The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Douglas Munro was decommissioned this weekend during a ceremony at the Coast Guard Base Kodiak. The Douglas Munro was the Coast Guard’s last remaining 378-foot Hamilton-class high endurance cutter. The fleet of high endurance cutters is scheduled to be replaced by 418-foot Legend-class national security cutters, which serve as the Coast Guard’s primary long-range asset.
The Douglas Munro was the tenth of twelve high endurance cutters built for long-range, high-endurance missions, including maritime security roles, drug interdiction, illegal migrant interception and fisheries patrols. It was commissioned originally in 1971.
Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Karl Schultz presided over the ceremony, “Today we say thank you and goodbye to the end of an era—an era of nearly 50 years when high endurance cutters took our service’s racing stripe around the globe, modeling the maritime rules-based order. Today we say thank you and goodbye to cutter Douglas Munro—the first cutter to be named after Coast Guard hero—Signalman First Class Douglas Munro.”
For nearly 50 years, the crews of the Douglas Munro served in a number of domestic and international theaters including the Gulf of Alaska and the Bering Sea, Persian Gulf and Horn of Africa, and Southeast Asia and the Eastern Pacific. In 1998, the Douglas Munro crew discovered and seized nearly 12 tons of cocaine from a Mexican flagged vessel. The following year, they seized a motor vessel that was attempting to transport 259 illegal Chinese migrants to the United States.
Capt. Riley Gatewood, commanding officer of the Douglas Munro said, “While Coast Guard Cutter Douglas Munro is being decommissioned, I know that the legacy and service of Signalman 1st Class Douglas Albert Munro lives on in the Coast Guard men and women serving around the world today, and in the national security cutter Munro that continues to bear his name.”
The Associated Press reports that Capt. Gatewood and the ship’s crew will accompany the cutter to Seattle where its classified technology and weapons systems will be removed. More information can be found here.