The Rescue Warriors of the United States Coast Guard are unique. Their veterans are deservedly proud of the contribution they’ve made to the safety, security and stewardship of the United States, its rivers, Great Lakes, coasts and distant seas. Every day, Coast Guard operations can range from rescuing a kayaker friend of mine off New Jersey last winter to breaking ice in Antarctica, bringing relief to earthquake victims in Haiti, or organizing flotillas of out-of-work shrimpers for oil spill clean-up in the Gulf.

They are both the smallest of the armed services, with just over 42,000 active duty personnel and 8,000 reservists, and also a multi-mission maritime agency with law enforcement authority. They operate not within the Department of Defense but as part of Homeland Security, the latest base of operations for this venerable sea service, founded as the 100-man Revenue Cutter Service by Alexander Hamilton in 1790.

Since that time, the Coast Guard, among its many duties, has served in every war fought by the United States from when its small cutters defeated larger French privateers during the “Quasi-War” of 1798–1800,  through World War II, when an expanded service guarded convoys against U-boats and operated all the landing craft on D-Day and across the Pacific. Signalman Douglas Munroe won a Medal of Honor when he sacrificed his life saving marines trapped on a beach at Guadalcanal. During Vietnam, the Coast Guard operated a brown water navy of gunboats in the Mekong Delta.

More recently, I visited some of the Coast Guard men and women who were guarding Iraqi oil terminals and boarding tankers and fishing Dhows in the Persian Gulf. This is the location where Damage Controlman Nate Bruckenthal was killed along with two Navy sailors, turning away a suicide boat targeting one of the terminals.

Still, the Coast Guard is best known for its Search and Rescue (SAR) missions that have saved over one million souls since 1790, including some 300,000 illegal migrants. I’ve talked with Coast Guard operators who thought they were dealing with a terrorist or pirate mother ship off Somalia, only to realize it was an overloaded migrant boat that capsized and quickly became a SAR case, with over 80 people in the water. In U.S. waters, the Coast Guard saves an average of 14 people a day.

Other missions include, but are not limited to: port security, maintaining aids to navigation (with a fleet of black hulled buoy tenders), oil spill response, narcotics and migrant interdiction (capturing more cocaine than the DEA, FBI and all local law enforcement combined), ship safety inspections, international training, ice breaking and fisheries enforcement.

Bottom line: their job is protecting anything having to do with navigable waters be they fresh, brackish or salty.

The Coast Guard coordinated the largest maritime evacuation in history on 9/11, getting a fleet of working boats to move half a million people off lower Manhattan after the twin towers collapsed, avoiding panic and more casualties. It was then decided that placing Coast Guard cutters in New York Harbor would reassure the public in a way that putting Navy ships of war there would not. By the next morning, a flotilla of armed Coast Guard vessels were patrolling the harbor, including the 110-foot Cutter ‘Bainbridge Island,’ which flew an oversized American flag as its battle ensign.

The “Coasties,” as they call themselves, also saved 33,500 people during 2005′s Hurricane Katrina, performing heroically with helicopter rooftop rescues and small boat operations starting within hours of the storm making landfall, even as other parts of the government failed to function. Much of their work was improvised as leadership and initiative is encouraged throughout the ranks. The standing order for new helicopters arriving at the New Orleans Air Station was, “Go out over the city and rescue people.” When I arrived there after the storm it looked like a combination MASH unit and Woodstock, with everyone living out of trailers and tents while continuing to fly SAR, medical evacuation and environmental survey flights.

Despite their small size and aging fleet, they were also the first U.S. armed service into Haiti after last year’s earthquake and the lead agency responding to the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico this past summer.

As one veteran Coastie recently told me, “I’ve gotten to travel the world and do all sorts of different jobs in my career, busted some bad guys and even helped save some people’s lives. What more could you want?”

During the two years I was writing Rescue Warriors: The U.S. Coast Guard, America’s Forgotten Heroes, I had the opportunity to take pictures in a range of settings from their training centers to the Bering Sea in Alaska, and from the Gulf of Mexico to the Persian Gulf. The photos included here show the daily life of these watermen and women, whose mix of patriotism, altruism and adrenaline came to inspire me and make me think of them and every Coast Guard veteran as the blue in our red, white and blue.