Enforcers on the Seas

From Prohibition-era rum runners to Axis spy networks during World War II, Elizebeth Friedman and the Coast Guard team known as Unit #387 cracked thousands of secret messages that helped disrupt criminal operations and support the Allied war effort.

A Maine lawyer with “Yankee common sense” quietly reshaped two 19th century agencies, cleaning up the Revenue Cutter Service, professionalizing the Lifesaving Service, founding the School of Instruction, and then helping engineer the 1915 merger that created the modern Coast Guard instead of letting it be dismantled.

As new mission threats have evolved, the Coast Guard’s canine team capability has also evolved.

Amid Gold Rush anarchy, the first Pacific cutter stood the law: breaking smuggling, stopping mutiny, rescuing crews, and charting CA’s coast.

With the need for maintaining security zones at anchorages, in the seaway, and alongside ships offloading military cargoes, the role and training for port security forces emerged as a priority for the Coast Guard.

From Hamilton’s “few armed vessels” to cutters and LEDETs in modern war zones, a small revenue force evolved into a full-fledged armed service that has answered every call from the age of sail to the Global War on Terrorism.

Under a blacked-out sky off Cay Sal, warnings went unanswered—until disabling fire cracked the dawn.

Night surf, shattered boats, and men lashed to frozen masts—volunteers and a cutter crew fought a killing gale to wrench life from a North Atlantic wreck.

What began as a routine interdiction became a lethal ambush: a ramming at sea, a split‑second shove that spared a shipmate and a sacrifice the Coast Guard will never forget.

Billard oversaw the largest and fastest peacetime expansion in Coast Guard history.