The Cape-class patrol boats were steel hull

patrol boats A patrol boat (also referred to as a patrol craft, patrol ship, or patrol vessel) is a relatively small naval vessel generally designed for coastal defence, border security, or law enforcement. There are many designs for patrol boats, and the ...

with aluminum superstructures of the

United States Coast Guard The United States Coast Guard (USCG) is the maritime security, search and rescue, and law enforcement service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the country's eight uniformed services. The service is a maritime, military, m ...

. They were unnamed until 1964, when they acquired names of U.S.

cape A cape is a clothing accessory or a sleeveless outer garment which drapes the wearer's back, arms, and chest, and connects at the neck. History Capes were common in medieval Europe, especially when combined with a hood in the chaperon. Th ...

s of land. Originally designed for

anti-submarine warfare Anti-submarine warfare (ASW, or in older form A/S) is a branch of underwater warfare that uses surface warships, aircraft, submarines, or other platforms, to find, track, and deter, damage, or destroy enemy submarines. Such operations are typ ...

(ASW), all 36 boats in this class were built at the

United States Coast Guard Yard The United States Coast Guard Yard or just Coast Guard Yard is a United States Coast Guard operated shipyard located on Curtis Bay in northern Anne Arundel County, Maryland, just south of the Baltimore city limits. It is the largest industrial fac ...

Curtis Bay, Maryland Curtis Bay is a residential / commercial / industrial neighborhood in the southern portion of the City of Baltimore, Maryland, United States. The neighborhood is on steep sloping heights, about four city blocks wide (west to east) and fifteen blo ...

History

The Cape class was originally developed as an ASW boat and as a replacement for the aging,

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

vintage, wooden

83-foot patrol boat The United States Coast Guard wooden-hulled 83-foot patrol boats (also called cutters) were all built by Wheeler Shipyard in Brooklyn, New York during World War II. The first 136 cutters were fitted with a tapered-roof Everdur silicon bronze whee ...

s ( in length) that were used mostly for

search and rescue Search and rescue (SAR) is the search for and provision of aid to people who are in distress or imminent danger. The general field of search and rescue includes many specialty sub-fields, typically determined by the type of terrain the search ...

duties. With the outbreak of the

Korean War {{Infobox military conflict , conflict = Korean War , partof = the Cold War and the Korean conflict , image = Korean War Montage 2.png , image_size = 300px , caption = Clockwise from top:{ ...

and the requirement tasked to the Coast Guard to secure and patrol port facilities in the United States under the Magnuson Act of 1950, the complete replacement of the 83-foot boat was deferred and the 95-foot boat was used for harbor patrols."Cape Henlopen, 1958 (WPB-95328)", Cutters, Craft & U.S. Coast Guard Manned Army & Navy Vessels, U.S. Coast Guard Historian's OfficeGreen, D.L.; "The 82-foot Class Patrol Boat", ''The Engineer's Digest'', March–April 1962, Number 133, pp 2–5, U.S. Coast GuardJohnson, p 283 The first 95-foot hulls were laid down at the Coast Guard Yard in 1952 and were officially described as "seagoing patrol cutters". Because Coast Guard policy did not provide for naming cutters under at the time of their construction they were referred to by their hull number only and gained the Cape-class names in 1964 when the service changed the naming criteria to . The class was named for North American geographic

s.Johnson, p 284 The Cape class was replaced by the beginning in the late 1980s and many of the decommissioned cutters were transferred to nations of the

Caribbean The Caribbean (, ) ( es, El Caribe; french: la Caraïbe; ht, Karayib; nl, De Caraïben) is a region of the Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (some surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some bordering both the Caribbean ...

and

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the sou ...

by the Coast Guard.

Design

There were three sub-classes or types that evolved as missions for the boat changed. The Type A was outfitted primarily for ASW. The Type B was fitted more for search and rescue (SAR) with the addition of scramble nets, a towing bitt, and a large searchlight. The Type C vessels were constructed with a deck house aft of the bridge. Sixteen boats were overhauled as part of a renovation program began in the mid-late 1970s.

Units

Notes

;Footnotes ;Citations

References cited

* * U.S. Coast Guard Historian's Office. * *

External links