USCGC Dione (WPC-107) was a operated by the United States Coast Guard from 1934 to 1963. She and the other members of the Thetis class were designed to enforce Prohibition in the United States by stopping the illegal smuggling of alcohol; her class had been designed to improve on the experiences of previous ships. Built by the Manitowoc Shipbuilding Corporation in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, Dione's construction began in November 1933. She was launched from the drydock to the water in June 1934 and was commissioned into service in October that same year. Prohibition had been repealed in December 1933, so the cutter had no use in her planned capacity; she instead conducted search and rescue operations out of her station in Norfolk, Virginia. She was assigned to patrol duty off Virginia and North Carolina after the start of World War II.
At the outbreak of the Second Happy Time in January 1942, Dione became the only large ship in the Fifth Naval District capable of opposing German U-boats. The cutter patrolled the waters off North Carolina, which were nicknamed "Torpedo Alley" due to the high capacity of U-boats operating there. From January to June 1942, she rescued the survivors of torpedoed ships, escorted Allied convoys, and hunted sonar pings suspected to have come from U-boatsthough the cutter never sank one. In 1945, Dione was transferred to New England with two of her sister ships to help escort surrendered U-boats to American ports, which she did in May when she escorted to Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
After the war, Dione served out of Norfolk until she was decommissioned in July 1947 due to a lack of personnel. She was recommissioned in February 1951 and became the first Coast Guard Cutter to be stationed in Freeport, Texas. She operated in the Gulf of Mexico, serving in a search and rescue capacity until she was once more decommissioned in February 1963. The cutter was placed in reserve for about a year before being sold as a supply ship in March 1964.
She was operated as a merchant ship in the Gulf Coast region by three companies and under four different names. She was first known as Dione and was operated by the Palmer Decker Boat Company until it was dissolved in September 1967; Dione was seized by a US Marshal and auctioned off in December. She was then known as Big Trouble and owned by Big Trouble Inc. until the company changed its name to Delta Boats Inc. in February 1968, and the ship's name was changed to Delta I. She was sold to Sabik Inc. in March 1969. Delta I caught fire the next month while underway in the Caribbean Sea, and only her hull was salvaged. The ship was rebuilt, temporarily seized by a US Marshal, and was underway again by March 1970; her name had been changed to Al Rashid by that time. She last seen in service in 1992, owned by Sabik Inc and named Al Rashid. Her combined military and civilian service lasted 58 years.
Development
On 17 January 1920, the Volstead Act went into force in the United States. The law executed the Eighteenth Amendment, which had been ratified on 16 January 1919. The amendment banned the "manufacture, sale, or transportation" of most alcohol and began the period of Prohibition in the United States. The Volstead Act was enforced by local police departments, the Bureau of Prohibition, the US Customs Service, the Department of the Treasury, and the Coast Guard. The Coast Guard's role was to prevent seaborne alcohol smuggling, a job that was initially deemed small and manageable. However, by 1924, the Coast Guard was overwhelmed by the volume of smugglers and struggled to intercept more than five percent of the flow of alcohol.
Alongside its normal duties, the Coast Guard shifted to impose a blockade along of American coastline. For the role, new patrol boats and destroyers—which had formerly been operated by the United States Navy—joined the fleet to patrol at sea; Prohibition enforcement had become the first priority for the Coast Guard. While the vessels helped fill gaps off the coast, they were expensive to operate and performed poorly. In the 1920s, the Coast Guard began to build purpose-built patrol boats to take over the role of Prohibition enforcement. These new cutters varied in size and capability but were used to create a continuous buffer of Prohibition enforcement that stretched from the open ocean to inner harbors.
A common tactic by smugglers was to use large, seagoing, mother ships that loitered off the coast and supplied alcohol to smaller boats; the smaller boats then brought the drinks ashore. The Coast Guard ordered the construction of the -long cutters in the 1920s to trail and intercept mother ships, and the experience was used to develop the next class of sea-going cutters. The "B"-class, named for the cutters' overall length and primarily known as the , was ordered in the 1930s and designed based on results of the Active class' experiences. The design was intended to balance speed, seaworthiness, range, radio equipment, and armament. Eighteen Thetis-class cutters were built, and they were large and fast enough to intercept the mother ships. A newspaper article in the Oshkosh Northwestern praised the class the day before the launching of Dione and two of her sister ships, describing the cutters as having "the latest developments in marine and electrical engineering together with a large cruising radius and extreme seaworthiness."
The Eighteenth Amendment was repealed on 5 December 1933 with the Twenty-first Amendment—a little under a year before Dione was commissioned. The cutter never operated in the capacity that she and her sister ships were constructed for: enforcing Prohibition in the United States.
Construction
Hull number 277, listed as patrol boat 13, was built by the Manitowoc Shipbuilding Corporation in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. Diones keel was laid on 10 November 1933, and her contract was entered the same day for a price of US$242,800. The launch of the cutters and her two sister ships, Electra and Pandora, was originally to occur on 23 June 1934; it was postponed one week per an announcement by the chief government inspector and shipyard officials. Dione was finally launched alongside her sister ships on 30 June, each cutter leaving the ways in intervals of twenty minutes beginning at 1100. Dione was christened by Unita Risch, president of Wisconsin Department of the American Legion Auxiliary. Champagne, rather than sparkling water, was used to christen the cutter for the first time in a ship's launching in Manitowoc since Prohibition; it was also the first time that three vessels of that size had been launched broadside at one time. Around 10,000 people attended the triple launching.
The first of her sisters to be completed, Dione was delivered on 28 September and then undertook her sea trials. The cutter was proclaimed "satisfactory" at her trials and was commissioned on 5 October. She was named for Dione, a Titaness and the mother of the goddess Aphrodite in Greek mythology. Dione cost US$258,000 to construct. The cutter's building number and designation were P-13; her signal letters were NRGV. She bore the prefix "USCGC," indicating that she was a "United States Coast Guard Cutter".
Design and specifications Dione had a length overall of , a length between perpendiculars of , a maximum beam of , and a beam at waterline of . When she was constructed in 1933, the cutter had a draft of . Her displacement was while fully loaded. She had a complement of 5 officers and 39 men. Her hull was made of steel.
The Thetis-class patrol boats had two decks: the main deck and berth deck. The latter was subdivided into compartments by six transverse watertight bulkheads. The forwardmost spaces were the chain locker and bosun's store, which were situated in front of the shared enlisted quarters. Directly behind that were four staterooms for the cutter's five officers, followed by the fuel tanks with a fuel capacity of of diesel fuel, that were subdivided by two bulkheads. Behind the tanks was the engine room, followed by separate enlisted and officer messrooms in the aft. On the main deck was a two-layered superstructure, which consisted of the deckhouse and pilot house. The deckhouse—the bottom layer of the superstructure—held the cutter's heads, the radio room, and the captain's quarters. Atop the deckhouse was the pilot house, an auxiliary diesel generator, three searchlights, and two guns on either side of the pilot house. Mounted on the bow was a 3-inch/23-caliber gun supplied by a magazine located in the keel. Behind the superstructure were two funnels. On both sides of the aft funnel were the cutter's boats, which consisted of dories.
The cutters were propelled by two Winton 6-cylinder, 4-stroke diesel engines. Each piston had a bore and stroke that could produce 450 rotations per minute and , for a total of . The engines turned two three-bladed propellers. The cutter had a maximum speed of , a maximum sustained speed of , a cruising speed of , and an economic speed of . She had a range of while traveling at her maximum sustained speed, a range of while traveling at her cruising speed, and a range of while traveling at her economic speed.
Military service
Pre-war Dione departed Manitowoc the same day she was commissioned—5 October 1934. She passed through the Great Lakes and docked in Ogdensburg, New York for repairs to her oil purifier on 15 October. The cutter traveled up through the remainder of the river and through the gulf of the same name. Dione stopped in Philadelphia on 30 October to be outfitted with her weaponry, and docked at the Coast Guard base on the Elizabeth River on 1 November in order to take on fuel and provisions.
Dione was stationed in Norfolk, Virginia. The cutter primarily operated in a search and rescue capacity, responding to vessels that had signaled that they were in distress, taking injured seamen to Norfolk, and locating the wreckage of downed planes. She also operated in various miscellaneous capacities, such as breaking through ice to allow ships access to the Smith and Tangier Islands in February 1936 and accompanying vessels participating in a Hampton One-Design race in August 1941. In November 1937, Dione joined the search for survivors of the sunken cargo ship , which had sunk in a storm off Hatteras, North Carolina, on the night of 12–13 November. Multiple lifeboats were found empty, but 15 survivors were eventually found clinging to wreckage by the cutter and were subsequently taken to Norfolk."Ships sweep sea for missing 22". The Sunday Star. Washington, DC. 14 November 1937. Retrieved 7 March 2024 – via Library of Congress.
World War II Following the beginning of World War II, Dione was assigned to both the Fifth Naval District—which contained the waters off Virginia and North Carolinaand the Eastern Sea Frontier, a Navy operational command. She was based out of Naval Operating Base Norfolk. Dione was assigned to patrol duty of the waters between Norfolk and Morehead City, North Carolina, covering the shipping lanes that passed by the Outer Banks of North Carolina and going as far out as the Gulf Stream. She also traveled to the lightships that operated off the Outer Banks to deliver and receive mail. On 1 November 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8929, which transferred control of the Coast Guard from the Department of the Treasury to the Navy "for the duration of the emergency." According to the US Coast Guard, sometime in 1941, the cutter's two guns were removed. Installed were two racks to hold depth charges and a Y-gun depth charge launcher, which was designed to throw depth charges over the sides of the cutter and into the water.
Second Happy Time