USCGC General Greene (WPC-140)

USCGC General Greene (WPC/WSC/WMEC-140), an Active-class patrol boat, was the fourth cutter to bear the name of the famous Revolutionary War general, Nathanael Greene. She was in service from 1927 through 1968 and served in Massachusetts waters during her post-war Coast Guard career.

Service history
The General Greene was built by the American Brown Boveri Electric Corp. of Camden, New Jersey, at a cost of $90,000. She was launched on 14 February 1927, and commissioned on 18 March 1927.

After commissioning the General Greene was stationed at Boston, Massachusetts, for search and rescue and law enforcement duty. From 1931 to 1933 she was assigned to the International Ice Patrol, and then stationed at Woods Hole, Massachusetts. While on an oceanographic survey off Newfoundland in May 1941, she was ordered to search for survivors from two British freighters torpedoed off the coast of Greenland. She recovered 39 survivors from the SS Marconi, and observed part of the Royal Navy task force engaging the GERMAN BATTLESHIP Bismarck. In early 1942 she was re-designated WSC-140, and assigned to search and rescue and convoy escort duties. On 25 May 1942 she engaged a German U-boat with depth charges in a dense fog off Nantucket Shoals while rescuing survivors from the British freighter SS Peisander. In 1946 she returned to her station at Woods Hole, and from 1947 until her decommissioning in 1968, served out of Gloucester, Massachusetts.

She was transferred to Newburyport, Massachusetts, for use as a museum ship, but was returned to the Coast Guard in 1976 and sold. In 1979, renamed Belmont, and under the flag of Guatemala, she was seized by the Coast Guard for drug smuggling.