Reservist Magazine is the award-winning official publication of the United States Coast Guard Reserve. Quarterly issues include news and feature articles about the men and women who comprise America's premier national maritime safety and security
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from Gibraltar to the U.K., the T AMPA was torpedoed by UB-91. The cutter quickly sank killing all 131 persons on board, including four sailors, sixteen Royal Navy personnel and 111 Coast Guard officers and men. It proved America's greatest naval loss of life from combat. In the years following the war, the Coast Guard would develop into a robust military agency. Prohibition saw the Service become the lead agency fighting the "Rum War," increasing the Coast Guard's size and technological sophistication. In this war against liquor smugglers, the Service operated 31 of the Navy's four-stack destroyers. It was the first time in history that Coast Guard crews had manned Navy warships. Prohibition also saw the first congressional funding for Coast Guard aviation to help fight the rumrunners; and, the establishment of the Coast Guard Intelligence Office, a leading Federal intelligence branch that would also decipher enemy codes in World War II. And 1932 saw the completion of the modern Coast Guard Academy, which produced many of the Service's combat leaders of WWII. World War I would prove the first true test of the modern Coast Guard's military capability. This baptism of fire also cemented the Service's place among American military agencies and prepared it for the challenges it would face in WWII. � Coast Guard cutter M C C U ll OCH , which received the coded message "Plan One, Acknowledge" on April 6, 1917, as did all Coast Guard units, stations and bases. (Photo courtesy NOAA) N A u T i CAL LORE "Lucky" bag These days, the "lucky bag" means a small compartment or locker where the master-at-arms stows articles of clothing, bedding, etc., picked up on deck. Originally, these articles were placed in a bag called the "lucky bag," which was in the custody of the master-at-arms. Once a month, the lucky bag was brought to the mainmast, and the owner of the articles (if their names were on them) got them again, with a few lashes for their carelessness in leaving them about the deck. The term "lucky," in this case, is sailor's humor for "unfortunate." Submitted by Master Chief Roger "Buck" Ward, USCG and USCGR (ret.) "Plan one, acknowledge," ….was the phrase transmitted by the Navy's communications center in Arlington, Va., to Coast Guard units, bases and cutters throughout the U.S. April 6, 1917, the day Congress declared war on Germany. These words, a coded message, initiated the Service's transfer from the Treasury Department to the Navy, placing the Service on a wartime footing. Taken from this story by Dr. Bill Thiesen. Tough training: "…Ira Ayer Beal [a sailor on board Hamilton in 1938, serving a three-year enlistment] found the ways of a sailor, over half a century ago, harsh. Physical force was still used to enforce discipline. Beal described his petty officers and other shipmates as 'moderately intelligent [, yet] most had not finished high school, … rough, [who] drank too much, but were superb seamen!' Beal described a method used to train enlisted Coast Guardsmen to be: "superb seamen in small boats: 'When coming into San Francisco Bay, we would be dropped at up to 15 knots [in a pulling boat] off Treasure Island. We would try to beat the ship to the pier at the end of 7th Street in Oakland. If we beat the ship we got steaks for chow; if we lost, we were restricted & put on short rations....'" Written by Dr. Dennis Noble, in "Fog, Men, and Cutters: A Short History of the Bering Sea Patrol," and found at uscg.mil/history 38 RESERVIST � Issue 3 • 2017