[2] By the early 1900s Haiti had the largest fleet of any Caribbean country, though its ships were crewed by foreigners and it mostly consisted of outdated gunboats.

[2][7] The largest vessel in the Haitian navy was the Italian cruiser Umbria, which was purchased in 1910 but it sank in less than a year because of the crew's inexperience.

Three 121-ton SC-class submarine chasers, Touissaint L'Ouverture, 16 Aout 1946, and Amiral Killick, were transferred in 1947, along with the 47-ton cutter Savannah and the light transport Vertières.

The transport Vertières sank in 1951 and was replaced by the Artibonite, a tank landing craft which had been previously wrecked on the Haitian coast and was subsequently salvaged.

On April 21, 1970,[9] three units — La Crête-à-Pierrot, Vertières, and Jean-Jacques Dessalines — mutinied and shelled the Presidential Palace in Port-au-Prince.

Duvalier celebrated this event by renaming the Coast Guard the "Haitian Navy" (La Marine Haitienne).

[4] As of 2004, the U.S. spent $4.6 million on training Haitian personnel, providing them with boats, and restoring the Coast Guard base in Port-au-Prince.

[1] The core mission of the Coast Guard is to secure the maritime area of Haiti through surveillance of territorial waters and the safety of maritime navigation divided into these different functions:[17] As of 2023:[5] Haitian Coast Guard vessels are marked with a diagonal blue before red slash and before the words Gardes-Côtes.