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What’s In A Name?
By Douglas Kroll, District 13
The 1915 act creating the Coast Guard described it as “an armed service,” but by the 1930s it differed from the Army and the Navy in at least one fundamental respect: The Coast Guard had no peacetime reserve.
This fact was on the mind of Commodore Malcolm Stuart Boylan of the Pacific Writer’s Yacht Club, Los Angeles Harbor, when he had occasion to invite Lieutenant Francis C. Pollard, Commanding Officer of the USS Aurora which was in the same harbor, for a sail in August of 1934. That day, Boylan and Pollard had a meeting of the minds and a few weeks later what is now known as the Founder’s Letter arrived on the desk of Lt. Pollard in San Pedro, California. It said:
My dear Lieutenant:
I have been dwelling on our recent conversations concerning the Coast Guard and your most informative explanation of its origin, traditions and functions. Out of this the thought has come to me that the Coast Guard alone of all armed services has no organized reserve, whereas the Navy, the most comparable service, has in reserve sixty-five hundred officers and seventeen
thousand enlisted men!
Sincerely,
Malcolm Stuart Boylan*
The proposal was pushed relentlessly by Admiral Russel R. Waesche until Bill No. 5966 was introduced by Congressman Schuyler Otis Bland of Virginia on April 24, 1939.
Admiral Russel R. Waesche, Commandant of the Coast Guard from 1936 to 1946, courtesy of the USCG Historians Office.
On June 23, 1939, Congress passed The Coast Guard Reserve Act “. . . in the interest of (a) safety to life at sea and upon the navigable waters, (b) the promotion of efficiency in the operation of motorboats and yachts, (c) a wider knowledge of, and better compliance with, the laws, rules and regulations governing the operation and navigation of motorboats and yachts, and (d) facilitating certain operations of the Coast Guard. . . .” The membership was open to volunteers who were citizens of the United States and most of its territories who owned motorboats or yachts.
Groups of boat owners were organized into flotillas and these into divisions within Coast Guard Districts around the country. Members initially conducted safety and security patrols and helped enforce the provisions of the 1940 Federal Boating and Espionage Acts. In some respects it was like the U.S. Power Squadron, which was founded in 1917 as a non-military reserve for the Navy.
The growing danger of war in the Pacific and in Europe alerted the Coast Guard to the need for a military Reserve, as well as the existing non-military Reserve. On February 19, 1941, Congress amended the original Reserve Act. The “Coast Guard Auxiliary and Reserve Act” created a new military Reserve and renamed the original non-military Reserve the “Coast Guard Auxiliary.” The original purpose of the nonmilitary Reserve was retained.
In the early years of the Auxiliary’s existence, a frequently voiced criticism concerned the organization’s name. Suggested replacements included “Coast Guard Reserve-Volunteer,” “Coast Guard Temporary Reserve,” and “Coast Guard Reserve-Class T.” Commodore Boylan supported dropping the name “Auxiliary” and replacing it with “Coast Guard Temporary Reserve.”
In August 1944, Auxiliarists from the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Ninth Districts held an Inter-District Conference at Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. They went on record favoring a name change for the organization on the grounds that that the word “auxiliary” was “too closely allied with women’s organizations which are adjunct to military or church groups.”
The Commandant’s Office was flexible with regard to many subjects, but not on the change of the name of the organization. The name “Coast Guard Auxiliary,” as authorized by the Congress in 1941, was retained.
*U.S. Coast Guard. Public Information Division. The Coast Guard at War:
Auxiliary. Volume XIX. Washington, DC: U.S. Coast Guard, 1 May 1948.
The Blue Ensign
By Doug Kroll, District 13
In testifying before the House of Representatives about the need for a volunteer Coast Guard Reserve in 1939, Admiral Russell Waesche, the Commandant of the Coast Guard, said that among the privileges afforded, owners “will be given a Coast Guard Reserve flag to fly..… The idea being that a motorboat or yacht going down the Potomac River, or the Detroit River, or elsewhere, flying that flag, is serving notice to have been examined and passed on; I know the rules of the
road; I know how to operate a motorboat; I have a seaworthy craft, properly equipped, in compliance with the law.”
When Congress authorized the civilian, volunteer Coast Guard Reserve in 1939, someone at Coast Guard Headquarters designed an ensign for it: a blue rectangular flag bearing the Coast Guard emblem in white, with “United States Coast Guard Reserve” in the circle around the shield. When a military reserve was created on February 19, 1941, the former civilian, volunteer reserve became the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary. This “new” Coast Guard Auxiliary changed its existing ensign by merely changing the word “Reserve” to “Auxiliary” in the circle around the shield on the rectangular blue ensign.
Photo: USCG Auxiliary archive, Joyner Library, East Carolina University.
In 1966 the National Board established a Flag Etiquette Committee to design a modernized Auxiliary ensign. The committee soon discovered that proposing a new design for a governmental agency was a complex process. They had to gain the approval of Coast Guard headquarters and of the U.S. Army’s Institute of Heraldry. The Commandant’s Office rejected several proposed designs because they were too similar to the ensign of the U.S. Power Squadron.
In 1967, Grover A. Miller, the National Commodore, conceived the idea of basing an ensign design on a simple shape associated with the Coast Guard: a diagonal white band, reminiscent of
the “slash” recently painted on Coast Guard vessels and aircraft, centered on a blue rectangular background. In the middle of the white slash would be the Auxiliary logo, in a new, slightly simplified form similar to the one the Institute of Heraldry had recently approved for the Coast Guard. The Army and the Commandant approved the design, and the new blue ensign went into use in the summer of 1968.
The Auxiliary ensign flies on inspected surface facilities that display a current facility decal and on vessels owned by Auxiliarists that have passed a vessel safety check and display a current VSC decal.
It is flown both day and night when the Auxiliarist is aboard, at the main truck if the vessel has a mast or at the bow staff if it does not. Boats equipped with a radio antenna but no mast may
fly the Auxiliary ensign on it, about two-thirds of the way up.
When the Coast Guard takes an Auxiliary member’s boat into service for a mission under Coast Guard orders, the vessel displays the Coast Guard Auxiliary patrol boat ensign in place
of the normal Auxiliary blue ensign. The patrol boat ensign is based on the so-called “racing stripes” painted as an identifying insignia on the hulls and fuselages of Coast Guard cutters and
aircraft. If a Coast Guard officer or petty officer is aboard, however, this patrol flag is replaced by the normal Coast Guard ensign.
