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The modern 270-foot medium-endurance cutter Harriet Lane (WMEC-903). Haitian and Cuban migrants flowing across the Windward Pass and Florida Straits toward the United States. During this mass migration, she rescued more than 2,400 migrants, with operational oversight of fifteen cutters and numerous aircraft. In 1996, Harriet Lane III served as on-scene commander for the initial search and recovery of TWA Flight 800 off Long Island, New York. In the summer of 2000, she served as command ship for the task unit supporting the highly successful Operation Sail 2000. For a time, she steamed under the command of Paul Zukunft, former commandant of the Coast Guard. Harriet Lane III continues to perform her multi-faceted role of search and rescue, maritime safety and security, counter-drug
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was a 125-foot patrol boat, commonly known as a “buck-and-a-quarter,” designed to interdict smugglers during Prohibition. She was homeported first in Boston, and later in Provincetown and Gloucester, Massachusetts. For a few years during the Rum War, she steamed under the command of Maurice Jester, who became the first Coast Guard skipper to sink a U-boat in World War II and the service’s first Navy Cross Medal recipient of the war. In 1941, Harriet Lane II was outfitted for buoy tending and conducted East Coast convoy escort duty during the war. After the war, she served as an air-sea rescue vessel for the Fifth Coast Guard District and was homeported in Norfolk, Virginia. She was finally de-commissioned and sold in 1946 after a distinguished twenty-year career. The current cutter named for Harriet Lane was commissioned in May 1984 in Washington, DC. She was the first federal ship commissioned in that city since the late 1800s. USCGC Harriet Lane III (WMEC-903), is the third of thirteen “Famous”-class 270-foot medium endurance cutters; she carries a crew of 100 officers and enlisted personnel. She can steam at nearly twenty knots and carries a helicopter and rigid-hulled inflatable over-thehorizon boats for maritime interdiction and rescue missions. In 1994, as the on-scene commander for Operation Able Manner, Harriet Lane III directed the rescue of thousands of
Prohibition-era photo of a 125-foot cutter of the same class as the Harriet Lane II. 20
and migrant operations, regulating living marine resources and national defense missions. The year 2003 saw history come full circle to her 1858 ancestor, when Harriet Lane III served as maritime security sentry for Charleston Harbor during the Operation Iraqi Freedom load-out. During the same cruise, she patrolled the Caribbean, seizing two tons of cocaine headed for the United States, and then rescued scores of Cuban migrants attempting to reach American shores in unseaworthy boats. In 2005, Harriet Lane III played a vital role in the Coast Guard response to Hurricane Katrina, and in 2010, she participated in the response to the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. Last year, Harriet Lane III helped seize a cocaine shipment with a street value of more than $32 million. Today, the story of Harriet Lane is largely unknown to the American public. Ms. Lane was devoted to her nation, her family, and the cutter named in her honor. Few First Ladies have achieved the political success in such troubled political times as Harriet Lane. In 1903, she died of cancer in Rhode Island at the age of 73. The record of her life and legacy remain with us through the institutions she helped found and the line of distinguished Coast Guard Cutters that have borne her name. William H. Thiesen, PhD, is the Atlantic Area Historian for the United States Coast Guard. A regular contributor to Sea History, Dr. Thiesen was awarded the 2017 Rodney N. Houghton Award for the best feature article in Sea History. For more information on USCG history, visit www.uscg.mil/history. SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018