LOCKPORT, La. — Bollinger Shipyards has delivered the fast-response cutter (FRC) Myrtle Hazard to the U.S. Coast Guard in Key West, Florida, the company announced on May 28.
The Myrtle Hazard is the 162nd vessel that Bollinger has delivered to the Coast Guard in 35 years and the 39th FRC delivered under the current program.
The cutter is the first of three FRCs to be homeported in Apra Harbor, Guam, increasing the presence for the Coast Guard in the Indo-Pacific. Later this year, Bollinger will deliver the first of six FRCs to be homeported in Manama, Bahrain, replacing Island-class patrol boats supporting the Patrol Forces Southwest Asia, the Coast Guard’s largest unit outside the United States.
“Our latest delivery of the … Myrtle Hazard is an important milestone in the FRC program as it is the first of several vessels that will expand and support the Coast Guard’s operational presence and enhance the U.S.’s mission in the Indo-Pacific region — a focal point emphasized by both President Trump and [Coast Guard Commandant] Adm. [Karl L.] Shultz,” said Ben Bordelon, Bollinger’s president and CEO. “Building ships for the U.S. Coast Guard provides critical assets to bolster our national security interests, both domestic and abroad. We are proud and humbled to be partners in the FRC program.”
The homeporting of three FRCs in Guam is part of the Coast Guard’s “doubling down on Oceania,” allowing more frequent and longer patrols in an area where the sea service has increased its presence over the past 18 months, aligning with priorities set in the 2018 National Defense Strategy to counter competitors such as China and Russia.
Schultz stressed the strategic importance of the service’s presence in the region saying, “We’re on a trajectory where the geostrategic importance of the Oceania region has not been higher here in decades, and it’s a place that the Coast Guard’s looking to be part of the whole-of-government solution set.”
Each FRC is named for an enlisted Coast Guard hero who distinguished himself or herself in the line of duty. A young mother in 1918, Myrtle Hazard answered a help-wanted ad for a qualified radio operator after graduating from a radio and telegraphy class at the Baltimore YMCA.
Skilled in telegraphy and Morse code, the Coast Guard enlisted Hazard in January 1918, and she became the sea service’s first female electrician. Hazard worked at Coast Guard headquarters in Washington, D.C., as an electrician’s mate third class and was promoted to electrician first class before being demobilized after the war ended.
