My Coast Guard News

A signed photo of Lt. Clarence Samuels commanding a Coast Guard vessel near the end of World War II. (U.S. Coast Guard Collection)

Sept. 16, 2022

The Long Blue Line: Clarence Samuels—the U.S. military’s Afro-Latino color barrier buster!

Panamanian born, here the story of Clarence Lorenzo Samuels, the first minority to command a federal ship.

At the Academy, Lt. Thomas James”Jimmy” Eugene Crotty excelled in leadership and athletics. During his senior year, he served as class president, company commander, and captain of the football team. Graduation in 1934 proved to be the last time many of his classmates and friends would see him. (Coast Guard Academy Tide Rips, 1934)

Sept. 16, 2022

The Long Blue Line: LT Crotty and the Battle for Corregidor

Sep. 16 we remember all POWs, here is the story of the Coast Guard's first POW since the War of 1812

One of the Coast Guard's first Hispanic American officers served in World War II, and has a Fast Response Cutter named for him.

Sept. 9, 2022

The Long Blue Line: Joseph Tezanos—wartime lifesaver, Hispanic-American trailblazer and FRC namesake

World War II hero goes on to become one of the first Hispanic American officers in the United States Coast Guard.

Painting of Alexander Fraser showing his home town of New York and the cutter Harriet Lane in the background. (U.S. Coast Guard Collection)

Sept. 2, 2022

The Long Blue Line: Captain Fraser—Coast Guard’s forgotten visionary and first commandant

. . . [Captain] Fraser opposed an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, and this official’s hostility proved fatal to the Captain’s long career: by an arbitrary abuse of power, the administration in 1856 revoked his commission summarily. Both indefensible and stupid, this action resulted wholly from personal animosity and cost the government one of

Official photograph of Chief Canine Sinbad featuring the Coast Guard crest in the background. (U.S. Coast Guard)

Aug. 26, 2022

The Long Blue Line: Chief Canine Sinbad—the Coast Guard’s Four-Legged Sailor

Life of a cutter dog.

Coast Guardsmen Petty Officers Second Class Charles Vilamere and Mike Kaszuba and Petty Officer First Class Steven “Sleepy” Franks, stand in front of a Coast Guard C-130 with “Policia” markings on the fuselage. (Coast Guard Aviation Association)

Aug. 19, 2022

The Long Blue Line: Operation “Jester”--Coast Guard counterdrug ops in Peru

The Coast Guard's role in Operation Jester.

An engraving showing “wreckers” salvaging a grounded vessel in the Florida Keys. In 1822, around 40 British and nine American sloops served as wreckers in the Keys. In addition to providing rescue and salvage assistance to grounded vessels, a few were also notorious smugglers and pirates. (State Archives of Florida)

Aug. 12, 2022

The Long Blue Line: Revenue Cutter Alabama rescues 16 from human traffickers 200 years ago!

In June 1822, the Alabama District Court in Mobile heard cases against three vessels that had been seized several months earlier by the Revenue Cutter Alabama. Within the space of four days, beginning on March 4th, the 56-foot topsail schooner had captured them just north of the Florida Keys. Two were charged with “having onboard . . . negroes . .