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USCGC Active (WPC-125)

American Coast Guard cutter, 1926

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMar 5, 2026
Entity authorityQ7865993 ↗
Source-derived summary

USCGC Active (WPC-125), later WSC-125, was a United States Coast Guard patrol boat in commission from 1926 to 1947 and from 1951 to 1962. She was the first vessel of the Coast Guard and the seventh of the United States Revenue Cutter Service or Coast Guard to bear the name Active.

Construction and commissioning

Active was built by American Brown Boveri Electric Corporation at Camden, New Jersey. She was commissioned as USCGC Active (WPC-125) on 30 November 1926. She was the lead ship of the Active-class patrol boats, which were designed for trailing the "mother ships" that supported the smuggling boats of "rum-runners" during Prohibition.

United States Coast Guard service 1926-1962

In 1938, Active was re-engined, her original 6-cylinder diesel engines being replaced by significantly more powerful 8-cylinder units that used the original engine beds and gave her an additional 3 knots of speed.

World War II service

In September 1941 to May 1942, during World War II, Active was stationed at Stapleton on Staten Island, New York, and this was her base when the United States entered World War II on 7 December 1941. During the war, she was reclassified as a submarine chaser and redesignated WSC-125. She operated out of Stapleton until May 1942.

In June 1942, her home port changed to Boston, Massachusetts, and she was assigned to operate under the control of the United States Navy's Commander-in-Chief Atlantic and to work under Destroyers Atlantic.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “USCGC Active (WPC-125)” as american Coast Guard cutter, 1926. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1926, 1947, 1951, 1962—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where USCGC, Active and WPC-125 can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as american Coast Guard cutter, 1926. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7865993. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1926, 1947, 1951 and 1962.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “USCGC Active (WPC-125)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.