Before it was sunk by a German submarine in World War I, the Coast Guard cutter Tampa bonded with its namesake, where it was stationed from 1913 to 1917 on hurricane patrols.
When that relationship began, the ship was still known as the Miami. But Coast Guard historians note how the crew marched in the Gasparilla parade and officers attended the celebration’s ball.
As the Tampa, the vessel went to war until it met with a U-boat torpedo in the Bristol Channel off the Wales coast, leaving 131 souls and their memories entombed more than 300 feet below the Atlantic waves for nearly a century.
Until a week ago.
The Coast Guard announced the ship’s wreckage was found and confirmed by the British technical diving team Gasperados, about 50 miles off Newquay, United Kingdom.
Adm. Kevin Lunday, commandant of the Coast Guard, said in a statement that the courage and sacrifice of the Tampa's crew reflected the legacy of the Coast Guard, which has defended the U.S. during every armed conflict since its 1790 founding.
“When the Tampa was lost with all hands in 1918, it left an enduring grief in our service," Lunday said. “Locating the wreck connects us to their sacrifice and reminds us that devotion to duty endures.”
The Gasperados team conducted 10 trips to possible dive locations until the wreckage was discovered north of the British Cornwall County coast.
“This discovery is the result of three years of research and exploration," team leader Steve Mortimer said in a Facebook post. "Tampa is of huge importance to the United States and the relatives of everyone who died that day. Their final resting place is known at last.”
The all-volunteer dive team first contacted the Coast Guard Historian's Office in 2023 regarding the Tampa.
“We provided the dive team with historical records and technical data to assist in confirming the wreck site,” Coast Guard Atlantic Area Historian William Thiesen said in a statement. “This included the archival images of the deck fittings, ship’s wheel, bell, weaponry, and archival images of the Tampa.”
The Miami — at 190 feet long and 1,191 tons — was launched in February 1912, one of a fleet of revenue cutters assigned to patrol U.S. waters.
While stationed in Tampa, the crew became a regular presence at Gasparilla — even earning recognition in 1915 as the festival’s top military marching unit. In recognition of those ties, the cutter was renamed Tampa on Feb. 1, 1916.
As the U.S. prepared to enter the war, the Tampa was anchored in Key West, received coats of slate-colored paint and trained on both sides of the Florida peninsula while awaiting orders.
According to the U.S. Coast Guard publication “Remember the Tampa,” the ship was transferred to Navy control and selected for overseas duty in April 1917. Operating out of Gibraltar, the cutter escorted merchant vessels through submarine-infested waters, helping protect more than 400 ships traveling between Allied ports during the war.
On Sept. 26, 1918, while traveling alone toward Wales after separating from a convoy, the Tampa was attacked by Imperial German sub UB-91 and sank in less than three minutes.
It was a final call of duty and bravery.
“The night was dark and cloudy. There was no moon,” the Coast Guard writes in an online history of the cutter. “The Tampa, perhaps detecting some sign of a submarine, darted out ahead of the convoy. At 8:45 p.m., a loud explosion was heard by people aboard other ships, and later, when they arrived in port, the Tampa was missing.”
After a search by U.S. destroyers and British patrol craft, all that was recovered was a few pieces of wreckage and two unidentifiable bodies in naval uniforms.
The dead included 111 Coast Guardsmen, four U.S. Navy personnel, and 16 British Navy personnel and civilians. It was the largest single American naval combat loss of life in World War I.
According to historians, those aboard were from Tampa, Key West, New York City, Denver, and even Russia and Norway. Many signed up for active duty as soon as the U.S. declared war on Germany on April 17, 1917, while others had been part of Tampa’s crew for years.
“The Tampa’s loss was more painful because she had been considered one of the happiest and most efficient ships of the ocean escort force,” Coast Guard historians wrote.
Since then, three other Coast Guard vessels have carried the name Tampa. The latest, a 270-footer commissioned in 1984, calls Portsmouth, Virginia, its home port.
During WWI, the Purple Heart — awarded to those wounded or killed in action — was not in use. In 1952, President Harry Truman signed an executive order awarding the medal retroactively, although the Tampa was forgotten for decades.
On Veterans Day in 1999, the current crew accepted Purple Hearts presented posthumously at Arlington National Cemetery to those who went down with the original.
