USCGC Alex Haley

USCGC Alex Haley (WMEC-39) is a United States Coast Guard Cutter and former United States Navy vessel that was recommissioned for Coast Guard duty on 10 July 1999. It was first entered service as USS Edenton (ATS-1), an Edenton-class salvage and rescue ship on 23 January 1971. In 1995, Edenton won the Marjorie Sterrett Battleship Fund Award for the Atlantic Fleet.

USCGC Alex Haley
History
United States
Name: Edenton
Laid down: 28 March 1967
Launched: 15 May 1968
Commissioned: 23 March 1971
Decommissioned: 29 March 1996
Stricken: 29 December 1997
Identification:
Fate: Transferred to USCG
United States
Name: Alex Haley
Namesake: Alex Haley
Acquired: 10 July 1999
Homeport: Kodiak, Alaska
Identification: Hull number: WMEC-39
Motto: Find the good and praise it.
Status: in active service
General characteristics
Class and type: Edenton-class salvage and rescue ship
Displacement:
  • 2,592 tons (lt)
  • 3,484 tons (fl)
Length: 283 ft (86 m)
Beam: 59 ft (18 m)
Draft: 17 ft (5.2 m), 18 ft (5.5 m)max
Propulsion:
  • 4 Caterpillar diesel engines,
  • twin screws,
  • 6,800 shp (5,100 kW)
Speed: 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph)
Range: 10,000 miles
Complement:
  • 10 officers
  • 90 enlisted
  • 4 aircrew
Armament:

The conversion from a salvage ship to a Coast Guard cutter involved the removal of the stern towing machine, forward crane, and A-frame, and the installation of a flight deck, retractable hangar, and air-search radar. Additionally, her four aging Paxman diesel engines were replaced with four 16-cylinder Caterpillar diesels.

The cutter was named after author and journalist Alex Haley, the first chief journalist of the Coast Guard, the first African-American to reach the rank of chief petty officer, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Roots: The Saga of an American Family. Haley served in the Coast Guard for 20 years.

The vessel's current home port is Kodiak, Alaska at the Coast Guard Base Kodiak from where she carries out her Fishery Law Enforcement and Search and Rescue primary missions.

In fiction

In the 2007 novel Robert Ludlum's The Arctic Event by James H. Cobb, Alex Haley is the ship that takes the heroes out to the island where a Tu-4 laden with anthrax crashed during the Cold War.[1]

In the 2016 novel Goliath by Shawn Corridan & Gary Waid, Alex Haley and USCGC Dauntless are the two Coast Guard cutters that respond to the fire aboard and subsequent stranding of a Russian ULCC.[2]

Photos
  • USS Edenton before becoming Alex Haley

References

Notes
  1. Cobb, James H. (2007). Robert Ludlum's The Arctic Event. Orion Books. ISBN 978-0-7528-7641-2.
  2. Corridan, Shawn; Waid, Gary (2016). Goliath. Longboat Key, Florida: Oceanview Publishing. ISBN 978-1-60809-215-4.

Sources


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