Semper Paratus: A Song History
"Semper Paratus" borrows its title from the Coast Guard's motto, and the service's Historian's Office admits that how the Latin phrase came to be chosen is unclear; it had long been a watchword of the Revenue Cutter Service and the Coast Guard, but official recognition came only in 1910, when it appeared on the Captain-Commandant's stationery.[1] The song began as a poem by Capt. Francis Saltus Van Boskerck, a cutter officer with 23 years at sea behind him, who wrote it in the winter of 1922 aboard the cutter Yamacraw.[2] The Historian's Office song page places that writing in the cutter's cabin at Savannah, Georgia, and says Van Boskerck hoped the motto might win the kind of recognition enjoyed by the Marines' "Semper Fidelis" and the Navy's "Anchors Aweigh."[1]
Winslow Homer, The Life Line, etching, printed in dark green ink, 1884. A lifesaving rescue at sea, shown for the Coast Guard's work; the etching has no connection to the song.
The melody came later, in Unalaska, Alaska, the remote headquarters of the Bering Sea Forces he commanded in 1925 and 1926; two Public Health dentists, Alf Nannestad and Joseph Fournier, helped him fit the words to music on a piano lent by a fur trader's wife.[1] Sources differ on the year: that page puts the music five years after the words, in 1927, while a Long Blue Line article by Cmdr. Krystyn Pecora puts it about four years after the poem and has the song publicly introduced in the Ghent neighborhood of Norfolk, Virginia, in the winter of 1926–27.[1][2] Van Boskerck died of an apparent heart attack on the ferry back to Norfolk after a meeting in Washington, and in April 1928 the editor of the U.S. Coast Guard magazine, Harvey Miller, printed the song with a piano score while Commandant Frederick Billard endorsed it as the service's anthem.[2]
The Sam Fox publishing company paid $50 for the copyright, which changed hands in 1938, and a 1942 promotion carried the song to number 16 on the music charts.[2] The Historian's Office prints three versions of the words, an original of about 1927, a second of about 1943 and the current text, and notes that the first line of each chorus was changed in 1969.[1] Pecora's article notes that the song was due to pass into the public domain in 2024.[2] For mountain dulcimer, Shelley Stevens sets it beside "Anchors Aweigh" and "The Caissons Go Rolling Along" in Baker's Dozen #13: Patriotic Tunes, a Fingers Of Steel book of 15 arrangements, all in DAD tuning with no capo needed.[3]
Sources
- U.S. Coast Guard Historian's Office: "Semper Paratus (Always Ready)".
- U.S. Coast Guard Historian's Office: "The Long Blue Line: The selling of the Coast Guard service song 'Semper Paratus'".
- Fingers Of Steel: "Shelley Stevens, Baker's Dozen #13: Patriotic Tunes".
- Image: Winslow Homer, The Life Line, etching, printed in dark green ink, 1884. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.