HISTORY
The first cutter RESOLUTE was a top-sail schooner built and commissioned in 1867 for the Revenue Cutter Service. This first RESOLUTE was homeported in Key West, Florida, and took on the missions of smuggling interdiction and search and rescue.
The current cutter RESOLUTE is very different in size and construction but the missions remain the same. The RESOLUTE was the first of her class to be powered by two 16-cylinder, 2,550 horsepower, Alco 251B Diesel engines. RESOLUTE’s keel was laid at the United States Coast Guard Yard, Curtis Bay, Maryland, in May 1965, and she was commissioned on December 8, 1966. Since that time, she has seen several different homeports including San Francisco, California; Alameda, California; Astoria, Oregon; and her current home port of St. Petersburg, Florida.
In 1981, RESOLUTE extinguished a fire aboard the tug DeFelice alongside a San Francisco fuel pier. Two RESOLUTE crewmembers entered the burning tug and retrieved her injured occupants. Several members of RESOLUTE’s crew were injured during this operation while they fought desperately to save the vessel and crew. In 1986, after successfully completing hundreds of SAR cases and fisheries boardings, RESOLUTE saw her first drug bust. The seizure of the M/V Pamnico and the arrest of the vessel's crew resulted in the interdiction of over 20,000 pounds of marijuana headed for the streets of the United States.
During her tour of duty in Astoria, Oregon, RESOLUTE was called to assist vessels in distress on numerous occasions; however, RESOLUTE’s primary calling was patrolling U.S. fishery protection zones. RESOLUTE also participated in the response to the Exxon Valdez oil spill disaster in Prince William Sound, Alaska.
In 1994 RESOLUTE was decommissioned at the United States Coast Guard Yard for a major refurbishment. Now recommissioned, she continues to meet diverse challenges in the eastern Pacific Ocean, Southeast United States and in the Caribbean Sea. RESOLUTE’s missions primarily focuse on counter drug, migrant interdiction, and Search and Rescue. In the summer of 2010, Resolute participated in the response to the Deep Water Horizon oil spill, performing duties as Command Task Unit and as the Coast Guard’s media platform to communicate the service’s response to the world.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Joaquin, RESOLUTE responded to the disappearance of Motor Vessel El Faro in the Bahamas, a rare modern day maritime disaster. After traveling more than 600 nautical miles in 48 hours, RESOLUTE arrived on scene and searched continuously for five days with three other ships, commercial tugs as well as highly capable military and interagency aircraft. While no survivors were located, the collective efforts of all resources provided assurance that every searchable square mile was saturated.
From 2022-2024, during 6 patrols totaling over 380 days deployed, RESOLUTE’s crew interdicted, processed, and repatriated over 1,200 Cuban and Haitian migrants and conducted the second major cutter repatriation to Cuba in over 50 years. In addition to Migrant interdiction operations, the RESOLUTE crew stopped over 3,250 kilograms of cocaine and 10,300 pounds of marijuana valued at over $100 million along with 19 narcotics traffickers from reaching U.S. shores. RESOLUTE also initiated a precedent-setting program with a vital Treaty Ally to train international military students in foundational cutter qualifications & shipboard maintenance processes by embarking two Philippine Coast Guard members for a 67-day patrol. This program was critical to the Philippine Coast Guard as it maximized learning and the members returned to the Philippines as the lead instructors for the first-ever Philippine Coast Guard A-School Training Center. Finally, RESOLUTE was the first ship to return to the west coast of Florida after Hurricanes Ian and Idalia. She led offshore command and control functions, search and rescue and helped to reconstitute the Port of Tampa Bay.