In My Own Words: Cmdr. James T. Hurley

Engineer Officer, Coast Guard Cutter Bertholf

I enlisted in the Coast Guard in 1986 after stumbling upon the base in the North End of Boston one day. There were a couple of boats outside that piqued my interest. I talked to a recruiter, and not too long after that I quit my civilian job and enlisted.

My first tour was on the Polar Star — one of the Coast Guard’s icebreakers. We spent three months in the Arctic Circle. I got a lot out of that first experience. A warrant boatswain, who was head of our department, encouraged people to seek all opportunities that were out there. That’s when I started considering the Coast Guard for the longer term, and I went to OCS ( Officer Candidates School).

After two decades of service, it’s hard to pick out a highlight. I loved my job as an officer on Escanaba, which is a 270-foot cutter based out of Boston. On one patrol, we went through the Panama Canal and did a narcotics patrol off the coast of Ecuador. It was a unique experience to be in the warm air of the Pacific, and that was one time where I was convinced that I did the right thing in staying in the Coast Guard.

In that tour, we had one in-port period where it seemed like one obstacle was just coming right after the other. We were doing some work in the berthing area, replacing a deck covering. When the covering was torn out, we found some badly corroded steel around the fuel tank, which isn’t trivial, so the scope of the job increased by 10 in a few minutes. Shortly after, we had another berthing area that caught on fire. That left us with three major projects that normally would be planned out well in advance.

When I was on Escanaba, Bill Parcells, then-Patriots head coach, held a press conference and threw out a great quote: “You are what your record says you are.” This is an inescapable measure of success — there’s a big difference between a 12-4 team and a 4-12 team.

We transferred that quote onto the ship, saying, “we are what our equipment says we are.” In other words, all of our training, maintenance, operations boils down to how our equipment operates. There’s no escaping that.

I’ve transferred that to the NSC (National Security Cutter). Everything will be brand new. Instead of being judged on how well we operate our equipment, we will be judged on how well our equipment operates. That’s the change in our duties coming to this new ship rather than being on an old ship.

The NSC began production in the fall of 2004, and I was assigned to this billet at that time. It’s a dream billet for a Coast Guard naval engineer. They told me that I was going to go down to the shipyard [in Pascagoula, Miss.], be there during the entire construction process and then, when the ship is delivered, I was going to be on the precommissioning crew. So I told them I could be there yesterday.

There’s a biography out about Commodore (Ellsworth P.) Bertholf, after whom the first NSC is named. There is a great description about his motivation, summed up by three words: “service, adventure and achievement.” Those three words are a great way to summarize my motivation and reason for being in the Coast Guard.