“I didn’t want it [the Coast Guard subcommittee chairmanship]. I can’t swim, and I get sick on small boats,” the former head of the Congressional Black Caucus admits in his carefully measured baritone. “I wanted Appropriations or Ways and Means, and at first when the Speaker [Pelosi] asked me to take this [in 2006] I didn’t pay attention to it. I was mourning what could’ve been, but that’s changed now . . . I recently turned down an offer to go on the Commerce Committee and decided to stay here and have an influence where I can affect every American. I’m committed to and enjoy it and want to help these men and women do things that will have an effect . . . I’ve been all over the place to talk with Coast Guard people. I do want them to know they’re appreciated by the American people and by Congress.”
An aide tells him a floor vote is coming on a resolution he’s introduced. He asks her to see if he’s the floor manager for it. She leaves, returns, tells him he’s not.
I ask him how he views Deepwater a year after his hearings and with oversight legislation he and Senator Cantwell have introduced coming into effect.
“We’re out of deep water but still almost over our heads. It was an embarrassment not just to the Coast Guard but to the nation . . . The Coast Guard has to be honest with itself and needs a ‘Come to Jesus’ meeting to say what they’ll now do and do well in terms of personnel and inspections.”
“Yet they don’t have much of a constituency in Congress, not like the Department of Defense,” I point out.
“I am thoroughly convinced in my fifty-seven years of life that one person can take on an issue and direct their energy to make a situation better. One train of thought is they’re our Thin Blue Line at sea and need to be thickened, but some members [of Congress] don’t see it that way—it’s like Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, but there’s a reluctance to understand the Coast Guard’s jobs. After 9/11 their responsibilities increased, and we as Congress haven’t kept up, and so it’s like a rubber band stretched to the nth degree, and while I don’t see it breaking I can see weak spots forming in the band. Right now it’s symbolic of what could become a culture of mediocrity. Something’s got to give. Congress has to increase its size, and my goal is at least ten thousand more (service members) over the next seven years.
“I think the public has high expectations of the Coast Guard when things like Katrina happen, but [at the same time] they almost can take it for granted. Of those thirty three thousand they saved, over twenty thousand would have died in New Orleans if not for the Coast Guard. That’s taken for granted.
“Like the theologian Swindoll said”—he then spells out the radio evangelist’s name to make sure I use the quote—“The best things you do are unseen, unnoticed, unappreciated, and unapplauded.”
His aide is now anxiously waiting on him. He slowly gets up to leave, offering to answer any other questions I might have at another time.
In the reception area, there’s a TV tuned to closed-circuit coverage from the House floor, where his floor manager explains that Representative Cummings has unfortunately been delayed and so he’d like permission to enter his statement in the record. They then pass Cummings’s resolution honoring pre–Civil War abolitionist and Underground Railroad conductor Harriet Tubman of Maryland, another American hero who has been too little noticed, appreciated, or applauded.
S
enator Cantwell’s caught the flu, “or some infection,” flying back from a fact-finding trip to Asia, so our meeting at her office is canceled. After a number of attempts to reschedule, we finally talk on the phone.
After my chat with Cummings, I ask her if she wanted to be chair of the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and Coast Guard.
“We see everyday impacts of the Coast Guard on fisheries, drug interdiction, keeping our [Puget Sound] ferry fleet safe, so it was obvious to me that this was important.”
“So you wanted the chairmanship?”
“Yes.”
She goes on to explain the connection between the oceans and the Coast Guard. “There’s a larger discussion on the health of the oceans and climate debate and ocean acidification [from carbon dioxide], but they’re not a central element. The Coast Guard is enforcement but doesn’t do policy. When you have changes like are now taking place in the Arctic, the first persons you think of, the first day job, is going to be the Coast Guard’s, but for larger policy questions about how to deal with resource development and climate, that will take place elsewhere.”
I ask if the Coast Guard has a constituency in the Senate beyond herself and Senator Snowe of Maine. She says there are some other interested senators, including John Kerry, who used to chair her subcommittee, and Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey. So I figure that’s at least four out of one hundred.
While it’s now in the Department of Homeland Security, Senator Cantwell believes that because of its multiple roles the Coast Guard could be in several other places. Even so, she isn’t thinking about moving them, “at this time.”
She recognizes that the Coast Guard has to grow significantly, “to keep pace with its traditional and emerging missions, but right now I’m more focused on the Deepwater program and making sure the resources get delivered and the taxpayer is protected. We’re not out of the woods yet. This problem got way out of hand, so there are still changes that need to take place and outside agencies [the Navy, the GAO, the Congressional Budget Office] that have a role to play.
“I think Admiral Allen did a great job with Hurricane Katrina . . . but this acquisitions disaster is bigger than he is. He’s well intended, but like most people would, he just wants to be free of it as soon as possible, but it’s not that simple. There’s going to be continued oversight.”
Out to Sea
I’m talking with the first CO of a National Security Cutter, Capt. Patrick Stadt, a smart, low-key CO with cool gray eyes, a long, lined face, and lanky six-foot frame, at his office on Coast Guard Island in Alameda, California. The Bertholf is supposed to be docked outside, but due to program delays there’s just him and some eighty-five crewmembers who have been training here without a ship for eight months. They’re getting ready to depart for Pascagoula, Mississippi, where they’ll spend an additional five months living in a hotel near the Northrop shipyard during the cutter’s builder and acceptance trials.
I ask if he’s excited about getting command of a state-of-the-art vessel like Bertholf.
“I wouldn’t call it state-of-the-art. Requirements [in the contract] were good but not thorough,” he explains with a frankness that impresses me. “It might be a different ship if we [the Coast Guard] built it from the bottom up. We certainly had people challenging it from the bottom up. Still, it’s better than anything we’ve ever had before.”
G
eneral Quarters—all hands man battle stations throughout the ship,” the pipe announces with a familiar double ah-oogah alarm just after 8:00 A.M. I’m on board the Bertholf for a weeklong run from Miami to Baltimore in June 2008 before it heads home to Alameda for the first time via Cancún, the Panama Canal, and Puerto Vallarta.
Captain Stadt is seated in his command chair in the chilly CIC—Combat Information Center—one deck below the wide, glassy bridge. His seat faces a large flat screen on the forward bulkhead showing a FLIR (forward-looking infrared) video image of the main gun mount. Also in front of him are half a dozen puddle-shaped dual-terminal workstations that look like something out of an early Star Trek episode. Because of the classified electronics’ tendency to drip condensation when the room gets above fifty degrees, the people manning these stations are wearing blue winter peacoats. From his Captain Kirk–like chair, Pat Stadt calls the shots for today’s gunnery exercise.
We’re in Giant Killer, a Navy live-fire range off Virginia that still has its share of fishing boats and freighters that the Bertholf has asked to stand at least fifteen miles off. On the aft helicopter flight deck, a dozen crewmembers are inflating a “Giant Killer Tomato” [no relation to the range
]. This is a ten-foot by seven-foot floating orange balloon with silver Mylar panels that makes it look like a cartoon pilothouse. When it’s ready, they lift it over their heads and toss it over the side.
Soon the 57 mm Bofors gun on the foc’sle, the first of its kind on a U.S. warship, starts firing two-, four-, and then twenty-round bursts at the killer tomato three thousand yards out. After ninety rounds, the video display on the bridge shows a close-up of the target slowly deflating and sinking. The gun crew goes forward and starts tossing empty copper shell casings over the side. Later the Navy contract people riding aboard tell me it was a very successful shoot, which makes me hope the homeland is never attacked by an armada of giant orange balloons.
Next it’s time to test-fire the CIWS (pronounced “Sea Whiz”) Close-In Weapons System, a 4,500-rounds-per-minute domed Gatling gun located toward the rear of the ship above the helicopter control shack. This is the first Coast Guard CIWS that can not only shoot at incoming aircraft and missiles but also be used for warning and disabling fire aimed at surface targets. It fires six bursts of a hundred rounds each. From forward on the bridge its rippling fire sounds like an industrial sewing machine, if one that stitches only funeral shrouds. The fifth and sixth bursts pockmark a newly inflated “tomato” with 20 mm shell holes.
Then they fire chaff and rockets from launcher tubes just off the bridge’s wings. The chaff rounds boom like mortars and (except for a few dud canisters that splash into the sea) burst overhead in smoky white fireworks, releasing spiraling clouds of silver foil designed to distract the radar on an incoming missile. The rockets roar more loudly, leaving smoke trails and puffs of chaff that create additional false radar targets.
Along with its armaments, the Bertholf has numerous other innovative aspects. Chief among them is simply the fact that it’s a large, modern ship, which is a cultural sea change for a service more used to patching up and making do with thirty- and forty-year-old cutters that would look more at home in maritime museums than on the open sea.
At 418 feet in length and a beamy 54 feet wide, the Bertholf has a smooth, quiet ride, at least in the low seas we pass through. They’re hoping to take it into the Bering Sea off Alaska soon for a test drive in big gnarly waters. It’s a crew-friendly ship with wide passageways, a large galley, a gym, and staterooms that include flat-screen TVs and computers. Most officers and chiefs share two-bunk staterooms. Unlike the service’s High Endurance Cutters that often crowd crews into twelve- and sixteen-person berthing areas, no stateroom on the Bertholf has more than six racks stacked two high (as opposed to narrow triple bunks). Being a highly automated ship, the Bertholf also has a downsized crew of 113 rather than the 165 or so normally found on 378-foot cutters.
“With people holed up in their rooms, it can get kind of like a creepy movie at night with its empty passageways,” says Electronics Chief Warrant Officer Matt Boyle, whom I stumble upon alone in the wardroom. This might appeal to the stolid, brushy-haired Boyle, who, having done most of his Bertholf tour ashore, is soon slated to run the isolated loran station in Port Clarence, Alaska, where dead walruses wash up on the empty beach.
On visits to the computerized engine control room (ECR) and main engine rooms, I get to check out the ship’s two near pristine 10,000 hp diesels and 30,000 hp GE jet gas turbine that can be controlled by touch screens from here or the bridge. The ship’s unique cross-connect gear allows a single diesel engine to run both propellers at up to eighteen knots or go to twenty-eight knots in CONDEC, combined diesel and gas turbine mode. With five modes of operation and greatly increased fuel efficiency, the Bertholf can easily match the twelve-thousand-mile range of smaller, lighter 378s, according to “fuel, oil, and water king” Machinery Technician First Class Jason Hoppenrath.
I
board the Bertholf on a Friday evening in Miami at the tail end of a reception being held on its large flight deck. With its sleek and stealthy white silhouette, the ship blends well with the city’s ultramodern skyline. The reception’s white party tents, once the ship is operational, will double as shade and shelter for undocumented migrants taken aboard during at-sea interdictions.
On arrival, I’m suffering from a flu-like headache and hacking cough. Sick bay corpsman Chief Rocky Gipson checks my lungs and ears before giving me some cough drops and decongestants. I then settle in to my below-deck stateroom shared with three Naval Sea Systems contractors.
We get under way the next morning, sailing out of the Port of Miami until we’re in deep cobalt blue water. On the bridge I meet the salty and taciturn Master Chief Bob Montague.
“Morning,” I say.
“Glad you didn’t put ‘Good’ before that, because it hasn’t been for me,” he complains, hankering for a cigarette. Bob has spent eleven years at sea out of twenty-three in the service. The Chief’s Mess, which is billeted for fifteen but sailing with 19 chiefs, has over 120 years of sea time and 300 years of service between them.
Engineering Chief Warrant Officer Richard “Sam” Sambenedetto has ten years at sea out of his eighteen in the Coast Guard. The beta testers for this new ship, I quickly realize, are among the saltiest in the service. Sam is a big guy with colorful nautical tattoos covering his forearms, including rope braids, a sailing ship, flags, his kids’ names, and an American eagle. Grandfathered in before the service’s new, more restrictive rules on tats, his eight knuckles read SHIP MATE.
Up on the bridge, executive officer Capt. Kelly Hatfield and operations chief Cdr. Joe LeCato are going at it as they have been for the past two years. Five-nine and five-seven, both bald, mustached, smart, and rotund, they could be brothers and act like they are. In a few days, Kelly will be leaving for a shore assignment and Joe will replace him as XO.
“You should write a side chapter on how incompetents gain leadership,” Kelly suggests to me, nodding toward his replacement.
“You could write it today,” Joe shoots back.
I head down ladders and through several airlocks designed to protect the core of the ship against chemical or biological attack till I reach the sturdy drop-down “Rescue door” on the starboard side of the ship. Common on cruise ships, this water-level access door and the watertight compartment behind it are new to the Coast Guard.
At the moment they’re using them to disembark visitors from Miami’s District 7, including its commander Adm. Steve Branham.
Bosun’s Mate 1 Jordan Baptiste off-loads the visitors from his 33-foot Special Purpose Craft (SPC) onto a 110-foot cutter standing by, then returns for the captain, the XO, and myself. I climb aboard the red jet-drive boat, straddling one of its saddle seats next to Jordan, and we do a quick loop around the ship as it’s under way, inspecting some less than satisfactory paintwork from the shipyard.
We then take up position behind the stern notch ramp with its sliding doors, overhead lifting cranes, and deck cradles designed so that the Bertholf can quickly launch and recover two rigid-hull inflatables. A third small boat deploys from a davit on the right side of the ship.
The Bertholf is cruising at twelve knots. “Hang on,” Jordan warns before he guns the jet drive and we ride up the rubber-lined ramp with a clacking thump and jerk as a net line stretched between hydraulic arms captures our bow horn. It feels like a wooden roller coaster hitting the brakes too hard. We’re now towed up the notch as the big stern doors close behind us. Jordan thinks they’re too slow and bulky and should be replaced by lighter gull-wing doors that lift up and out. The CO adds this to his list of needed changes.
I
soon fall into a shipboard routine, waking up with the 6:30 reveille pipe. After breakfast I head up to the bridge, then wander the ship doing interviews with the crew and outside evaluators, undogging and redogging (opening and closing) latches on multiple watertight doors in order to get around, and also catch some deck time in the warmth outside the skin of the ship. I watch the occasional flying fish, turtles, and a sunset pod of dolphins first spotted on the Spook Nine weapons radar. Captain Stadt has a
standing order to be called to the bridge when marine life is spotted. In the evenings after transcribing my notes, I usually join some of the officers or crew watching a movie. Often it’s a war movie: Kelly’s Heroes, The Kingdom, 300, Black Hawk Down. Lights Out is at 2200 hours (10:00 P.M.).
Saturday afternoon they announce “Steel Beach” and “Fish Call.” Young Coasties head out on the flight deck in their bathing suits with beach towels to catch some sun on the rough gray nonskid or bring out a few rods and try to catch a fish without much luck (someone caught a four- to five-foot dorado when they were transiting the Gulf of Mexico). A soft football gets tossed around. The helicopter crash netting is lowered and becomes passable nylon hammocks. Below on the boat deck, the smokers are tossing their cigarette butts over the side.
Each afternoon there’s Crew Quarters called on the flight deck. At one XO Kelly Hatfield tells them he’s been called to his new job early and will be leaving them in Baltimore.
“The last couple of days have been sad for me. I didn’t have time to prepare to move on. This is my sixth ship and the best crew I ever had, so consider that special.” He begins to choke up. Sam and one of the chiefs step forward, bracket him, and pat him on the back. I try to imagine an Army warrant officer and sergeant stepping forward to comfort a colonel while he’s addressing the troops. Some Coast Guard things just don’t translate.
“The point is your work’s not done just because I’m leaving, so stay focused,” Hatfield continues firmly. “Take respites where you can but don’t lose your momentum. In the next few days the commandant, the secretary of homeland security, and about ten other admirals are coming aboard because this ship is so important, so stay focused.”
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