KODIAK, Alaska- The crew of the Coast Guard cutter Storis will celebrate their ship's 63 years of service on Sept. 30. The Storis was built by the Toledo Shipbuilding Company, Toledo, Ohio and commissioned in 1942. The Storis saw action in World War II in the North Atlantic while assigned to prevent the establishment of Nazi weather stations in Greenland. In 1948, the Storis changed homeport to Juneau where it supplied medical treatment to native villages and surveyed uncharted waters in the Arctic. The Storis and two other cutters, now decommissioned, completed a historic transit of the Northwest Passage and circumnavigation of the North American Continent in July of 1957. Soon after, the Storis was transferred to its present homeport here. The Storis continues to patrol the Gulf of Alaska and the Bering Sea, proudly bearing its gold "38" hull numbers, which is a distinction given only to the oldest cutter in the fleet. (Official Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer Christopher D. McLaughlin)
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