In this capacity he commanded a number of cutters on the United States Gulf Coast and was responsible for moving the School of Instruction to Fort Trumbull, Connecticut.

A native of Cleveland, Ohio, Ross was appointed as a cadet to the Revenue Cutter Service School of Instruction on 4 January 1877 after successfully completing an entrance examination.

[3] He was among ten candidates out of nineteen to pass the required examination and was one of eight cadets that were told to report aboard the USRC Dobbin at Baltimore, Maryland.

Records do not specify what his offense was, although Ross apparently arrived in New Bedford, Massachusetts, on 15 October with the rest of the class to start cadet academic training.

[3][8][Note 2] Ross was serving as executive officer aboard the USRC Levi Woodbury when the Spanish–American War was declared in April 1898,[9] but he was soon transferred to the USS Harvard, a converted passenger liner, formerly known as City of New York, that the U.S. Navy used as a supply carrier and troopship.

[4] Soon after his appointment, Ross was directed by Secretary Shaw to take personal charge of six Revenue Service cutters that were being used to quarantine vessels arriving at the ports along the Gulf Coast from the threat of a yellow fever epidemic and defuse tensions caused by the disruption of shipping schedules.

After USRC Salmon P. Chase was decommissioned, Ross moved the school to Curtis Bay, Maryland, and, in 1910, after the facilities there proved to be too small, to Fort Trumbull, Connecticut, a surplus United States Army fort located one mile (1.6 km) away from the academy's current home in New London, Connecticut, to which the academy was moved in 1932.