The establishment of prohibition gave rise to smuggling of illicit liquor into the United States overland from Canada and from ships moored just outside the three-mile limit along the Atlantic seaboard.

In February 1922, the Commandant of the Coast Guard, Rear Admiral William E. Reynolds, informed the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, Roy Asa Haynes that although the Coast Guard was tasked with the enforcement of prohibition, Congress had not included any funding for the additional maintenance and operation of vessels.

[2] To deal with this problem, twenty-five destroyers were transferred by the United States Navy to the Treasury Department for service with the Coast Guard.

Some began to show signs of wear and tear after the often arduous pace of operations on the Rum Patrol and required replacement.

The destroyers’ mission, therefore, was to picket the larger mother ships and prevent them from off-loading their cargo onto the smaller, speedier contact boats that ran the liquor into shore.