The 75-foot U.S. Coast Guard cutter CG-290 battled a moderate gale as she patrolled off Montauk Point, the eastern tip of Long Island, New York, on Christmas Eve 1930. Standing in to Fort Pond Bay at the start of the midwatch on Christmas morning, Officer-in-Charge Boatswain Alexander C. Cornell took CG-290 toward the yacht club landing there. Stabbing into the stormy darkness, the cutter’s searchlight beam starkly illuminated men offloading a cargo of liquor from a rumrunner. Caught red-handed, the disconcerted smugglers scattered pell-mell at the cutter’s approach, while a second, larger runner—the 100-foot Audrey B.—began moving away from the dock.
Three times the cutter’s 1-pounder barked as CG-290 accelerated and chased the Audrey B., the blank rounds compelling the Nova Scotia–based “black”—so nicknamed because of the color applied to the runners to aid the nocturnal nature of their work—to pick up speed and begin laying smoke. Despite the heavy weather, the Coast Guardsmen’s gunnery in earnest proved excellent: They scored three hits on the Audrey B.’s stern, forcing her to heave-to and surrender. CG-290 came alongside the black, both rolling and pitching vessels suffering damage as the Coast Guard sailors nimbly boarded and took possession of the rumrunner and then detained the Audrey B.’s crew on board the cutter. Boatswain Cornell brought the prize and her 2,800 cases of spirits into New London, Connecticut, later that morning.
The valiant little vessel that bested natural and criminal elements that Christmas morning was one of 203 such craft authorized to combat the substantial forces bringing liquor into the United States in defiance of Prohibition. They were nicknamed “six-bitters,” a monetary slang reference to their rounded-off 75-foot length—75 cents = “six bits.” While the Coast Guard had specified the basic requirements, it employed an outside architect to draft the plans. Trained as a naval architect at Die Technische Hochshule in Berlin, Germany, John Trumpy had emigrated to the United States in 1902. Employed first by the New York Shipbuilding Company, Camden, New Jersey, he began working for the Mathis Yacht Building Company as a yacht designer in 1908. For the Coast Guard, Trumpy envisioned a flush-deck vessel with a roomy pilothouse, a simple mast stepped forward of that structure, and two trunk cabins. A single 1-pounder gun was mounted on the centerline, with provision for a pintle-mount .30-caliber Lewis machine gun forward of that.
In keeping with Coast Guard practice, the officer-in-charge and engineer lived aft, the two officers having their own head. Ordnance stores and the magazines lay aft of the officers’ quarters. The six-man crew berthed forward, with their own head located in the bow of the vessel and the crew’s lockers grouped three on each side of the hull. In between, amidships, separated by metal bulkheads from the shared galley and mess room, lay the machinery spaces and fuel tanks. Two six-cylinder 200-hp gasoline engines enabled the twin-screw boats to attain a top speed of between 15 and 16 knots. Galley amenities included a sink, ice chest, and four-burner range.
With white oak keels and framing, and fir or yellow pine bulwarks and planking, the boats took shape in 17 different yards, ranging from Benton Harbor, Michigan, to Seattle, Washington, and from East Boothbay, Maine, to Jacksonville, Florida. The largest number of six-bitters came from Camden, New Jersey (22 vessels); Jacksonville, Florida (20); Norfolk, Virginia (18); and Bay City, Michigan (15). Stanching rum-running was a high priority for the Coast Guard, resulting in the 75-footers being completed quickly. The first, CG-100, was commissioned on 21 October 1924, and the last, CG-302, on 18 July 1925.
Intercepting liquor-laden vessels provided the six-bitters with ample employment from when they began entering service through the repeal of Prohibition in 1933. The 75-footers then transitioned to patrolling regattas, providing assistance to mariners, and keeping close watch for obstacles to navigation. While the Coast Guard provided 14 boats to other government agencies, between 1932 and 1937 it transferred more than 50 of the six-bitters to the Navy, which designated them as district patrol vessels (YPs). The first one transferred, CG-149, became YP-15, on 24 November 1932. Eleven of the boats went to the U.S. Naval Academy.
Between 1936 and 1941, seven of the Navy craft were stricken, including YP-30, which was assigned to the Ninth Naval District and destroyed by fire on 24 May 1937. The others continued to serve as unnamed district patrol vessels save one—YP-6, ex-CG-209. First named the Skaneateles when received by the Navy, YP-6 was designated for use of Assistant Secretary of the Navy Charles Edison and on 20 October 1937 was renamed the Milan in honor of the Ohio birthplace of Edison’s father, inventor Thomas Alva Edison. She was the only one of the Navy’s six-bitters to have a name.
In 1940, with global tensions increasing and American involvement with stemming the tide of Axis aggression only a matter of time, the Navy reassigned its six-bitters from training reservists to inshore patrol work. By mid-1941, the Coast Guard and the Navy were each operating about the same number of the vessels, the former from bases on both coasts and on the Great Lakes, and the latter in the naval districts to which they were assigned.
The first of the craft lost to enemy action belonged to the Navy: YP-16 (ex-CG-267) and YP-17 (ex-CG-275). Transferred from the Thirteenth Naval District and transported to Guam as deck cargo on board the oiler Ramapo (AO-12), both vessels ultimately were lost during the Japanese assault on that nearly defenseless American possession in early December 1941.
When the Sea Services no longer needed the six-bitters, these sturdy little craft found employment in private hands. With the exception of the Skaneateles/Milan, the six-bitters received names for the first time. For example, CG-162 became the fishing boat Marjorie, CG-150 became the tow boat Avenger, and CG-193 became the freight boat Angler. Ironically, some of the six-bitters that had emerged from the draftsmanship of John Trumpy, the yacht designer, became yachts; the Charbert (ex-CG-217) belonged to Robert Todd Lincoln Beckwith, great-grandson of President Abraham Lincoln.
Designed and employed to deal with an unprecedented law-enforcement crisis, the six-bitters had, as Commander Frederick A. Hunnewell, chief constructor for the Coast Guard, declared, combined “seaworthiness, speed, cruising radius, and accommodations . . . essential for a self-sustaining unit of the Service.” In Hunnewell’s estimation, the six-bitters had proved “successful from every point of view.” Those who had operated the stout little boats would have agreed with him.
CG-100–class 75-foot Coast Guard Cutter
Displacement: 37 tons
Length: 74 feet, 11 inches
Breadth: 13 feet, 7½ inches
Draft: 4 feet
Speed: 16 knots
Complement: 8 men
Armament: 1 1-pounder
1 .30-caliber Lewis machine gun