In the great disaster that followed the blowing up of a munition ship at Halifax, the U. S. Coast Guard cutter Morrill, in command of Lieutenant H. G. Hemmingway, and its crew gave first aid to the injured in that stricken city. Coast Guard men supervised, without accident or loss of life, the landing of 345,602 tons of high explosives in New York and the loading on 1,698 vessels. The total value of the explosives on these ships was more than five hundred million dollars.
When the tug Perth Amboy and four barges were shelled by a German submarine on July 21, 1918, within sight of Coast Guard station No. 40, at East Orleans, Mass., Keeper Robert F. Pierce, with his crew, launched their surfboat, and while the shelling was continuing, proceeded out to assist the tug and her tow and aided in safely landing the crew and treating the wounded.
A very gallant action was that of the keeper and crew of Coast Guard Station No. 179 at Chicamacomico, North Carolina, in rescuing life under extraordinary circumstances following the destruction of the steamship Mirlo, on August 16, 1918. At 4:30 p. m. the lookout reported seeing a great mass of water shoot into the air. It seemed to cover the after portion of a steamer that was about seven miles away. At the same time a quantity of smoke rose from the steamer. Fire was seen, and heavy explosions were heard. The Coast Guard boat went to the rescue. Five miles off shore they met one of the ship's boats with the captain and six men in it, who informed them that the ship was a British tank steamer and that she had been torpedoed. Keeper John A. Midgett directed the captain where to go. The Coast Guard boat was headed for the burning mass of wreckage and oil. On arrival the sea was found to be covered with burning oil and blazing gas for a hundred yards, with two masses of flames about a hundred yards apart. In between these, when the smoke would clear away a little, a lifeboat could be seen, bottom up, with six men clinging to it. Heavy seas washed over the boat.
The Coast Guardsmen made their way through that inferno of smoke, thrashing wreckage and blazing oil. They evaded the perils of floating debris, fire, and wave. Lifting the six men on board, all that survived of the sixteen who had been in that lifeboat, the Coast Guard rescuers sought the safety of clear water. Thirty-six men of the Mirlo were rescued.
The first United States vessel to pass the German fortifications at Heligoland and through the Kiel Canal after the signing of the armistice was the Aphrodite, commanded by a Coast Guard officer, Captain F. C. Billard. While passing through the North Sea, the Aphrodite struck a German mine, but escaped destruction and was able to proceed to Germany.
The danger to American shipping by a submarine base on our coast, not to speak of the violation of neutrality which such action would involve, necessitated a patrol of the coast to make sure that there was no such base and to prevent U-boat operations. These requirements were admirably met by the coöperation of the Coast Guard. There were on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts 199 stations.
On April 6, 1917, one message, "Plan One. Acknowledge," incorporated the Coast Guard as an integral part of the Navy during the war. That service had 138 line officers, 70 engineer officers, 13 district superintendents, and 2 constructors, a total of 233 commissioned and 257 warrant officers, and 3,478 men—a valuable addition to the naval forces. The professional ability of the Coast Guard officers is evidenced by the fact that twenty-four commanded combatant ships operating in European waters, five vessels of the patrol force in the Caribbean Sea, and twenty-three combatant craft attached to naval districts. Five Coast Guard officers commanded training camps, six performed aviation duty, two being in command of air stations, one of these in France. The Navy Department, naturally enough, assigned to the command of combatant ships only officers whose experience and ability warranted such detail and only those officers in whom the Department had implicit confidence.
Commodore E. P. Bertholf, then commandant, and Commodore W. E. Reynolds, later commandant of the Coast Guard, and other officers were assigned important administrative duties. Ashore and afloat, officers and men discharged their duties with such efficiency that at the close of the war I strongly recommended to the President and Congress that the Coast Guard be continued permanently as a part of the Navy.
Not only was the Coast Guard an integral part of the Navy during the war, but the Lighthouse Service added 1,284 men to the naval personnel and fifty vessels to the naval force. These vessels did a large part of the work on the defensive entrance areas, laid mines, and were employed as patrols. The light vessels and lighthouses served as lookouts and reporting stations. The Diamond Shoal Light vessel, off Cape Hatteras, was sunk by a German submarine, but not until after it had given warning and saved a number of vessels. The larger light-house tenders were almost continuously in the danger-zone and were employed to buoy the wrecks of torpedoed vessels.
The transfer of forty-one commissioned officers of the Coast and Geodetic Survey gave the Navy additional officers who, from their previous training and experience, immediately assumed important duties. In addition to commanding patrol boats and auxiliaries and other service afloat, their scientific attainments made them particularly useful. For example, one officer, by his experience in developing the wire-drag method of searching for hidden rocks and dangers, was well fitted for research work on the anti-submarine problem. His services were so valuable that he was ordered to London to coöperate with the British Admiralty in further study of anti-submarine devices. Officers of this service at the Naval Observatory, among other contributions, designed a new type of submarine compass binnacle and new type of aircraft compass. One of the ships of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, the Surveyor, did excellent service at Gibraltar and shared with the Wheeling and the Venita the credit for a successful attack on a submarine.