The U.S. Coast Guard is bound tightly to the best, and worst, elements of the naval, military, maritime, and political history of the United States. No one can deny Coast Guard history is difficult to untangle. It is a complex mix of cross-purpose doctrines, stirred by conflicting personal and professional ideologies, all roaming through numerous agencies, governmental mandates, wars, and conflicts. Above all, a history of political wrangling gives the Coast Guard the most peculiar character among U.S. military forces.
This is an institution with a wide range of experience and diverse functions. Despite this varied background, one must wonder why the Coast Guard routinely dismisses its history. Perhaps it is a lack of knowledge, understanding, or caring. Whatever the reason, history remains the service's most overlooked and underused operational and planning asset.
The issue of relevancy appears often in the Coast Guard. Recently retired Commandant Admiral James Loy might have been speaking of relevancy when he proclaimed the short-lived "new normalcy." It is short-lived because his successor will find another "normalcy" and carry on with his version of it. Admiral Loy often used historical allusions, attempting to apply some relevancy of the past to the present. Relevancy has been difficult for the Coast Guard, and not only about its place in the national scheme.
In 1992, U.S. Coast Guard Academy chemistry instructors faced a problem of how to make knowledge of chemistry relevant to cadets. The cadets, not unlike their civilian student counterparts, approached chemistry classes with "fear and foreboding."1 Wanting to relieve the dread, instructors developed a program that explained how chemistry is "intertwined in countless professions," and therefore relevant. The campaign was a success.
If instructors were able to impress on a group of teenagers the complex relevancy of chemistry, why is showing the relevance of Coast Guard history so difficult? Does history have no relevancy to the Coast Guard's military professionals? Presumably, not. Although standard undergraduate history courses are in the Academy curriculum, Coast Guard history has yet to become a formal course. Many graduates believe, however, that they have received training in Coast Guard history because of the legacy method employed at the Academy to "pass the word."
On a Coast Guard-orientated Internet discussion group, an Academy cadet described his historical instruction:
Cadets are "indoctrinated" in Coast Guard history in various ways over their four years. It does indeed start out with swab summer where swabs learn the "facts," but it usually doesn't end there. During 4/c [fourth class] year they are jammed full of Coast Guard knowledge as part of their training, which is finalized in March of each year with what we call Boards. It is a combination of professional knowledge and history. During 3/c [third class] year you are responsible for teaching that history to your 4/c so you actually learn it better then. However, during your 2/c [second class] and 1/c [first class] year there is little additional history knowledge gained.
I am guessing there is no formal course on history because there simply isn't enough time to fit it into most degree programs. That's not to say that many of us wouldn't take it as an elective if it was offered, it would just take a back seat to other classes.
In other words, a harried bunch of teenagers are told selected bits of information or trivia, which they are supposed to teach to yet another nearly inattentive group of cadets, only to be forgotten over the next two years when "little ... history knowledge is gained." The lack of emphasis the Coast Guard places on its history is clear when it doesn't "fit" into degree programs. If history were a part of the degree programs, it would take a "back seat" to the more relevant classes. It would be difficult to ask the Coast Guard's future leaders to understand and apply history if they have no historical background.
The Coast Guard Academy creates engineers through a rigorous course of instruction, but it limits subjects containing institutional knowledge and culture. The Academy has a special responsibility to conduct this training, because its graduates predominate the senior officer corps. In all military services, the officer corps is responsible for maintaining and preserving the service's history. The Academy does not dismiss history; it simply does not emphasize it as being relevant or important in an engineering atmosphere.
Nevertheless, any professional should know and understand the history of his profession. No competent chemist would begin laboratory research without a review of historical developments in chemistry. Neither should professional Coast Guard officers depart the Academy without a historical understanding of their service. History melds the philosophical and perceptual compounds with reality, which, in turn, shapes the Coast Guard's character and culture. Cadets, in all years of training, should be exposed to the service's historical base to be used as a tool to shape their moral and ethical conduct not only as officers, but as leaders of the nation at large. These simply remain theoretical, or worse, become myth.
Nearly all cadets, within the first two years of instruction, learn of notorious Captain Mike Healy and his exploits in 19th-century Alaska. But do they know more than popular stories? Do they know why Healy remains the most controversial officer in the service's history? Do they understand how Healy's conduct altered the service? Similarly, recent commentary notes the lack of a "warrior ethic" in the Coast Guard. Do people understand just what this is and why it is important? This deficiency owes, in part, to the lack of knowledge of history.
In previous years, the challenge to do a variety of simultaneous missions relied on a keen sense and understanding of history. For example, it was the use of history that stymied the U.S. Navy's attempts at absorbing the Revenue Cutter Service. During the first major takeover attempts in the 1880s, the service's chief, Ezra W. Clarke, asked veteran Captain Gilbert Knapp (a captain since 1841) to write about the early history of the Revenue Cutter Service, "which [it] is believed may be of importance in promoting the interests of the Service." Clarke wanted information about wrecks, vessels in distress, participation in military operations, or "any remarkable or noteworthy occurrences with which the Service has been identified." His goal was not to inform the public. The information was for the consumption of Congress and those officers having no more than a generational knowledge of the service's history. Knapp's recollections helped justify the service's continued existence as a separate entity. Following 1880, these histories appeared as regular appendices in congressional records with annual updates.
The Army, Navy, and Marine Corps chronicle their histories for operational purposes. Unfortunately, the Coast Guard does not consider its history in an operational context and as such has become a poor steward of it. In the 1880s, Captain Horatio Smith (the first historian of the Revenue Cutter Service) lamented that the service did not have a person to champion the service's history. Similarly, former Coast Guard Academy history professor Irving King, with some surprise, noted in Contemporary Authors: "Historians have paid surprisingly little attention to Coast Guard history." In reality, this lack of notice should be no surprise, because the 21st-century Coast Guard has yet to produce internally initiated, definitive histories. Considering the service creates no historical interest within itself, no external interest can be or should be expected from the mainstream historical community.
This rekindles the theme that people cannot be expected to understand a history that does not exist. There will be those who will argue that the Coast Guard generated a very good series about World War II. What is not widely known is this series exists only because President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order mandating the recording of all services' actions during World War II. This was the Coast Guard's last comprehensive historical series. This is unfortunate, because those who lived and commanded during wartime are becoming fewer each year, and with them goes history that cannot be found in textual form. The Vietnam War has been relegated to similar handling; to date no official effort has been made to document the Coast Guard's role in that war.
The lack of historical interest falls squarely on the Coast Guard's leadership. Since World War II, the Coast Guard has relegated history to a public affairs role with the express purpose to increase "the value of Coast Guard history and prestige in information releases and service morale." In other words, it is a relevancy issue. The late renowned historical novelist Patrick O'Brian recounted a similar circumstance. His primary character, Captain Jack Aubrey, teaching navigation to a group of midshipmen, noted "although a lunar observation was harder to understand than a sheet-bend, most of the young men convinced of the subject's importance." So far, making engineering the sheet-bend of the Academy, cadets view history as earlier young sailors viewed the taking of lunar observations. Most will not see the importance of history in their careers, because it is not a mechanical undertaking, and it is more difficult to understand.
The use of history only for public affairs purposes has been a failure. It has generated little or no interest among internal or external academic professionals or lay participation. People who should be informed about the Coast Guard are not. For example, during the 1996 election year, candidate Lamar Alexander felt the "current armed forces lineup of Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines is insufficient" to protect the nation's borders. "He wants to establish a fifth branch [of the armed forces] to patrol." It could be that Alexander did not know the Air Force is the fifth service. Nevertheless, those in power who remain misinformed about the Coast Guard's being one of the armed forces can cause the service unintentional harm. The Coast Guard, as a military organization, has allowed its historical purpose to drift into invisibility. In contemporary terms, invisibility and lack of notice affect the Coast Guard's ongoing attempts to attract an equitable share of congressional funding and quality enlisted recruits and officer candidates.
The implications and effects of history should be ingrained in the service's culture, but it never should be considered as a chemical formula. Captain Charles F. Shoemaker, the service's first true military head, knew the importance of history when he adopted the motto, Semper Paratus. He based the motto on a historical understanding beyond the literal meaning, that officers were always on duty.
Some leaders may forget chemical formulas, but the professional understanding of their service's history must remain a basis in all their immediate and future decisions. Researchers at the Academy studied values of cadets and found the cadets altered their values only slightly from entrance to graduation. If value judgments change little during their training and they receive no Coast Guard historical background, then on what will they base their future professional decisions?
The relevancy of history will become more prevalent as the nation moves into the 21st century, especially given the possibility of the service's being placed under yet another government agency. The Coast Guard must begin including history as a relevant topic and a survival tool, just as any of its engineering courses, and begin sponsoring quality research with greater staff support and funding. The placement of history as a relevant part of Coast Guard operational parameters is not a quixotic task but a rational and intelligent decision by informed service leaders.
If the Coast Guard chooses to ignore its history, however, and continues on a course of using zero-based generational knowledge, then it may have a future filled with a renewed series of exclusions, misrepresentations, tactical and strategic errors, and quadrennial reorganizations. To continue to be Semper Paratus in its original meaning, the Coast Guard must embrace knowledge and understanding of its history. It must place that history in such a place within the organization that everyone will recognize its relevance and importance for the future of the service.
Master Chief Wells is a long-time researcher and author of U.S. Coast Guard and Revenue Cutter Service history. His article, “Crisis at Cedar Keys,” appeared in the April 2002 issue of Naval History magazine.