Coastal Patrolling

Coastal patrolling is vital to a maritime nation such as the United States. Nearly 95 percent of all American foreign trade, valued at over $1.7 trillion, travels by sea. Coastal patrolling not only protects this trade but also forms an integral part of U.S. national security. Originally begun to enforce custom laws, coastal patrolling has grown increasingly—preventing drug smuggling, migrant smuggling, illegal fishing, and terrorism in the 21st century.

One of the first challenges facing the newly independent United States of America was to pull itself out of the bankruptcy that resulted from the American Revolution. That debt, at home and abroad, totaled $80 million. A new protective tariff would not only protect American manufacturing but also provide a means of raising desperately needed revenue. Alexander Hamilton, the nation's first secretary of the treasury, realized that the tariff would not command universal support. The American colonists had distrusted authority and, through a century of practice, had become expert at dodging the king's taxes. To an extent, it had become a patriotic duty to avoid paying British import taxes.

Hamilton knew that smuggling could not be suppressed by paper statutes alone; America needed a coastal patrolling fleet to prevent it. He therefore sought and, on August 4, 1790, obtained from Congress authority to launch a seagoing military coastal patrolling force in support of the national economic policy. The 10 armed revenue cutters—small, swift, and manned by American sailors—became the nucleus of what initially was called the “Revenue Service” and later “Revenue Marine Service”; it was given the official name of “Revenue Cutter Service” in 1863. The service merged with the Life-Saving Service in 1915 to become the U.S. Coast Guard.

While the initial purpose of coastal patrolling was to enforce U.S. tariff laws, it would soon include other functions. During the Quasi-War with France (1798–1800), the Revenue Marine cutters were ordered to defend the coast and repel any hostility offered to vessels and commerce by the French Navy. However, this responsibility was not to be allowed to interfere with the regular protection of revenue.

In 1808 the legal importation of slaves came to an end in the United States. Coastal patrolling duties began to include prevention of slave smuggling into the nation. Blocking and seizing slave smugglers remained a major function of coastal patrolling up to the Civil War.

During the War of 1812, coastal patrolling returned to its defensive role, this time against the British Navy rather than the French Navy. The first shots of the naval war were fired by one of the Revenue Marine cutters. After only one week of fighting, the cutter Jefferson encountered the British brig Patriot, splintered her topsides with roundshot, and brought her in as the first captive ship of the war.

The U.S. defeat of England during the War of 1812 did not end the threat to American ships. Pirates sailed in and out of the West Indies and plundered U.S. ships from their bases in Florida and Louisiana. Congress ordered coastal patrols of the area to “protect the merchant vessels of the United States and their crews from piratical aggressions and depredations” (Bloomfield, 27). The Revenue Marine cutters, searching the American waters and coastline hideaways, were followed by a punitive U.S. Navy squadron commanded by Comm. David Porter. The suppression of piracy remained a coastal patrolling concern until about 1840.

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