THE LITTLE KNOWN HISTORY OF AMERICA'S OTHER REVENUE MARINE

IN THE 1860s THE U.S. REVENUE MARINE AND THE OTHER "PREDECESSOR AGENCIES" THAT WOULD EVENTUALLY FORM THE U.S. COAST GUARD WERE STILL EVOLVING EVEN AS THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR RAGED ON. THE CONFEDERATES WERE EVOLVING A COAST GUARD ALONG ALMOST IDENTICAL LINES.  

 C.S. Revenue Marine Ensign   1861 - 1865

The United States Coast Guard traces its history to the 1790 formation of the system of 10 "cutters" assigned to the Secretary of the Treasury for the enforcement of U.S. Maritime customs laws. As the Continental Navy had been disbanded and the U.S. Navy had not yet formed these "Cutters" were the only armed vessels owned and operated by the Federal Government of the United States. The crews were organized along naval lines and officers commissioned with naval ranks, and with the Navy in formation in mind, the Congress eventually elected to make the Revenue Marine a naval auxiliary subject to the call of naval duty under the command and direction of the U.S. Navy after it was formed. Eventually the highly disciplined but non military U.S. Light House Service would be inducted into the evolving Coast Guard, as would the para naval organized U.S. Life Saving Service. The U.S. Light House Service was actually created in 1789 one year before the Revenue Marine but the Revenue Marine is considered the "parent agency" vice one of the "predecessor agencies" of the U.S. Coast Guard because it was the agency into which everything else was folded, and was the only military organization in the group and as each "predecessor agency" was at most only "uniformed" or "paramilitary". Upon assimilation into ""Coast Guard" the predecessor agencies personnel and operations either became military members or civilian employees of a military employer, the first "Commandant" of the newly formed and named U.S. Coast Guard was a senior Revenue Marine Officer.

 The American Civil War broke out almost fifty years prior to the final configuration of the Revenue Marine and its various "predecessor agencies"into the U.S. Coast Guard. The Confederate States of America as a new fledgling nation soon realized that in peace and war they would have to enforce maritime customs laws, create and manages coastal aids to navigation, and provide some sort of search and rescue services. A number of former U.S. Revenue Marine Officers and crewmen came over to the Confederate side. Despite the war in progress these experienced police/sailors were not pressed into direct Confederate naval service but organized into the Confederate Revenue Marine, a near mirror image of the U.S. Revenue Marine of its day. The Head of what was known as the Confederate "REVENUE MARINE CUSTOMS SERVICE was the Confederate Secretary of the Treasury. During the brief life time of the service the Secretaries were:

Secretaries of the Treasury 21 Feb 1861 - 18 Jul 1864  
Christopher Gustavus Memminger (b. 1803 - d. 1888)(provisional to 17 Feb 1862)
18 Jul 1864 - 27 Apr 1865  George Alfred Trenholm (b. 1807 - d.?)                  (acting to 22 Nov 1864)  27 Apr 1865 - 10 May 1865  John Henninger Reagan (acting)(s.a.)

Simultaneous with the creation of the Confederate Revenue Marine the Confederacy also inherited the responsibility for maintenance light houses, buoys, and other coastal aids to navigation. To provide for this navigational function the Confederacy created a Light House Service (Bureau) almost identical to that of the United states at the time. Take a look at who the heads of this service were.

Chiefs of the Lighthouse Bureau 
 4 Apr 1861 - 18 Apr 1861  Raphael Semmes  b. 1809 - d. 1877)18 Apr 1861 - Sep 1861     Ebenezer Farrand (b. 1803 - d. 1873)Sep 1861 - 1865 Thomas E. Martin (acting)

 Obviously Raphael Semmes, who would gain fame as the commander of the famous CSS ALABAMA had a very short tenure but his presence on the roster indicates the importance that the Confederate naval establishment placed on the Light House Bureau.

 

CSS ALABAMA, The Best Known Commerce Raider of the Confederacy

 The rapid manner in which the Confederacy created a Revenue Marine and a Light House Bureau lends credence to the recent observation in the U.S. Naval Institute's PROCEEDINGS that if the United States didn't have a Coast Guard it would need to create one right away. For quite different reasons, but responding in large part to the global reputation of coast guard services as arms of effective government administration over watery national areas in peace and war, China has just formed its many different civil maritime agencies into an armed coast guard. Relatively little is known about the Confederate agencies but their parallels with the evolution of what would become the U.S. Coast Guard is illustrative of the needs and agency models that give rise to coast guards separate and distinct but closely cooperative with national navies.



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