USRC Relief
Ship of the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service
USRC Relief, was a revenue cutter of the United States Revenue Cutter Service in commission from 1867 to at least 1870. She was the first Revenue Cutter Service ship to bear the name.
History
Built at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, by Bierly & Hillman, Relief was commissioned in 1867 and served what is known of her entire career homeported at Indianola, Texas. She was the lead ship of the Relief-class of two revenue schooners built to her specifications. Relief and her sister ship, Rescue also built by Bierly & Hillman, were among the last strictly sail-powered cutters built for the Revenue Service. On 18 September Relief was transferred temporarily to Key West, Florida due to an outbreak of yellow fever in the Indianola area. She returned from Key West on 5 December 1867. On 19 July 1870, she sailed for New Orleans for scheduled repairs. No Revenue Cutter Service record exists of her movements after 19 July 1870.
The public source identifies “USRC Relief” as ship of the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around USRC, Relief and Ship.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “USRC Relief”, the useful work is to connect “ship of the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 14, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q16984064. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1867 and 1870.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
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Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “USRC Relief”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow USRC Relief primary sources, USRC Relief archive and USRC research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “USRC Relief” 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.