USRC James C. Dobbin

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USRC James C. Dobbin was a Cushing-class revenue cutter of the United States Revenue Cutter Service. Built in Massachusetts and launched in 1853, she served from 1853 to 1881 and was named for James Cochrane Dobbin, Franklin Pierce’s Secretary of the Navy.

Dobbin began work in Wilmington, North Carolina, and in 1856 moved to Savannah, Georgia. On January 3, 1861, a mob seized the cutter in Savannah and held the officers and crew in irons. After a protest from the customs inspector, Georgia’s governor ordered their release, making Dobbin the only revenue cutter based in the South to escape to the North before the Civil War.

In April 1861 she was sent to Philadelphia to receive heavier armament and was then assigned to New York City. In 1863 she moved to Portland, Maine, where she remained until December 1876, when she was sent to Baltimore to be refitted as a training ship. The first eight cadets of the new Revenue Cutter School of Instruction boarded Dobbin and sailed on their first practice cruise on May 24, 1877; one cadet, Worth G. Ross, would later become Commandant of the Coast Guard.

The following summer she was replaced by the new training cutter Salmon P. Chase, but Dobbin continued to serve as a revenue cutter until she was sold on April 6, 1881, to Henry Brothers for $5,156.