On 5 September, as Bibb and Campbell raced toward their
rendezvous, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had declared a
Neutrality Zone along the East Coast of the United States.
Initially it was a 300-mile-wide strip of ocean bounded on the
north by Canadian territorial waters then running south through
the Caribbean. The U.S. Navy was to patrol this expanse to
report on belligerent activity and prevent British, French, and
German warships from attacking merchant ships within the zone's
boundaries. The Navy, however, did not have enough ships to
watch the vast area effectively and immediately asked for Coast
Guard assistance. The Coast Guard assigned numerous vessels,
including six of the seven Secretary - (or Treasury -) class
cutters—the Bibb , Campbell , Duane (WPG-33), Alexander Hamilton
(WPG-34), Ingham (WPG-35), and Spencer (WPG-36)—to the force.
(The seventh, the Taney [WPG-37], would spend most of World War
II in the Pacific.) Named after secretaries of the Treasury, the
ships were roomy but relatively sl