USCG Cutter EAGLE: The Legacy of the Coast Guard’s Flagship, by Will Sofrin. Lyons Press (an imprint of the Globe Pequot Publishing Group),
www.globepequot.com/imprint/lyons-press/. 232 pp., illus. $24.95
It is always interesting to learn how many institutions arise from backgrounds of chance and adaptation. The U.S. Coast Guard is often described as the oldest branch of the American armed forces, but in name it dates only to 1915, when the Revenue Cutter Service (founded in 1790) merged with the U.S. Lifesaving Service and went on to further swallow the U.S. Lighthouse Service two decades later. The characteristic red racing stripe of Coast Guard cutters showed up only in 1967, created by a design firm whose portfolio also includes logos for Exxon, Greyhound, and the interior of Air Force One.
Branding aside, the Coast Guard has deployed personnel to every major war in U.S. history—all while simultaneously tending buoys, busting smugglers, issuing licenses, breaking ice, and coming to the aid of civilian mariners in every imaginable form of distress. One collateral benefit of a maritime career is the opportunity to meet a lot of people from the Coast Guard along the way, and they are a collectively upbeat and resourceful bunch—well accustomed to complex missions with limited support and equipment that may or may not be state of the art.