The United States Coast Guard (USCG) is a difficult organization to define or label. It has no single mission, and its priorities change over the tears. It is always evolving.

Looking at the Coast Guard’s 200-year history doesn’t simplify matters, but it does help to explain the Service, and it is an interesting way of viewing American history.

Coast Guard men and women, and those who served in the five organizations from which the Coast Guard was derived, have contributed a lot to American history.

They have fought America’s wars. They have battled pirates, privateers, slavers and smugglers. They have protected the environment, enforced laws and treaties and, of course, saved countless thousands of lives. They have done this and more.

This book, however, is not intended to be simply a chronology of Coast Guard events. It is a book about people and how they lived. It is about life on board early revenue cutters or in turn-of-the-century lighthouses. It is about fighting through a raging surf in order to save to doomed passengers and crew of a grounded ship. It is about the boredom of bouncing around on a cutter during a weather patrol, and the terror of gun battle during the Vietnam War. It is a history of men and women and even some children who have lived interesting lives and left their mark on the story of America.

Alex Haley contributed to They That Go Down To The Sea by writing the foreword.