Secured along the seawall at Truman Waterfront, the ship commands attention, the searing white of its hull stretches out like a 100-meter dash (327 feet), punctuated by the unmistakable orange stripe and thick, block letters — U.S. Coast Guard — near the bow.
Impressive as it is, the ship could be, and often is, mistaken for one of its Coast Guard counterparts docked across the harbor at Sector Key West. Don’t let the matching paint jobs fool you. This ship is special.
The cutter Ingham, nearly 90 years old, is a war hero, the most decorated ship in Coast Guard history — and she’s worth saving, according to the Florida Trust for Historic Preservation.
The trust last month added the Ingham to its annual “11 to Save” list, which prioritizes 11 historical preservation projects around the state each year.
The Ingham operates as a historic maritime museum at Truman Waterfront, headed by Bill Verge, a former Coast Guardsman and Key West city commissioner. The ship is open for tours and hosts a sunset happy hour every Friday and Saturday, which will resume on Sept. 29 after the slow and hot summer months. More than 16,000 schoolchildren have explored the Ingham since it arrived in Key West in 2009. Veterans who served aboard the ship have a reunion in Key West every two years.
“Those guys come on board, and they remember every inch of this place,” Verge said. “They go to their work stations, their old bunk spots. They love it.”
During World War II, Ingham criss-crossed the Atlantic in convoys protecting U.S. and allied ships. It was during one of these crossings that the Ingham sank a German U-boat (submarine) and earned the first of its two presidential unit citations “for extraordinary heroism in action against an armed enemy.”
After World War II, Ingham spent about 20 years performing her primary peacetime tasks of maintaining ocean weather stations in the Atlantic between Virginia and Newfoundland.
Then came the Vietnam War, and the Ingham headed to Southeast Asia.
“While patrolling off Vietnam, Ingham’s task was to prevent the infiltration of arms and supplies to communist forces in South Vietnam by stopping, boarding and searching vessels,” states the ship’s website at uscgcingham.org.
After Vietnam, Ingham returned to weather station duties until the ship’s final tour of duty, which brought her to Key West — the Mariel Boatlift.
“Ingham’s largest search and rescue mission came in 1980 after Cuban dictator Fidel Castro opened the port of Mariel, Cuba, letting thousands flee the Communist island. While patrolling the waters between Cuba and Florida in late April 1980, Ingham towed five vessels and rescued 14 survivors from swamped boats as a storm battered refugee boats sailing from Cuba. On July 11, 1980, Ingham rescued six Cuban men from a 15-foot wood and rubber raft 70 miles northeast of Havana. The next day Ingham escorted two Cuban refugee vessels — and 102 people — to safety in Key West.
Ingham’s inclusion on the 11 to Save list enables it to receive assistance from the Florida Trust about available grant funding.
“It doesn’t come with grant money, but the trust is supposed to help us find grants and preservation funding,” Verge said on Sept. 16.
And funding is crucial in the coming year. In preparation for the ship’s 90th birthday, and the 250th birthday of the United States, Verge and the Ingham’s nonprofit board members and supporters plan to repaint the boat, but not the Coast Guard’s usual white and orange.
“We want to paint it in the same gray camouflage design it had during World War II,” Verge said, pointing to a photograph of the Ingham in 1942.
The paint job, necessary maintenance and towing the Ingham to a boatyard in Jacksonville will cost about $3 million, Verge said.
