Happy 80th birthday in 2024 to the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Smilax (WLIC-315), homeported at Station Fort Macon at Atlantic Beach. The vessel is affectionately known as “Queen of the Fleet,” the oldest vessel still performing official Coast Guard duties.
Writing for the U.S. Department of Defense information services office, military historian Walter T. Ham IV said the 94-foot Smilax was built by Dubuque (Iowa) Boat & Boiler Works on the Mississippi River. She was launched on Aug. 18, 1944, and commissioned Nov. 1, 1944, during World War II.
“The
allied forces had another 10 months of fighting ahead before victory in Europe
and the Pacific would bring World War II to an end,” Ham wrote.
“With nearly eight decades of water in her wake, the Smilax is an octogenarian inland construction tender that was enthroned as the Coast Guard “Queen of the Fleet” in 2011 when the medium endurance cutter Acushnet (WMEC-167) was decommissioned in Ketchikan, Alaska.
“To mark her special status, Smilax displays a gold hull number instead of a white hull number like the rest of the Aids to Navigation (ATON) or ‘Black Hull’ cutters,” Ham said. “Smilax crewmembers wear a gold 315 insignia on their nametags.”
Prior
to coming to North Carolina in 1999, Smilax rotated through Coast Guard assignments
at Fort Pierce and New Smyrna Beach, Fla., and Brunswick, Ga.
From Station Fort Macon, Smilax is tasked with “helping mariners to get home safely by maintaining the buoys and beacons that enable them to avoid hazards and find the safest route around the scenic shores of North Carolina’s Outer Banks,” Ham said.
He noted that Smilax serves a territory that ranges from the Alligator River and Kitty Hawk Bay in the Albemarle Sound to Calabash Creek at the North Carolina/South Carolina state line and includes 1,325 fixed aids and 25 floating aids.
“Smilax pushes a 70-foot barge with a crane that can lift up to 8.2 tons,” according to Ham. Additionally, a buoy deck crane can lift aids that weigh up to 5 tons.
“In 2013,” Ham said, “Smilax crew members worked with divers from the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources to salvage five cannons and multiple barrel hoops from the Queen Anne’s Revenge, the flagship of Edward Teach, the legendary pirate captain better known as Blackbeard.”
The
pirate ship ran aground in Beaufort Inlet in 1718. The wreck was discovered by
divers in 1996 at a depth of about 28 feet, located about a mile offshore from
Fort Macon State Park.
“Weighing almost a ton each, the cannons that struck fear in the hearts of 18th century seafarers spent nearly 300 years on the seafloor before the Smilax crew hoisted them on to the cutter’s buoy deck,” Ham wrote.
(The North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort is the official repository for artifacts from Queen Anne’s Revenge Project. More than 300 items are now on display.)
Details of a happy Smilax human interest story were included within the original application for Carteret County to gain certification as an official “Coast Guard Community,” which was authorized in 2015.
A key member of the Military Affairs Committee at the Carteret County Chamber of Commerce had “connections” aboard the Smilax. Her husband held the rank of Petty Officer First Class.
The couple arranged for their first-born son to be baptized aboard the Smilax in 2012, as shipmates, family, friends and community members looked on. The Coast Guard Reserve national chaplain officiated.
A photograph from that christening was the centerpiece of the “Coast Guard Community” application.
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