When did the Coast Guard become besot with "beset"?

Until just a few days ago I had only seen the word ‘beset’ used in maritime context to refer to a ship surrounded and stuck in the ice. Then the Pan Viva off Unalaska is reported on a Coast Guard press release as 'beset by weather" and a day or two later off La Push the tug Luther loses steering and is “beset by weather”.

What’s going on? It’s like a viral meme sweeping through the Coast Guard’s press release people.

It’s not just a CG meme, the press release people have become their own meme. They get medals and ribbons for talking about it. The best (worst?) example I found is this one, General Patrick Ryder:


The guy has been nothing but a talking head since joining the Air Force yet has more medals than General Hap Arnold who commanded the 8th Air Force in WW2.

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Just as a word choice, I have no problem with beset. It’s sufficiently neutral without being bloodless.

And as a press release your list of go-to verbs has to be limited or you’ll fall into sports-writer talk where you try to change the verb meaning the same thing in every sentence.

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I was talking challenge coins with a shipmate & he told me how an admiral once gave him a self made challenge coin. The coin wasn’t for a ship, a group, base or even a specific operation. The admirals challenge coin was about himself, with his picture & personal motto on it?

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FWIW, the bottom five (!) rows are service, campaign, and unit commendation ribbons.

Interestingly, I believe the Air (and Space?) Force is the only service in which public affairs is a primary career field for officers. Correction: apparently the Navy also has a small allotment for PAO directly from OCS, though a transfer from another community seems to be more normal.

Used to be the path for Coasties was enlisted-warrant officer-direct commission as a lieutenant (0-3). Not sure if that is still the case.

Anyway … “beset” is a pretty great word.

Have you run the press releases through an AI detector? :grinning:

Cheers,

Earl

Could be worse:

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I say this in a humorous vein and really mean no ill will, but is “beset” anything like “unburdened”? Or to make this non-partisan, “covfete”?

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Unburdening is the path to enlightenment.

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Usage 1900 - 2022 (google books)

Seems doubtful usage would drop off suddenly in 2008 as shown. Might be some kind of error. More likely usage followed the same trend line as previously from 1900.

I’m going to vote for ‘confounded’ as a substitute verb.

It removes any taint of bias against the storm. The captain is doing his thing. The storm is doing its thing. /s

“The ship was confounded by a severe storm”.

And I’m going to imagine Foghorn Leghorn saying it.

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CG has been using “beset” for a long time. It at least predates me and I retired in 2020.

A year ago (by google search by dates) t’s usage in CG press releases was far more used in the common maritime meaning, to be trapped in ice.

Of course I realize this is not a urgent issue. I suspect the word will suffer from over-usage and it’s use by the CG will decline.

A ship I was on was beset in the Chukchi sea for 8 days so perhaps I feel a need to police the word so to speak.

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Is the CG besot or besotted? There is a difference but nothing that should beset most people.

I’m purty much in the dark about a lot of stuff. :grin:

Here’s the U.S. Navy pub “Naval Arctic Manual”

The manual’s definition: Beset. Situation of a vessel surrounded by ice and unable to move.

In ice navigation the usage differs; instead of 'beset by weather" it’s simply “beset”

This is from the manual: " When a ship is beset, awaiting ice-breaker assistance to get moving again, it should keep propeller(s) turning slowly to keep the ice away"

No need to say 'beset by ice" because that’s what " beset" means in a maritime context.

For me it was only 8 days, and we were not beset the entire time. A government research ship stuck eight days in Arctic…

Here’s the seismic vessel Edward O’ Vetter which was a couple miles away:

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Man, that’s amazing. Thank you for revealing this atrocity.

The word means, "surrounded, attacked on all sides, hemmed in. It might be said that you are beset “by weather” if the weather is precipitation but in the cases mentioned above the CG is talking about wind. Except in wild imagination, the wind is usually from one direction only and therefore you are not beset.

Likely the CG was using the term ‘beset’ in a figurative sense, as in one is 'beset by troubles" rather than literally surrounded as is the case of a ship trapped in sea ice.