Coast Guard Academy

The Coast Guard Academy, located in New London, Connecticut, is the smallest of the nation's four service academies and the only one not under the administration of the Department of the Defense. As a result, it is often forgotten by the public. However, since its founding, the academy has provided cadets with the academic, seamanship, and physical training required to become commissioned officers in the Coast Guard. Its high academic and military standards, combined with seagoing training during the summers, continue to produce future leaders not only for the Coast Guard, but also for the nation.

The Coast Guard Academy began in 1876 when Congress authorized a School of Instruction for the Revenue Cutter Service. Of 19 candidates, 9 were selected by competitive examinations and reported aboard the topsail schooner Dobbin in May 1877 for a two-year course of instruction. (The course of instruction would be expanded to three years in 1903 and to four years in 1930.) The academy admits only those ranking highest in nationwide tests of knowledge and aptitude; since its founding, the Coast Guard Academy remains the only military service academy that accepts cadets without political appointment or giving consideration to their state of residence.

In 1878 the 106-foot barque Chase replaced the Dobbin. Without classrooms ashore, cadets studied while working the ship between its homeport near New Bedford, Massachusetts, and ports in the South and Bermuda. The program was discontinued in 1890, when Congress specified that Revenue Cutter Service officers would come from an overflow of Naval Academy graduates. By 1894 an expansion of the Navy led to a need to reopen the School of Instruction.

In 1904 the school moved the Chase to Arundel Cove, Maryland, and added classroom space ashore. The steam [Page 142]cutter Itasca replaced the Chase in 1910, when winter quarters were moved to Fort Trumbull in New London, Connecticut. The school's name was changed to the Revenue Cutter Academy in 1914, and, in 1915, with the creation of the U.S. Coast Guard from the merger of the Revenue Cutter Service and the Life-Saving Service, it became the Coast Guard Academy.

In February 1929 the efforts of Coast Guard commandant Rear Adm. Frederick Chamberlayne Billard bore fruit when Congress voted to appropriate the funds needed to build a suitable academy for the Coast Guard in New London. In the fall of 1932 the academy moved to its present location on the west bank of the Thames River in New London. In 1947, the United States acquired the 295-foot sailing barque Eagle from Germany as a war reparation and commissioned it into the academy, where it still serves as a seagoing classroom, giving cadets their first taste of life at sea.

The Coast Guard Academy command structure is similar to that of the other armed service academies. A rear admiral serves as superintendent with a captain as Commandant of Cadets. The faculty is a mix of permanent civilian faculty, permanent military faculty, and rotating military faculty. The permanent military faculty (Permanent Commissioned Teaching Staff) is removed from the line of the Coast Guard and staff members normally retain their positions for the duration of their military careers. Little, if any, tension exists between the academic and military professional emphases of the academy.

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