Coast Guard's Hamlet

With exception of the war with Tripoli, the U. S. Coast Guard has played a distinguished part in every national struggle since its inception in 1790 as the revenue cutter service. The sinking of its cutter Tampa with 115 souls aboard stands, with the exception of the Navy's lost collier Cyclops, as the largest single U. S. naval loss during the World War. Operating in peace time under the Treasury Department, the chief business of the 11,966 officers & men and 350 vessels of the Coast Guard is saving lives & property, not shooting 'leggers. They bring the only touch of civilization to remote corners of Alaska, succor Mississippi River flood victims, rescue bathers on the Great Lakes, conduct the international North Atlantic iceberg patrol which was instituted in 1914 after the Titanic disaster. Last week the Coast Guard got a new commandant.

Sworn in at Washington as he was about to conduct a Coast Guard Cadet cruise through South American waters was Rear Admiral Harry Gabriel Hamlet. He is 58, the big-boned, white-haired son of a New England revenue cutter captain. One of his first jobs with the Coast Guard was on the famed cutter Bear, rescuing distressed whaling ships in the Arctic. In the War he commanded the converted yacht convoy Marietta. Since 1928 Admiral Hamlet has been superintendent of the Coast Guard Academy at New London, Conn. His new appointment fills the post left vacant by Rear Admiral Frederick Chamberlayne Billard, who died last month of pneumonia, after overtaxing his strength by directing, from his bed, the Coast Guard's search for the Lindbergh baby.

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