The commissioning ceremony for the U.S. Coast Guard National Security Cutter Munro was held in Seattle this weekend, according to the Coast Guard.
The Munro is named for Coast Guard’s only Medal of Honor recipient, Signalman First Class Douglas A. Munro. Munro was fatally wounded while providing covering fire for 500 U.S. Marines who were being evacuated during the Guadalcanal campaign in 1942.
The crew accepted their positions aboard the ship when the Munro was ‘brought to life’ by Douglas Munro’s great niece, Julie Sheehan, alongside the ship’s commander Coast Guard Capt. Thomas H. King.
Saturday's ceremony, held at the Port of Seattle’s Pier 91, was presided over by Homeland Security Secretary and retired Marine Corps Gen. John Kelly, as well as Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Paul Zukunft. The Munro is the Coast Guard’s sixth and newest National Security Cutter and the fourth to be home-ported on the west coast at U.S. Coast Guard Base Alameda, California.
"National Security Cutters are state of the art platforms that can operate seamlessly within the Navy’s fleet and leverage our unique authorities to push our maritime borders thousands of miles beyond the homeland in order to ensure our national security and prosperity," said Adm. Zukunft. "Our nation faces significant threats posed by violent transnational organized crime networks and the men and women of the Coast Guard are on the front lines of this fight," he added.
The Legend-class National Security Cutter Munro was built by Huntington Ingalls Industries at the Ingalls Shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi. The Munro is 418 feet in length and has a displacement of 4,600 long tons. It has a top speed in excess of 28 knots, a range of 12,000 nautical miles, endurance of up to 90 days and can hold a crew of 150, according to the Coast Guard. The National Security Cutters are replacing the 378-foot High Endurance Hamilton class cutters, which have been in use since the 1960s.
National Security Cutters like the Munro will be used to conduct alien migrant interdiction operations, domestic fisheries protection, search and rescue, counter-narcotics and homeland security operations. The west coast based cutters can be used as far north as the Bering Sea and as far south as South America.
"Since the first operational deployment of a National Security Cutter in Fiscal Year 2009, three NSCs (Waesche, Bertholf and Stratton) removed more than 98 metric tons of cocaine worth an estimated $2.9 billion wholesale combined," according to the Coast Guard.
"It's significant," Sheehan told Seattle NBC affiliate NBC K5. "He's an inspiration to us. His namesake lives on in our family. My dad's name is Doug. My brother's middle name is Doug. My son's middle name is Douglas."
