Summer of 1910, Cordova, Alaska: An armed naval landing party dispatched from the U.S. Revenue Service Cutter Rush— which is seen in her gleaming white and buff livery tied up to the pier behind the group. It should be noted that during this period in the Territory’s history, the USRCS served largely the same role as the Army’s horse cavalry during the settlement of the Old West, being typically the only armed federal force in most of the region.
Photo by: U.S. Coast Guard Historian’s Office, VIRIN: 221215-G-G0000-109.
With a typical complement of eight officers, a USPHS surgeon, and 40 ratings, you are looking at a big hunk of the 175-foot cutter’s manpower. Note a boxcar of the short-lived Copper River Railway, a line that only ran from the copper mines at Kennecott to Cordova.
Of interest, besides the Navy-pattern jumpers, leggings, and dixie cups, the “Revenuers” are armed with Army Krag pattern .30-40 caliber bolt-action rifles and clad in SpanAm period USMC Mills cartridge belts, sans suspenders, as better seen in this inset:
The Marines had used the 12-pocket M1895 belt for the old clip-fed straight-pull Lee-Navy 6mm rifle, which was retired by the Navy in 1907.
The circa 1895 belts, originally black, aged to more charcoal and then gray tone, especially after long periods in salt air
The 4th Revenue Cutter named after Richard Rush, John Quincy Adams’s Secretary of the Treasury, our 300-ton hermaphrodite steam schooner was built in 1885 by Hall Brothers of San Francisco for $74,000.
The service, always pinching pennies, recycled the old boiler and 400 h.p. compound-expansion steam engine of the previous 140-foot circa 1874 cutter of the same name, of which she was officially a “reconstruction.”
U.S. Revenue Cutter Rush rides at anchor off Seattle in the early 1900s
Stationed on the West Coast, she roamed the next 27 years from Alaska– where she typically made an annual summer Bearing Sea Patrol– to Washington and California where she cruised during the winter.
Her service included operating under Navy control during the Spanish-American War– when she likely picked up the Krags for her small arms locker to augment her trio of 6-pounders. During the conflict, Rush served with the understrength Pacific Squadron protecting vessels traveling between San Francisco and the Klondike gold fields.
As detailed by the USCG Historian’s Office:
She became famous for her dogged pursuit and prosecution of seal poachers who quickly learned that if they wanted to get in a large hunt, they’d have better “Get there ahead of the Rush!”. The term is also “Get there early to avoid the Rush” and “Beat the Rush“, but all date back to this single ship and the work of her crews in Alaskan waters.
She retired in 1912 and sold to the Alaska Junk Company for $8.500 on 22 January 1913.
The later USCG would recycle the name Rush two additional times, for a Prohibition-era 125-foot “Buck and a Quarter” (WSC-151) that would continue to serve until 1947 including WWII service as a subchaser, and the Hamilton-class 378-foot cutter (WHEC-723) which commissioned in 1969 and continued to serve until 2015 including stints off Vietnam where she delivered naval gunfire support to troops ashore and interdicted weapon-carrying North Vietnamese junks.
USCGC Rush (WHEC-723)