This Day in Coast Guard History – April 28
1908- Secretary of Commerce and Labor was authorized to patrol regattas and transfer that authority to another Department if need be. Thus the Revenue Cutter Service became the primary federal agency that patrolled regattas.
1918- CGC Seneca saved 81 survivors from the torpedoed British naval sloop Cowslip while on convoy route to Gibraltar. Cowslip was attacked by three German U-boats.
1993-Coast Guard PACAREA LEDETs, operating from the USS Valley Forge and USS Cleveland, boarded the St. Vincent-flagged 225-foot freighter Sea Chariot about 300 miles southwest of Panama. The boarding team discovered bales of cocaine in some of the containers aboard and then seized the vessel. The vessel was escorted through the Panama Canal to Station Miami Beach where a search of the vessel's containers turned up 11,233 pounds of cocaine.
2001-A LEDET assigned to the USS Rodney M. Davis, with later assistance from the CGC Active made the largest cocaine seizure in maritime history when they boarded and seized the Belizean F/V Svesda Maru 1,500 miles south of San Diego. The fishing vessel was carrying 26,931 pounds of cocaine.
(Source: USCG Historian’s Office)