Let’s hear it for the U.S. Coast Guard.
As regular readers will recall, I’m a great admirer of the U.S. military, but I usually talk about the men and women who wield the weapons, from the rifle up to highly efficient bombers that can ruin the whole day for a bunch of bad guys.
Today I want to pay tribute to the Coast Guard, whose usual stock in trade is saving lives. When needed, they can also use force most effectively, in interdicting drug runners and other smugglers. But when you think Coast Guard you usually envision one of those orange and white helicopters hovering over a disaster scene and hoisting some poor individual to safety.
The Coast Guard has a long and proud history. It began as the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service in 1790, to curtail smuggling in the brand new United States. The cutters were combined in 1915 with the U.S. Lifesaving Service to form the Coast Guard as we know it.
I was inspired to write today’s column by the great work the service did in rescuing flood victims from Hurricane Harvey and, almost certainly, from Irma. I well remember the hundreds and hundreds of New Orleanians that the Coast Guard saved after Katrina.
When I was a reporter with the New Orleans Times–Picayune I got to know the personnel of Coast Guard Air Station New Orleans pretty well and went on some missions with them.
I remember that when I first started writing about them, they were still flying the HH-3 Pelican helicopter, a great big old boxcar sized aircraft that could venture out more than 700 miles and hold up to 15 people. That was in theory. But one time an HH-3 crew jammed more than 20 victims of an oil rig disaster into their aircraft and of course they all made it back safely to the air station.
The HH-3 was replaced by the HH-65 Dolphin, a sleek modern, computerized helicopter that could be programmed, for example, to fly search patterns in a specific grid, all on its own. That allows the pilot to lend his own set of eyeballs to the rest of the crew in searching for victims.
The Dolphin is a lot smaller than the HH-3 and its range is not as great, but it’s modern and that’s what the military must go with these days.
As mentioned, the Coast Guard also fights the war against drugs and it was on a drug patrol that I had one of my more interesting adventures as a reporter. The service uses a series of 110-foot cutters made by Bollinger Shipyards on Bayou Lafourche, La., and it was that connection to our state that led me to go on the drug patrol. .
The closest 110-footer was based out of Miami so a photographer and I flew there to meet up with the captain and crew. We were to be out for two or three days, looking for any bad guys with illegal cargos.
We set out through Biscayne Bay on a lovely day and I was enjoying the great view from the cutter’s bridge. But as soon as we got out into the open Atlantic, we encountered huge waves of about 15 feet, some of which crashed into the bridge itself.
I was doing fine, however, and I told the skipper, a young lieutenant, that I would go below to the galley to get a sandwich for lunch. Well, as soon as I got below and could not see any horizon for visual orientation, the huge waves got to me and I had an instant and severe case of seasickness.
Crew members told me I could lie down in a vacant bunk, but that rack, as they call it, was right in the ship’s bow and was rising and falling many feet with each wave. I even did “hang time” when the rack would quickly rise and then drop from under me, leaving me suspended in the air for a split second.
Thankfully, the head, or bathroom, was very close by and I utilized it several times to deal with my seasickness.
Well, while this was going on, an announcement from the captain was piped throughout the cutter: “Attention all hands. Attention all hands. We have lost steering. This is no drill.”
Something had gone wrong with the rudder and steering system. But our skillful young captain, utilizing the twin propellers, or screws, could still steer the craft on an emergency basis. But our drug patrol was over before it had really begun and we had to return to Miami.
Still shaky legged and rather green around the gills, I and the photographer said farewell to the skipper and his crew and I had to reluctantly call the newspaper to tell them we’d be back early.
Despite that misadventure, however, I again want to say how much admiration I have for the men and women of the Coast Guard. Thousands of Americans, ranging from boaters, fishermen, deep sea mariners and flood victims, are walking around safe today who would otherwise not be here without the Coast Guard.
As they say, Semper Paratis — Always Ready.
