Our Stories: Storied cutter defied all attempts to sink it

By Paul Clancy

THERE'S AN ADDITION TO FORT NELSON PARK next to the Portsmouth Naval Hospital. On a slab near other naval artifacts is a gleaming propeller with just a few words and numbers etched deep into its hub: "Navy Yard, Philadelphia, Pa., 9'0", Starboard, 3410 lbs."

There's not a clue there, at least not yet, about its identity. But we will learn this fall, when a "Path of History" sign has been prepared and installed, that this finely honed hunk of bronze pushed one of the storied ships of this region from one ocean to another through half a century of conflict and service.

The ship was the Coast Guard cutter Taney, one of the Secretary class of vessels that began its career in 1936, helping spread American influence across the Pacific. The 327-foot ship, based in Honolulu, was transferred to the Navy just in time for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

"The message: 'Air Raid, Pearl Harbor. This is no drill' came at 0755 on 7 December, as Japanese planes swept overhead in an attempt to cripple the Pacific Fleet," says a Coast Guard Web site, http://www.uscg.mil/history/webcutters/Taney_1936.html.

"Taney, moored alongside Pier 6, Honolulu harbor, stood to her antiaircraft guns swiftly when word of the surprise attack reached her simultaneously."

It was the first, but not last, time that enemies and raging elements of two oceans would try to sink the Taney.

The ship arrived in Norfolk in March 1944 and began service as a convoy guide. It survived an attack by German bombers and torpedo planes near the Canary Islands, then made several other crossings. Again transferred to the Pacific, it took part in the invasion of Okinawa, downing numerous suicide planes and other aircraft. The Taney endured more than 100 combat operations and two typhoons before taking part in the occupation of Japan.

After the war, the ship again assumed Coast Guard duties, this time as an ocean station, where it performed weather patrols and search-and-rescue missions. From 1976-86, the Taney served out of Portsmouth, performing search and rescue and serving as a floating weather station, sending up balloons and tracking hurricanes.

"It was the easiest two years I ever had and the toughest," former Coast Guard Capt. Eugene Moran tells me. Moran, 74, who lives in Chesapeake, served as Taney's commander while stationed off Chincoteague from 1976 to 1978. "It could get pretty lumpy out there," he says.

And then there was the North Atlantic during training cruises for Coast Guard cadets.

"There were not many good days in the North Atlantic in the winter," he remembers.

Moran retired from the service in April 1986, while the Taney - the last of the ships to survive Pearl Harbor - was decommissioned on Dec. 7 of that year. It's still afloat, as a museum ship in Baltimore's Inner Harbor.

The vessel was named for a famous Marylander. Well, infamous in some ways.

The fellow was Roger B. Taney, a one-time Treasury secretary who became chief justice of the United States and wrote the Dred Scott ruling in 1857, perpetuating slavery.

Scott, incidentally, was born in Southampton County, before his master took him to Missouri. Eventually he petitioned for citizenship but Taney held, and a majority of the court agreed, that the Constitution did not allow slaves to be free. We know what followed.

But that's a whole other story.

Taney's still-floating namesake, and its propeller, have many others to tell.

Paul Clancy, paulclancy@msn.com, www.paulclancystories.com