High cost of victory 

 in World War I 



Plan l, acknowledge. That was the 

 dispatch received by all Coast Guard units 

 on the morning of April 6, 1917. It meant 

 that the United States was at war with 

 Germany and that the 15 cruising cutters, 

 200-odd officers, and 5,000 men of the 

 Coast Guard were to go into action with 

 the Navy. The naval action was almost 

 exclusively undersea warfare and the Coast 

 Guard was in the thick of it, convoying 

 cargo ships and screening transports. 



One of the most famous antisubmarine 

 units of the Atlantic Fleet was Squadron 2, 

 Division 6, composed of the cutters Ossi- 

 pee, Seneca, Yamacraw, Algonquin, Man- 

 ning, and Tafnpa, based at Gibraltar. 



On April 28, 1918, the Seneca was es- 

 corting ships toward Gibraltar when at 

 2:45 in the morning the convoy ran into 

 a pack of three U-boats. The British naval 

 sloop Cowslip was nearly broken in two 

 by a torpedo. Under the circumstances, the 

 Seneca would have been justified to steam 

 on, looking for the safety of the other ships 

 and herself. But she stopped three times to 

 put off lifeboats and pick up 81 survivors. 



In another of the Seneca's convoys the 

 British collier Wellington was torpedoed. 

 She was abandoned but remained afloat. 

 Her crew refused to reboard her, though 

 19 of them relented when 20 of the Sen- 

 eca's men manned her and got up steam 

 for Brest. Her captain said he couldn't see 

 others doing duty that was his. In the night 

 a gale came up and at 4 a. m. the Welling- 

 ton went down. At daybreak, the British 

 destroyer W^arrington picked up seven sea- 

 12 



men and one Coast Guardsman in a lone 

 lifeboat and floating on make-shift rafts 

 another seven seamen and eight Coast 

 Guardsmen. Eleven of the Seneca's com- 

 plement, including two Navy petty offi- 

 cers, and five of the collier's crew were 

 lost. 



"Seldom in the annals of the sea," de- 

 clared the British Admiralty in praise of 

 the Seneca, "has there been exhibited such 

 self-abnegation, such cool courage, and 

 such unfailing diligence in the face of 

 almost insurmountable difficulties." If 

 that sounds like Winston Churchill, per- 

 haps it is because he was the Admiralty's 

 chief at that time. 



Shortly afterward, the cutter Tampa, 

 bound for England after having brought 

 a convoy safely into Gibraltar, disappeared 

 with a loud explosion. A little wreckage 

 and 2 unidentifiable bodies were the only 

 traces ever found of the ship and 111 Coast 

 Guardsmen and 4 Navy men aboard her. 

 It is believed she was hit by a torpedo. 



During a fire and explosions at a Mor- 

 gan, N. J., shell-loading plant in 1918, 

 Coast Guardsmen relaid damaged rails so 

 that a train load of TNT could be saved. 



An unarmed surfboat answering the dis- 

 tress call of the tug Perth Amhoy, under 

 fire from a surfaced submarine off New 

 England, apparently was enough to scare 

 the U-boat off. 



A tower look-out at the Chicamaco- 

 mico, N. C, Coast Guard Station saw the 

 British tanker Mirlo torpedoed 7 miles off 

 shore. The station's motor surfboat made 

 three trips through burning gasoline and 

 northeast seas in gathering darkness to 

 save 36 British seamen. 



The Coast Guard suffered greater losses, 

 in proportion to its strength, than any of 

 the other United States armed forces in 

 World War I. 



