Operational history
Active almost never made it into the water. Apparently no shipbuilder in the Baltimore area was willing to build a cutter for the price offered by the government. Eventually, after an exasperated Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton offered to increase the payment by no more than 10 percent and then threatened to have the Maryland cutter built in Virginia, David Stodder, of Baltimore, agreed to build the revenue cutter for the government's asking price. She was laid down in January 1791 and her keel entered the water on 9 April of that same year. When she was sold out of government service in 1798, she was described as having a "square stern, a square tuck, no galleries and no figurehead." She was a two-masted topsail schooner with a single deck. It is also known how she was initially outfitted and equipped thanks to the survival of a letter from her first master, Simon Gross, to Alexander Hamilton.
Personnel problems
Active seemed to have been plagued with problems from the start. For the first few months of her existence she remained tied up in port. Gross, a man of known intemperance, had trouble hiring a crew at the wages the government offered. The pay in the merchant service proved to be much more lucrative. Gross also did not get along with his first mate. These problems manifested themselves, despite the name of the cutter, in a decided lack of activity. Baltimore's Collector of Customs complained that merchant vessel manifests, supplied to the Active by incoming ships, did not reach his desk for weeks, if at all. Relative incompetence amongst the officers and difficulty obtaining a full crew continually troubled the revenue cutter throughout its service life. Indeed, the collector wrote Hamilton in disgust that the cutter was "of no more advantage to the United States and perhaps much less, than if she had been built and manned on the lake Erie." [2]
Gross and Porter both saw fit to leave the cutter under the command of the second mate on numerous occasions, thereby adding to the frustration of the collector and the Secretary of the Treasury as well. Gross submitted his resignation in the summer of 1792 and Porter, with the recommendation of President George Washington, assumed command of the lackluster Active. Even the President seemed satisfied that Gross was leaving government service. He noted in a letter that "... the service would sustain no loss by the resignation of the Master of the Maryland Revenue Cutter." [3]
Little seemed to change under the command of Porter although he did complain that his third mate, Forbes, had difficulty staying away from the bottle, as apparently did some of the other crewmen. Many of the crew were also unhappy with the daily ration allowance and poor pay and as such Porter, as did Gross, had trouble finding crewmen. He wrote to Hamilton asking for an increase, and Hamilton promptly raised the daily ration allowance from nine cents to 12. It is not certain if this solved Porter's problems but Porter once again asked for a greater increase in both the pay and ration allowances. This, however, was not the way to endear him to the parsimonious Secretary of the Treasury. But one wonders if Porter really cared at all. Despite his apparent concern for the welfare of his men and attention to duty, Hamilton was perplexed at the obvious inaction of the cutter, its commanding officer, and even his collector of customs.
According to Kern, for the next few years Porter rarely sailed on Active, rather, he let the first mate handle command of the cutter—if she sailed on patrol at all. He did sail to the West Indies with his son, twice in 1796, but not on board his cutter. He sailed on board a merchant vessel in which he had a monetary stake. Whether he had permission to leave his duty post and what occurred on board the cutter while he was way is unknown. Unfortunately her journals have not survived the ravages of the British Army, which burned Washington, D.C. in 1814, and the later fire at the United States Treasury Department in 1833, so there is little documentation regarding her accomplishments or conversely, explaining her inaction. But Hamilton's letters have survived and he was not overly pleased with his Baltimore-based cutter. Indeed, when ordered to sell the Active in 1798, Porter could not locate her! He eventually found her grounded in the mud of the riverbank outside Baltimore Harbor. She was sold at auction for $750.00 and her new owners sailed her to the West Indies and promptly sold her once again. [4] Porter stayed on the federal payroll for another year after his cutter had been sold.
The cast of characters who paraded on, around, and nowhere near her decks continued to lead rather interesting lives. Porter went back into the merchant trade after failing to secure a commission in the Navy and ran into trouble in the courts under suspicion of barratry and fraud. He was apparently not convicted and he eventually received a naval commission as the sailing master of gunboat based at New Orleans in 1807—under the overall command of his son! It seems that David Junior joined the Navy as a midshipman at the age of nineteen and went on to have a distinguished career. Indeed, he became one of the Navy's most celebrated heroes, as did his two sons and his adopted son, David Glasgow Farragut. Not so the first master of the Active, Simon Gross. Gross had secured a commission as a first lieutenant in the Navy after leaving the Active, only to earn the wrath of another famous naval personage, Captain Thomas Truxton, who admonished him that "every drunkard is a Nuisance and no drunkard ought to be employ'd and if employ'd Shall ever remain an officer with me." He later picked a fight with, of all people, David Porter, Junior, when they were both lieutenants. Gross made some rather "insulting" remarks about Porter's father, who, it will be remembered, was Gross's first mate on the Active! After a fistfight, Gross was dismissed from the service and he then enlisted as a seaman in the Navy. The last anyone heard of him he was an oarsman on an officer's barge. [5]
The United States Revenue Cutter Service was established by an act of Congress on 4 August 1790 as the Revenue-Marine upon the recommendation of Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton to serve as an armed customs enforcement service. As time passed, the service gradually gained missions either voluntarily or by legislation, including those of a military nature. It was generally referred to as the Revenue-Marine until 31 July 1894, when it was officially renamed the Revenue Cutter Service. The Revenue Cutter Service operated under the authority of the U.S. Department of the Treasury. On 28 January 28 1915, the service was merged by an act of Congress with the United States Life-Saving Service to form the United States Coast Guard.
Vigilant was one of the original ten cutters employed by the Federal government of the United States which made up the Revenue Marine, or Revenue Cutter Service, later to become the United States Coast Guard.
John Foster Williams was an American mariner who served as an officer in the Massachusetts State Navy during the American Revolutionary War and later an officer in the Revenue-Marine.
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USRC Scammel was one of the first ten cutters operated by the United States' Revenue Cutter Service.
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The first ten Revenue Service cutters were ten oceangoing cutters built at the behest of the 1st United States Congress in the early 1790s to crack down on smuggling. Since the United States Navy had at the time not yet been formed, these ten cutters of the newly formed Revenue Marine therefore represent the United States Government's first official "armed force afloat", as well as being the first seagoing vessels to operate with what would later become the United States Coast Guard.
Hopley Yeaton was the first officer commissioned under the Constitution of the United States by George Washington into the Revenue Marine, one of the forerunners of the modern-day United States Coast Guard. The Coast Guard was created when Congress merged the Revenue Cutter Service with the U.S. Lifesaving Service in 1915.
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HMS Alderney was a 10-gun Alderney-class sloop of the Royal Navy that saw active service during the Seven Years' War and the American Revolutionary War. Launched in 1757, she was principally deployed in the North Sea to protect British fishing fleets and merchant trade. In this capacity she captured two American privateers, Hawk in 1779 and the 12-gun Lady Washington in 1780. She was removed from Navy service at the conclusion of the American Revolutionary War, and sold into private hands at Deptford Dockyard on 1 May 1783. She became the whaler Alderney that operated between 1784 and 1797, when the Spaniards captured her off Chile.
USRCSurveyor was a ship of the United States Revenue Marine captured by the United Kingdom during the War of 1812. Despite the vessel's loss, the "gallant and desperate" defense of her crew against a superior force of the Royal Navy and the Corps of Royal Marines is commemorated by the United States Coast Guard. Along with the Royal Navy frigate which bested her in battle, HMS Narcissus, Surveyor is among six legendary ships memorialized in the lyrics of the Coast Guard march "Semper Paratus".
United States