Happy 235th birthday to America’s second-oldest military service: the U.S. Coast Guard!
Since 1927, Semper Paratus (Latin for “always ready”) has been the motto by which the Coast Guard has sailed. According to the United States Coast Guard Academy, the phrase reflects the Service’s commitment to “being prepared for any situation, whether it’s search and rescue, law enforcement, or national defense.”
With dual directives as both a military service and a federal law enforcement agency, the Coast Guard is a very unique entity.
In times of war, the Coast Guard often operates under the flag of the U.S. Navy, as it did in World War II. During Vietnam, Coast Guard Squadrons One and Three were developed as direct combat units providing offshore combat support to military operations, while the legendary “swift boats” patrolled the country’s rivers.
Today, the service operates elite units known as Deployable Specialized Forces, used domestically and internationally to respond to terrorist threats, drug trafficking and other illegal activities.
As a federal law enforcement agency, the USCG has some of the broadest authority in the nation, surpassed only by the U.S. Marshals Service.
The Coast Guard’s day-to-day missions are many – actually, too many to cover in depth in a single article. In a nutshell, those missions include controlling the U.S. border and maritime approaches, protection of America’s ports and waterways, conducting military operations to defend the nation, saving lives, enforcing federal law, taking the lead in national emergencies and maintaining the flow of maritime commerce.
Here in Tennessee, most people do not realize the service’s significant presence on the state’s navigable waterways, which include the lower Mississippi, Tennessee and Cumberland rivers, as well as their tributaries.
In the Volunteer State, the largest Coast Guard unit is Sector Lower Mississippi in Memphis. The sector’s area of responsibility covers more than 2,200 miles of rivers in six states. The unit oversees buoy tenders, a navigation boat, response boats and a Marine Safety Detachment, whose primary missions are marine environmental protection and to ensure the safety and security of vessels and waterways through inspections, investigations and enforcement of regulations.
Under the umbrella of Sector Ohio Valley is another Marine Safety Detachment in Nashville, as well as buoy tenders homeported in Chattanooga and Paris Landing.
From Chattanooga, the USCG cutter Ouachita maintains aids to navigation and conducts light ice breaking operations (when needed) on the Tennessee River and the navigable portions of its tributaries.
The Coast Guard cutter Chippewa is homeported at Paris Landing and is responsible for maintaining aids along portions of the Tennessee, Cumberland, Ohio and Upper Mississippi Rivers.
Josh McTaggart is a retired Coast Guard commander who served as supervisor of Marine Safety Detachment Nashville from 2007-10. Reflecting on his time in Tennessee, the Coast Guard Academy graduate said, “It might not have been on the coast, but my time in the Coast Guard still made a difference here in Tennessee.”
McTaggart added, “We worked to keep towboats and barges moving safely on the rivers, helped during floods, and did our part to protect the people and commerce that depend on our waterways every day.”
He summed up his statement by saying, “It wasn’t flashy, but it mattered and I’m proud to have been a small part of that.”
In an effort to deter smuggling on American shores, the Coast Guard was conceived as the Revenue Cutter Service in 1790. As Secretary of Treasury, Alexander Hamilton petitioned Congress to authorize the construction of 10 cutters to help stem the flow of illegal imports. The request was authorized on Aug. 4, 1790. That date has been adopted as the Coast Guard’s official birthday.
The United States Life-Saving Service was established in 1848 and for more than 60 years, the agency worked alongside the Revenue-Marine. In 1915, President Woodrow Wilson signed an act merging the two groups to create what is now known as the Coast Guard.
From its inception, the USCG and its predecessors operated under the authority of the Department of Treasury. In 1967, the service was transferred to the Department of Transportation. In response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the agency was reassigned to the Department of Homeland Security in 2003.
Presently, active duty members of the Coast Guard number only about 40,000. By contrast, according to NYC.gov, there are 36,000 uniformed police officers in New York City alone.
Marcus Easley is a retired Chattanooga policeman and former criminal science instructor who retired from the Coast Guard Reserve as a senior chief petty officer in 2020.
When asked how he felt about having had the opportunity to serve in the Coast Guard, Easley replied, “How do you sum up 30 years?”
He added, “There was always a sense of pride that you were helping the people of Tennessee and America by doing something most people didn’t even know existed.”
Referring to the beauty of the state’s waterways, he noted, “Where I live, there is so much boating and until I joined the Reserves, I had no idea what was going on behind the scenes to keep things here pristine.”
After the 9/11 attacks, Easley said Tennessee Reservists were well represented in the Gulf War, with many of his fellow Reservists serving in Kuwait, Iran and other venues throughout the Middle East.
“We always worked just as hard in peace time as we did in war time. If you don’t have pride in that,” he concluded, “you don’t have pride in yourself.”
Recently, under President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, the Coast Guard welcomed a $25-billion investment from the federal government marking the largest single commitment of funding in the Service’s history.
For 235 years, on the sea, in the air and on land, the United States Coast Guard has performed hundreds of missions at home and abroad in an effort to maintain and improve the lives of Americans.
In the greatest traditions of the sea going services, we say Bravo Zulu – well done.
Happy birthday, Coasties. Keep up the good work.
In Service to our Nation With Honor, Respect, and Devotion to Duty We protect We defend
We save We are Semper Paratus We are the United States Coast Guard
– The Coast Guard Ethos
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Donnie Hall is a native of East Tennessee and is a veteran of the U.S. Coast Guard. He currently lives in Nashville where he works as an actor and freelance writer.