Scene on the Sound: USCGC John McCormick

USCGC John McCormick sails by Shoreline. Photo by Jan Hansen

USCGC John McCormick (WPC-1121) is the United States Coast Guard's 21st Sentinel-class cutter, and the first to be stationed in Alaska, where homeported at Coast Guard Base Ketchikan

The Sentinel-class cutters are lightly armed patrol vessels with a crew of approximately two dozen sailors, capable of traveling almost 3,000 nautical miles, on five day missions. The cutter is a multi-mission vessel intended to perform law enforcement, search and rescue, fisheries and environmental protection, and homeland security tasks.

In 2010, Charles "Skip" W. Bowen, who was then the United States Coast Guard's most senior non-commissioned officer, proposed that all 58 cutters in the Sentinel class should be named after enlisted sailors in the Coast Guard, or one of its precursor services, who were recognized for their heroism.[13][14] 

In 2014 the Coast Guard announced that John F. McCormick, a Coast Guard seaman who earned a Gold Lifesaving Medal for saving the life of fellow Coast Guard sailor, Richard O. Bracken, off Clatsop Spit, near the treacherous Columbia River bar, would be the namesake of the 21st cutter

--Wikipedia