Appropriately enough, the U. S. Coast Guard Academy, the primary source of career officers for the nation’s oldest continuous seagoing service, is located on the Thames River in New London, Connecticut, one of the nation’s earliest centers of American naval and maritime activity.
With the origins of its own history dating back nearly a century, the school has developed a highly regarded course of academic and military instruction which is on a par with that of the three larger service academies, and its graduates are recognized among the world’s most proficient seamen. The 1971 graduation ceremony this month, the 39th one at New London, will further extend that tradition to include 140 new commissioned members of the Service.
The Academy was established 31 July 1876 by an Act of Congress which authorized a school of instruction to educate cadets and provide for their eventual commissioning as officers in the Revenue Marine, the forerunner of the present day Coast Guard. Later that year, nine cadets were appointed by Secretary of the Treasury John Sherman.
This first, small Corps of Cadets trained in an old topsail schooner, with winter quarters at Fish Island, near New Bedford, Massachusetts. The school was closed in 1890, but after four years was reopened and, in 1900, was moved to Arundel Cove, near Baltimore, and later, in 1910, moved to Fort Trumbull at the mouth of the Thames River in New London, Connecticut.
The name of the institution was changed from “The Revenue Cutter School of Instruction” to “The Revenue Cutter Academy” in 1914 and the following year, with the merger of the Revenue Cutter Service and the Lifesaving Service, the school took its present name. Then, in 1932, the Academy was moved once more, to the site it now occupies just a few miles further up the Thames from the former location at Fort Trumbull.
Today the main portion of the Academy reservation remains much the same as it was at the time of the last move, and its red brick, white trim, Georgian colonial-style buildings are spread over an area of about 120 acres. In other things, however, the Academy has changed impressively, even as its Corps of Cadets has increased from the original nine to nearly 1,000. Differing in several respects from its sister institutions, the Coast Guard Academy, for example, gains its candidates through nationwide competition, using College Entrance Examination Board tests. There are no congressional appointments or geographical quotas as at the other military Academies.
The Corps of Cadets is organized as a regiment, primarily for the purpose of providing instruction and training in the principles of military command and discipline, and to provide opportunities for the development of military leadership. To this end, cadets are charged with the maintenance of discipline within the regiment, and emphasis is given to developing a high degree of loyalty, honor, integrity, and pride in the tradition and spirit of the Cadet Regiment, the Academy, and the Coast Guard.
The Regimental Commander, a first class cadet, is assisted in his duties by a 15-man staff. He operates through a chain of command comprising two Battalion Commanders and their staffs, eight Company Commanders, 24 Platoon Commanders, and 72 Squad Leaders. The Regimental Commander is the direct representative of the Commandant of Cadets, and as such is responsible to him for the maintenance of discipline and the effective operation of day-to-day cadet activities.
During their first two years at the Academy, all students follow the same core program of basic, required courses. Since 1965, cadets beginning their third (second class) year have been allowed to branch into academic areas of individual interest, with some of their choices including Marine and Nuclear Engineering, Chemistry, Ocean Science, Economics, and Management.
While the academic areas of their education are covered in modern classrooms and laboratories, a portion of each cadet’s military and professional training is still gained at sea on board the famous training barque Eagle, the only square-rigger actively sailing under the American flag.
All cadets spend about two summer months each year in various phases of professional training, the most glamorous of which is the time spent on board the 295-foot Eagle, which was acquired from Germany in 1946. During his four cadet summers, each man usually takes at least two cruises on modern cutters. For the new fourth classmen, the first cruise on board the picturesque, three-masted Eagle provides an introduction to shipboard routine and basic nautical skills.
Other phases of the summer training program include two European cruises, for members of the first and third classes, on board Coast Guard cutters; a Great Lakes cruise in the icebreaker Mackinaw (WAGB-83), and search and rescue indoctrination for second classmen; firefighting and damage control for first classmen; small arms training for third classmen.
Since graduating its first class of 31 officers in 1933, the Coast Guard Academy at New London has trained and educated some 2,860 officers. This month is the occasion for the commissioning of 140 more graduates who will join the 4,511 officers and 1,261 warrant officers and 32,000 enlisted men of the Coast Guard, whose mission includes tasks that vary from icebreaking above the Arctic circle to Market Time patrols in the combat environment of Vietnam.
And in so serving, they, and the Coast Guard Academy, will continue to make their motto, Semper Paratus, the world’s standard for professional excellence that is, indeed, “always ready.”