The Californian

The Californian The Revenue Marine Service The war for American independence from Great Britain began the morning of April 19, 1775 at Lexington, Massachusetts with the “shot heard ‘round the world” and ended on January 14, 1784 when the Treaty of Paris was ratified by Congress. The new American nation operated under the Articles of Confederation drafted by the Continental Congress in 1777. These articles reflected the wariness by the states of a strong central government and established a "firm league of friendship" between and among the 13 states. Under the Articles each of the states retained their "sovereignty, freedom and independence.” It was not until 1789 that America truly became the United States of America when the new nation’s first Congress convened in New York under the recently ratified Constitution. After the Revolution, the United States was deep in debt, and its emerging industries were under tremendous pressure from British imports. The American merchant marine, a mainstay of the colonial economy, had been weakened by losses in the war. To secure its political independence, the United States first had to secure its financial independence. One of the acts of the first Congress of the United States was to establish protective tariffs and taxes to generate revenues to repay the heavy debt of the Revolutionary War. Prior to the American Revolution, the colonists balked at what they felt were undue taxes imposed by Great Britain upon goods entering North America. One of the ways to escape this oppressive tariff was by smuggling. When the war was over however, many smugglers saw little difference between the tax imposed by King George and the Congress of the United States, so they continued their illegal trade. George Washington’s former military aide and renowned financier Alexander Hamilton had been appointed as the first Secretary of the Treasury. Hamilton's first interest when he took office was the repayment in full of the $75 million war debt. He claimed "The debt of the United States ... was the price of liberty,'' In April of 1790 he sought authorization from Congress to build “so many boats or cutters, not exceeding ten, as may be employed for the protection of revenue.” On August 4, 1790, Congress Enacted the Tariff Act of 1790 establishing formation of a "Revenue Marine." and authorized the building of ten revenue cutters, but did not define their exact specifications. Most were “Baltimore Clipper” type two-masted schooners that were “light, fast, easily managed, seaworthy vessels, handy in beating in and out of harbors and through winding river channels.” The first ten cutters were constructed and then stationed at strategic locations along the Atlantic sea coast. The service would be variously known as "Revenue Service," "Revenue Marine," and "Revenue Cutter Service," until an Act of Congress on 31 July 1894, officially designated the last name as the only correct one. The term "revenue cutter" dated back to the early 1700's in England, where their Revenue patrol vessels were all cutter-rigged, that is, with a single mast and with two or more jibs. The creation of the Revenue Cutter Service on Aug. 4, 1790 is considered the “Birth of the Coast Guard”. The spirit of the service was based on Hamilton's insistence upon thrift and responsibility to the public. The service was intended to collect money, not spend it. The officers were to be servants of the people. “They [the officers] will always keep in mind that their Countrymen are Freemen & as such are impatient of everything that bears that least mark of a domineering Spirit.” The Primary Purpose of Cutters was to protect the revenue of the new nation by deterring smuggling. That meant sailing out of the ports to which they were assigned and intercepting vessels before they came too close to the shore. It was here, well out of the harbor but within sight of the coast, that smugglers unloaded part of their cargoes into smaller "coaster" vessels or directly onshore to avoid customs duties. The collectors usually had smaller boats that could check vessels as they sailed into port. These ten cutters, therefore, were not harbor vessels; they were designed to sail out to sea, survive in heavy weather, and sail swiftly so that they might overtake most merchant vessels. They were the nation's first line of defense against attempts to circumvent the new nation's duties, the country's major source of income during this period. The original duties specifically assigned to the cutters and their crews as legislated by Congress and expounded by Alexander Hamilton included, Boarding incoming and outgoing vessels and checking their papers (ownership, registration, admeasurement, manifests, etc.), Insuring that all cargoes were properly documented, Sealing the cargo holds of incoming vessels, and Seizing those vessels in violation of the law. In 1799 an act of Congress gave authority to the President to maintain as many revenue cutters as should be necessary to provide for the proper collection of import and tonnage duties. Thus the corps gradually grew in size and importance and its vessels became larger & better. In addition to the usual duties, Revenue Cutters began to enforce other laws as well, including those that regulated navigation such as enforcing quarantine restrictions, charting local coastlines and enforcing neutrality & embargo acts. They were also charged with the suppression of piracy and the slave trade. On March 22, 1794 it became illegal for US citizens to engage in the international slave trade and on March 2, 1807 Congress declared the importation of slaves from Africa illegal. Then on May 15, 1820 engaging in the international slave trade was declared an “act of piracy.” Some seizures of note were the first capture under the 1794 law in 1799, the capture of Brig General Ramirez carrying 280 African slaves off St. Augustine, FL on July 8, 1820, and on March 25, 1822 the Alabama captured three slave ships. By the Civil War, revenue cutters had captured numerous slavers and freed almost 500 slaves. The best known incident of slaver interdiction is the case of the schooner Amistad. On June 28, 1839, 53 slaves recently captured in Africa left Havana, Cuba, aboard the Amistad schooner for a sugar plantation at Puerto Principe, Cuba. Three days later, one of the slaves, freed himself and the other slaves. They rose up against their captors and using sugar-cane knives found in the hold, they killed all but two of their captors. On August 26, after almost nearly two difficult months at sea, during which time more than a dozen Africans perished, the Amistad was spotted by the USS Washington, a U.S. Navy brig (and former Revenue Cutter). The Washington seized the Amistad off the coast of Long Island and escorted it to New London, Connecticut where the trial made famous by the 1997 Stephen Spielberg film, "Amistad" was held. Ironically in the film the slave ship La Amistad was portrayed by the Californian. During the Civil War the Revenue Cutters operated under control of the Navy; indeed, On April 11, 1861 the Cutter Harriet Lane, the service's first operational steam cutter, fired the first shot from any vessel in the Civil War when it sent a volley across the bow of the Confederate vessel Nashville entering Charleston harbor during the siege of Ft. Sumter. Legislation to create the Coast Guard was initially introduced in 1913. On January 20, 1915 Congress passed the "Act to Create the Coast Guard," (38 Stat. L., 800) and authorized the merger of the Revenue Cutter Service with the Lifesaving Service. President Woodrow Wilson signed it into law on 28 January 1915 and two days later it went into effect on January 30, 1915. The newly constituted Coast Guard was made, by statute, one of the nation’s armed services. The Coast Guard however, celebrates August 4, 1790, (the birth of the Revenue Marine Service) as its birthday making it the nation’s oldest continuously serving sea service. The Revenue Cutter C. W. Lawrence The C. W. Lawrence was one of 7 vessels built to replace Revenue Cutters lost during the Mexican / American War (1846 – 1848). She was a Campbell class brig rigged Baltimore clipper with raked masts, 96 ½ ft. in length with a 24 ft. beam and displaced 144 tons. She was launched at the William Easby yard, Foggy Bottom, Washington D.C. on August 20, 1848. She was christened Cornelius W. Lawrence in honor of Cornelius Van Wyck Lawrence (Feb. 28, 1791 – Feb. 20, 1861) the 11th Collector of Customs at the Port of New York from 1845 – 1849. He was also a successful merchant, President of the Bank of the State of New York for 20 years, served in the 23rd Congress House of Representatives Mar. 4, 1833 – May 14, 1834, and the first elected mayor of New York 1834 – 1837 (3 terms). The Lawrence was accepted for service by the Revenue Marine Service on October 11, 1848. With the acquisition of Oregon by treaty with Great Britain in 1846 and cession of California by Mexico in 1848, the revenue laws were extended to the new territories and California was included within a newly-erected custom's district. Revenue cutters were needed on the Pacific Coast to enforce the law. The original C W Lawrence was pierced for 10 guns and carried two 32-pounders, one long 18-pounder, two 6-pounders, plus carbines, percussion pistols, Colt revolvers, boarding pikes, and cutlasses. The C W Lawrence set sail for the Pacific on November 1, under the command of Captain Alexander V. Fraser with a crew of 43 aboard. After an arduous voyage of almost a full year, including five weeks spent attempting to sail around the Horn, she arrived in San Francisco on October 31, 1849 after visiting the ports of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Valparaiso, Chile, and the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii).

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