Coast Guard City USA and the Loss of the Escanaba
Near Grand Haven, Michigan
Grand Haven calls itself Coast Guard City USA, and it holds that title first in the whole nation, granted by a law signed by President Clinton on the thirteenth of November, nineteen ninety-eight. The bond runs deep, and its heart is a tragedy. The Coast Guard cutter Escanaba was commissioned in nineteen thirty-two and made her home port right here at Grand Haven.
When war came she was sent east to escort convoys across the frigid North Atlantic. On the thirteenth of June, nineteen forty-three, while guarding a convoy off Greenland, the Escanaba erupted in a fiery explosion and sank in just two or three minutes. Whether it was a torpedo or a drifting mine was never proven, and the Coast Guard today leans toward a mine, so we will honor that uncertainty.
Of the one hundred five men aboard, only two survived. Their soaked clothing froze them to floating wreckage and held them above the water until rescue came. One hundred three men died.
The town that had raised her was shattered, and its people bought more than a million dollars in war bonds to fund a replacement cutter of the same name. Every summer, during the Coast Guard Festival, Grand Haven still holds a memorial service for the men of the Escanaba.
