Vol. 64, No. 4 winter 2019 318


3. Reliance with an HH-52 on the fl ightdeck.


In 1964, the United States Coast Guard commissioned the medium-endurance cutter Reliance (WMEC- 615). This 210-foot cutter has served the nation for over fi fty-fi ve years. During that time, Reliance has performed the missions of search and rescue, national defense, international engagement, migrant interdiction, maritime safety and security, port and coastal security, regulating living marine resources and preventing drug smuggling.


Reliance is named for an inspirational trait of dependability. The fi rst cutter named Reliance was a 100-foot steam-powered tugboat. The Revenue Cutter Service purchased Reliance and two other tugs for $9,000 apiece at the start of the Civil War. The Service received the cutter in August 1861 and it served through 1865. During the war, Reliance operated out of Baltimore mainly as a blockade enforcement ship in Chesapeake Bay. The cutter also served as a convoy escort and a troop transport for Union landing parties along the shores of Chesapeake Bay.


The second cutter named Reliance was a 110- foot topsail schooner. Built in Baltimore, and commissioned in June 1867, Reliance II was one of the last solely sail-powered cutters in the Revenue Cutter Service. The cutter sailed around Cape Horn for San Francisco where it deployed on Bering Sea patrols off the coast of Alaska. Reliance II was only the third cutter deployed to the new territory for law enforcement cruises. The duties of the Bering Sea Patrol were hard on wooden ships and the cutter only remained in service for eight years before it was decommissioned and sold in 1875.


Commissioned in 1927, the third Reliance was a 125- foot Active-class patrol boat assigned to New York. As part of Prohibition’s Offshore Patrol Force, the cutter’s missions included law enforcement, search and rescue, and the interdiction of illegal liquor off American shores. In 1933, Congress repealed the 18th


Amendment, so Reliance III was detailed to


Norfolk, Virginia, where the cutter was homeported until 1935. That year, the cutter was transferred to Honolulu, Hawaii, and rearmed for possible combat


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