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50 free Coast Guard trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
The Coast Guard is the smallest of the US armed forces and the one most people know least about. These 46 Coast Guard trivia questions cover the whole story: Alexander Hamilton's ten revenue cutters in 1790, the 1915 merger with the Life-Saving Service, the Rum War and the Hooligan Navy, the Matchbox Fleet at Normandy, Douglas Munro at Guadalcanal, the SPARS, the Pendleton rescue that became The Finest Hours, the 33,500 people pulled from Katrina's floodwaters, and the rescue swimmers, Jayhawks, Dolphins, icebreakers and National Security Cutters of today. It also asks about the barque Eagle, the Academy in New London, boot camp at Cape May, Base Kodiak, the International Ice Patrol born from the Titanic, the 64-degree racing stripe, and how the coast guards of Britain, Canada and Japan differ from America's. Easy questions suit anyone with a Coastie in the family; the hard ones are for veterans and history buffs. Every answer is checked against Wikipedia, Coast Guard history sources and primary records, and each question shows its source once you answer.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Founding Father persuaded Congress in 1790 to create the Revenue Cutter Service?
Alexander Hamilton
As first Treasury Secretary he wanted the cutters to stop smugglers dodging the tariffs that funded the new government.
Q 02The Coast Guard celebrates its birthday on which date, when Congress authorized ten revenue cutters in 1790?
August 4
The Tariff Act also authorized just 40 revenue officers; each cutter got one master and three mates.
Q 03The modern Coast Guard was created on 28 January 1915 by merging the revenue cutters with which agency?
The Life-Saving Service
The Life-Saving Service's surfmen had an unofficial motto: 'You have to go out, but you don't have to come back.'
Q 04What is the Coast Guard's Latin motto?
Semper Paratus
It means 'Always Ready'; the Marines' Semper Fidelis and Space Force's Semper Supra are the others.
Q 05Which federal department has the Coast Guard operated under in peacetime since 2003?
Homeland Security
It sat in the Treasury from 1790 to 1967 and Transportation from 1967 to 2003, and can be transferred to the Navy in wartime.
Q 06Which cabinet agency did the Coast Guard belong to for its first 177 years, until 1967?
Department of the Treasury
Its original job was collecting customs revenue, so it reported to the same department as the tax collectors.
Q 07The Coast Guard is by far the smallest US armed service. Roughly how many active-duty personnel does it have?
About 40,000
Add roughly 7,700 reservists and 18,000-21,000 volunteer auxiliarists and it is still smaller than the New York Police Department.
Q 08Douglas Munro, the only Coast Guard Medal of Honor recipient, died shielding Marines in which 1942 campaign?
Guadalcanal
Shot while covering the evacuation at the Matanikau, his last words were reportedly 'Did they get off?'; Coast Guard headquarters in Washington is named for him.
Q 09In which country was Medal of Honor recipient Douglas Munro born?
Canada
He was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1919 and raised in Cle Elum, Washington, where his grave is now a historic site.
Q 10The Coast Guard training ship Eagle was originally built in 1936 for which navy?
Germany's
Launched at Hamburg as the Horst Wessel, she was won by the US in a drawing of lots with the British and Soviets after the war.
Q 11What type of sailing rig does the 295-foot training cutter Eagle carry?
Barque
Nicknamed 'America's Tall Ship', she is homeported in New London and sails each summer with cadets aloft.
Q 12In which Connecticut city is the United States Coast Guard Academy?
New London
Founded in 1876 as the School of Instruction of the Revenue Cutter Service, its teams are the Bears.
Q 13What makes admission to the Coast Guard Academy different from the other US service academies?
It requires no congressional nomination
About 300 cadets arrive each summer and roughly 250 graduate as ensigns owing five years of service.
Q 21How many survivors did coxswain Bernard Webber bring back on the 12-man lifeboat CG 36500 in 1952?
32
Nine of the tanker's 41 crew were lost, and Chris Pine played Webber in the film.
Q 22The Coast Guard-run International Ice Patrol was established in 1914 in response to which disaster?
The Titanic
Every 15 April a wreath is dropped at the wreck site, and 13 shipping nations still fund the patrol.
Q 23Under what original name did Congress create the Coast Guard Auxiliary in 1939?
The Reserve
It was renamed the Auxiliary in 1941; its 18,000 or so members are barred from law-enforcement duties.
Q 14The Coast Guard's only recruit training centre, its boot camp, is in which New Jersey town?
Cape May
The base has been in Coast Guard hands since 1924 and sits at 1 Munro Avenue.
Q 15The Coast Guard's famous diagonal 'racing stripe' was designed by the firm of which industrial designer?
Raymond Loewy
President Kennedy, pleased with Loewy's Air Force One livery, suggested the Coast Guard as the next federal makeover.
Q 16At what angle are the Coast Guard racing stripe's bars canted, matching the year it was drawn?
64 degrees
Designed in 1964, the slash appeared across the whole service on April 6, 1967.
Q 17Who wrote the Coast Guard's official march, penning the words in 1922 and the music in 1927 in Alaska?
Francis Saltus Van Boskerck
He wrote the lyrics in his cabin aboard the cutter Yamacraw in Savannah and the tune while stationed in Unalaska, Alaska.
Q 18The SPARS, the Coast Guard's women's branch in World War II, took their name from what?
The motto Semper Paratus
About 11,000 women served; the Coast Guard was the only service to train women officer candidates at its own academy.
Q 19Who was the first director of the SPARS, previously Purdue's first full-time dean of women?
Dorothy Stratton
She was appointed a lieutenant commander in November 1942; a cutter now bears her name.
Q 20The Finest Hours (2016) dramatises the 1952 Coast Guard rescue of which broken tanker's crew?
SS Pendleton
Bernard Webber's 36-foot motor lifeboat CG 36500, built for 12, came back with 32 survivors aboard.
Q 24Which Coast Guard programme followed the 1983 Marine Electric sinking, when aircrews couldn't enter the water?
Rescue swimmers
Rescue swimmers, formally Aviation Survival Technicians, train at Elizabeth City, North Carolina, and there were 300 of them within six years.
Q 25Which 2006 Coast Guard rescue-swimmer film starred Kevin Costner as instructor and Ashton Kutcher as trainee?
The Guardian
Andrew Davis directed; the script was rewritten after Hurricane Katrina to include those rescues.
Q 26The Coast Guard icebreaker Healy became in 2015 the first unaccompanied US surface vessel to reach where?
The North Pole
Commissioned in 1999 and homeported in Seattle, she carries up to 50 scientists and is named for Revenue Cutter captain Michael Healy.
Q 27The icebreaker Polar Star breaks a channel each year to resupply which Antarctic base?
McMurdo Station
Commissioned in 1976, she can smash through 21 feet of ice by backing and ramming and became America's only heavy icebreaker in 2010.
Q 28The Coast Guard's MH-65 Dolphin helicopter is a variant of an aircraft from which country?
France
It is based on the Eurocopter AS365 Dauphin and was the first helicopter certified with a four-axis autopilot for hands-off hovering.
Q 29The Coast Guard's MH-60 Jayhawk belongs to the same Sikorsky family as which Army helicopter?
The Black Hawk
It derives from the Navy's SH-60 Seahawk and entered Coast Guard service in June 1990 with a range of 260 nautical miles offshore.
Q 30To be called a 'cutter', a Coast Guard vessel must be at least how long?
65 feet
It must also have a permanently assigned crew living aboard; anything smaller is a 'boat'.