Coast Guard U S

Two months after her husband, two young sons and nephew died at sea, Libby Cornett got a surprise visit from a U.S. Coast Guard commander who played for her a tape-recording of a three-second radio transmission. "May . . . Mayday, U.S. Coast Guard, come in," cried a tiny, frightened voice that Cornett immediately recognized as that of her 13-year-old son, Daniel.

In past years, these remote gray waters of the Alaskan Arctic saw little more than the occasional cargo barge and Eskimo whaling boat. No more. This summer, when the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Bertholf was monitoring shipping traffic along the desolate tundra coast, its radar displays were often brightly lighted with mysterious targets. There were oil drilling rigs, research vessels, fuel barges, small cruise ships. A few were sailboats that had ventured through the Northwest Passage above Canada.

In past years, these remote gray waters of the Alaskan Arctic saw little more than the occasional cargo barge and Eskimo whaling boat. No more. This summer, when the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Bertholf was monitoring shipping traffic along the desolate tundra coast, its radar displays were often brightly lighted with mysterious targets. There were oil drilling rigs, research vessels, fuel barges, small cruise ships. A few were sailboats that had ventured through the Northwest Passage above Canada.

Electronic warning systems and a computerized "notice to all airmen" system exist to prevent midair collisions like the one Thursday night off San Clemente Island that apparently killed nine military members. But as a Coast Guard admiral noted ruefully Friday, "No system is perfect." Even in an age of sophisticated collision-detection warning equipment, communication gear and an instantaneous message board notifying all pilots of military maneuvers, the fundamental safety procedure remains "see and avoid."

The Coast Guard has officially ended the operation that started in August and rescued tens of thousands of Cuban refugees seeking to reach Florida by sea, spokesman Dan Waldschmidt said. "An operation specifically to handle a massive influx of Cuban migrants has ended," Waldschmidt said of the Able Vigil operation.

Families who alleged that the Coast Guard botched a rescue, which led to the deaths of four people in a sailboat accident, on Thursday were awarded $18.9 million from the federal government. Michael Cornett, 49, of Hiltons, Va., and his sons, Paul, 16, and Daniel, 13, died when their sailboat Morning Dew ran into a Charleston Harbor jetty on a December night in 1997. Bobby Lee Hurd Jr., the boys' 14-year-old cousin from Mountain City, Tenn., also died. "This tragedy was avoidable," U.S.

Mark Laws has no problem with Coast Guard officials launching a stern new effort to combat drug smuggling on the high seas. But "they've gone overboard," the Marina del Rey boat captain declared, with their "zero tolerance" crackdown, which has resulted in the confiscation of more than two dozen craft ranging from sailboats to shrimp boats to tugboats, from Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico, since mid-April.

Determined to head off another deadly confrontation between Cuban warplanes and unarmed civilians, President Clinton on Thursday ordered the Coast Guard to escort an armada of Cuban exile aircraft and boats to a memorial demonstration this weekend for the pilots shot down off the island's coast last Saturday. Clinton directed the Coast Guard, with U.S.

The U.S. Coast Guard on Tuesday tried to stop six Cuban refugees from reaching American soil by using a water cannon to sink their small wooden rowboat during a desperate drama that has outraged this community of immigrants and exiles. After forcing the six men into the Atlantic Ocean a few dozen yards off Surfside beach, several Coast Guard vessels circled around them, blocking their efforts to swim ashore.

In October, 1987, the American supertanker Stuyvesant was battling heavy seas and gale-force winds in the Gulf of Alaska, its tanks filled with North Slope crude oil loaded in Valdez, when the pounding waves fractured its hull. More than 600,000 gallons of oil oozed from the wound. It was the second time in 10 months that the 1,100-foot Stuyvesant had been cracked open by the sea. In the previous January, the tanker had sailed through several days of bad weather before anyone noticed the leak.

When Capt. Kevin Cavanaugh guided his ship under the Golden Gate Bridge and into San Francisco Bay last week, it ended a voyage that marked two firsts for the veteran officer. It was the first time he circumnavigated the globe -- a rare achievement for any sailor -- and the first time he tangled with suspected pirates.

In a sobering self-assessment of the response to last year's San Francisco Bay oil spill, a U.S. Coast Guard study released Monday conceded that the first crews on the scene dramatically underestimated the trouble and onshore commanders failed to properly alert the public and local officials. But the 130-page report on the aftermath of the Nov.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Members of Congress demanded answers Monday on the Coast Guard's response to an oil spill that dumped 58,000 gallons of fuel into San Francisco Bay, but the legislators left unsatisfied and pledged to open another federal investigation. An admiral countered that the blame rested squarely with the operators of the container ship that rammed a tower of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge on Nov. 7.

The head of the Coast Guard on Sunday defended his agency's response to the oil spill in San Francisco Bay while pledging a full investigation. "On the surface it would appear that we did everything by the book in this case as far as responding," Adm. Thad Allen said while en route from Washington, D.C., to survey the damage. "We need to recover all the information, make sure all the facts are established."

The Coast Guard Academy said it was expanding training on race relations after two hangman's nooses were found on campus, the first in the bag of a black cadet and the second in a trainer's office. "We take these incidents very seriously," said Petty Officer Gail Dale at the New London academy.

The U.S. Coast Guard has been intercepting more boat people crossing from Cuba to the Straits of Florida in the last three months, and the U.S. Border Patrol has been processing rising numbers turning up at the U.S.-Mexico border, officials said. A U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman said 2,819 Cubans had reached Florida so far this year, compared with 3,076 in all of last year.

In a report filled with vivid details of disaster on the high seas, the U.S. Coast Guard said Friday that a South Korean freighter was responsible for ramming and sinking a Santa Clarita family's yacht last fall in the South Pacific, killing two children and their father.

Search crews frantically looking for survivors or significant wreckage of the small plane carrying John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife and his sister-in-law found neither for a second day Sunday, and gave up on finding any of the three alive.

Common images of the U.S. Coast Guard's duties include boat rescues on the Great Lakes, pursuits of smugglers in the Caribbean and patrols of U.S. ports in the post-Sept. 11 security buildup. But "Coasties" are also hip-deep in one of the world's riskiest and most politically volatile missions: boarding ships in the Persian Gulf to search for contraband, weaponry and suspected terrorists.

The Coast Guard suspended its search Monday for three people believed to have died when a small plane crashed off the coast here. The propeller-driven Cessna 182 left McClellan-Palomar Airport in Carlsbad at 9:45 a.m. Sunday and crashed five minutes later about one mile off the coast. The plane was registered to Leroy F. Kochert of Phoenix. The names of the three people -- a man and two women -- had not been released.