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Major work begins on 1st Sentinel-class cutter

LOCKPORT, La. — Major construction officially began Friday on the first in a series of new Coast Guard patrol boats with a combined tribute to a Coast Guard hero, the service’s lifesaving role after Hurricane Katrina and the Louisiana shipbuilding industry that employs thousands.

The $88 million USCGC Bernard C. Webber, being constructed at Bollinger Shipyards, is the initial vessel in the Sentinel class for fast-response cutters. The vessels will gradually replace the Island class of patrol boats that Bollinger started building about 25 years ago.

The vessel is named for a petty officer who became a Coast Guard legend nearly 60 years ago. Webber, as commander of a rescue vessel, led three other Coast Guardsmen in a daring, high-seas rescue of 32 crewmembers of the S.S. Pendleton. The ship had broken in half during a storm on Feb. 18, 1952, off the coast of Cape Cod.

“He literally, that day, gave those people back their lives,” Adm. Thad Allen, the Coast Guard’s commandant, said of Webber. Webber died in 2009.

Webber’s daughter, Pattie Hamilton, said of her father: “He gave his heart and his soul to the Coast Guard and truly loved his country.”

Allen himself received plaudits for his role as the head of Coast Guard rescue efforts along the Gulf Coast after Katrina and flooding triggered by levee failures devastated the region in August 2005.

Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., called Allen “a true hero to the people of south Louisiana,” crediting the Coast Guard with saving thousands of lives.

“When some agencies picked up and left ... the Coast Guard stayed and dug in deeper,” Landrieu said.

For Bollinger Shipyards, a family company started in 1946, the Coast Guard has been an economic lifeline. CEO Donald “Boysie” Bollinger called the latest series of cutters a “continuation of a lovefest.”

Bollinger Shipyards, one of dozens of shipbuilders both big and small in southern Louisiana, began with marine repairs and branched into the building of specialized vessels for the offshore petroleum industry. But the oil price crash of the early 1980s dried up the demand for such ships and the company did its first business with the Coast Guard. Since then, the company has built about 135 vessels for the Coast Guard, including 49 in the Island class.

“I cannot understate how important these shipyards are to the economy of the state of Louisiana,” Gov. Bobby Jindal said.

The ceremony also included a shipbuilding tradition known as “authenticating the keel” — signing a plaque stating that the ship’s basic foundation had been “truly and fairly laid.”

Bollinger has a contract worth up to $1.5 billion to build up to 34 of the vessels, each of which will accommodate a crew of 22 for up to five days at sea. So far, three other vessels in the series are in line to be built after Bernard C. Webber.

Allen said the new class will improve the Coast Guard’s increasing role in homeland security.

“This cutter can be applied in a variety of missions,” Allen said in an interview. “That’s what makes it so valuable.”