannibal pushed onward, upward, and over the Berkshire Mountains, he and his men fighting the elements for 70 days.
They finally reached General Washington around January 27, 1776. Knox had done it, and now Washington could prepare a surprise for the British. The America had the big guns now and the Continental Army would drive the British from Boston in March.
History has shown that if Americans remain steadfast and true they can overcome all obstacles and adapt to all challenges.
If they remain steadfast and true.
Wonderful article Albert!