On June 29, 1918, the _Seneca_ was acting as ocean escort to a convoy, when at 6:45 a. m., the British steamer _Queen_ was torpedoed and sank in five minutes. As in the case of the _Cowslip_, Captain Wheeler boldly approached the _Queen_. Dropping depth charges and firing his guns to keep the submarine down, he picked up the survivors. [Illustration: GALLANT OFFICERS OF THE COAST GUARD Left to right: Commodore E. P. Bertholf, commandant of the Coast Guard from 1911 to July, 1919; Lieutenant F. W. Brown, navigating officer of the Seneca, who volunteered to work the torpedoed Wellington to port; Boatswain John A. Midgett, of Coast Guard Station No. 179, who led the rescue of survivors of the torpedoed Mirlo under extraordinary danger from fire.] It was work like this, calling for daring and quick decision, that distinguished the vessels of the Coast Guard, which, operating in the Navy, performed such signal service for the Allies and the commerce of the world. On this side of the Atlantic, the main contribution by the Coast Guard was as part of the patrol service under Admiral Anderson in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico, protecting the oil supply that went in large volume from Texas and Mexico to British and other Allied naval ships and for the necessary uses by the Allied armies in France. In the great disaster that followed the blowing up of a munition ship at Halifax, the U. S. Coast Guard cutter _Morrill_, in command of Lieutenant H. G. Hemmingway, and its crew gave first aid to the injured in that stricken city. Coast Guard men supervised, without accident or loss of life, the landing of 345,602 tons of high explosives in New York and the loading on 1,698 vessels. The total value of the explosives on these ships was more than five hundred million dollars. When the tug _Perth Amboy_ and four barges were shelled by a German submarine on July 21, 1918, within sight of Coast Guard station No. 40, at East Orleans, Mass., Keeper Robert F. Pierce, with his crew, launched their surfboat, and while the shelling was continuing, proceeded out to assist the tug and her tow and aided in safely landing the crew and treating the wounded.