Lt Commander Fred Seaton became the newest captain of the Coast Guard Maple on Thursday, June 14. (KCAW Photo: Rachel Waldholz)
The Coast Guard cutter Maple got a new commander at a ceremony Thursday evening (6-14-12). Lieutenant Commander Fred Seaton took over from Lieutenant Commander Daniel Gray. Gray had served as captain of the cutter for three years.
At the ceremony, Rear Admiral Thomas P. Ostebo congratulated the crew of the Maple for their service.
“Maple, under Commander Gray’s leadership, was known as the quiet ship, a ship that is humble,” Ostebo said. “She simply got the job done.”
Ostebo noted that in 2010, the Maple single-handedly covered the entire West Coast during a period when all other coast guard cutters were called to the Gulf of Mexico to respond to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
“This ship did everything the nation asked of it, and she did it with aplomb,” he said. “She is in fact the best black-hulled ship in the Coast Guard.”
Outgoing Commander Gray is headed to the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia. The new commander, Fred Seaton, was most recently the operations officer on the Seattle-based cutters Polar Star and Polar Sea.
