BNHA USCGC Taney

The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Taney is one of the famed Secretary/Treasury class Coast Guard cutters built in the mid 1930s and saw extensive service in war and peace for half a century. Taney’s keel was laid on May 1, 1935 at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, where she was built alongside three sister ships.

Commissioned in October 1936, Taney’s was first home port was Honolulu, Hawaii. Before World War II, the ship interdicted opium smugglers and carried out search and rescue duties from the Hawaiian Islands through the central Pacific Ocean. In 1940 and 1941, Taney received successive armament upgrades in anticipation of war.

On the eve of Pearl Harbor, Taney was officially assigned to the U.S. Navy's Destroyer Division 80, though she retained her Coast Guard crew. When Japanese aircraft attacked Pearl Harbor and other American military installations in Hawaii on December 7, 1941, Taney was tied up at Pier 6 and was able engage Japanese planes. When the attack subsided, Taney immediately commenced anti-submarine patrol duties off Pearl Harbor. Throughout the war, the ship was used to conduct anti-submarine patrols, convoy escort duties, and served as the flagship for Rear Adm. Calvin Cobb. Immediately after the end of the war in September 1945, Taney steamed into Japanese home waters where it assisted with the evacuation of Allied prisoners of war.

Following World War II, Taney was reconfigured for peacetime duties. Known as “The Queen of the Pacific,” Taney carried out virtually every peacetime U.S. Coast Guard duty, including decades of ocean weather patrol and fisheries patrols. By the late 1960s, Taney had become the last U.S. vessel still in commission that had seen action during the Japanese attack on Hawaii and was often referred to as “The Last Survivor of Pearl Harbor.”

On December 7, 1986, after more than 50 years of continuous service, Taney was decommissioned at Portsmouth, Virginia, and donated to the City of Baltimore to serve as a memorial and museum. Today it is open daily and is one of the four vessels of the Historic Ships in Baltimore maritime museum.