BOSTON — The crew of the Coast Guard Cutter Seneca departed Coast Guard Base Boston on Sept. 2, en route to their new homeport in Portsmouth, Virginia, the Coast Guard 1st District said in a release.
After 33 years homeported in Boston, Seneca will continue service with six other 270-foot, medium-endurance cutters, homeported at Coast Guard Base Portsmouth. This will allow the Coast Guard to better leverage efficiencies gained by clustering vessels of the same class.
Seneca was formally commissioned in Boston on May 9, 1987. Since then, Seneca’s crew has conducted nearly all of the Coast Guard’s missions throughout New England, the Caribbean Sea, and the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, all while calling Boston home.
In the late 1990s, Coast Guard Cutter Seneca, along with Coast Guard Cutter Galatin, was part of Operation New Frontier, a counter-narcotics operation that tested the use of high-speed pursuit boats and armed helicopters. The operation was successfully completed March 13, 2000, and lead to the creation of the Helicopter Interdiction Tactical Squadron in Jacksonville, Florida.
More recently, Seneca’s crew assisted in the rescue of 187 Haitian migrants approximately 17 miles southwest of Turks and Caicos Islands on December 22, 2019. The Coast Guard, Royal Bahamas Defense Force, and Turks and Caicos Islands Police worked together to rescue all 187 people after they were spotted onboard a single 30-foot vessel.
Seneca shares its name with the Revenue Cutter Seneca, the first cutter to engage in official ice patrol duties after the sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912, and one of five Coast Guard cutters that made up Squadron 2 of Division 6 of the Atlantic Fleet Patrol Forces during World War I.
