Menghean Maritime Rescue Service
The Menghean Maritime Rescue Service (Menghean: 대멩 해양 구조대 / 大孟海洋救助隊, Dae Meng Haeyang Gujodae) was a Menghean government agency tasked with conducting search and rescue operations in Menghe's internal waters, territorial waters, and exclusive economic zone. Its ships were also responsible for firefighting at sea and towing vessels in distress. Throughout its existence, the Maritime Rescue Service was subordinate to the Ministry of Public Security, making it a purely civilian body rather than a military or paramilitary one.
In 2017, the Maritime Rescue Service, the Maritime Traffic Control Agency, and the Maritime Environmental Service were folded into the Menghean Maritime Security Force.
History
The Menghean Maritime Rescue Service was established in 1966 as an umbrella agency under the Ministry of Public Security. Previously, search and rescue operations had been the responsibility of the Coastal Militia. After this reorganization, search and rescue units were still managed and funded by county, city, or municipal governments, but the Maritime Rescue Service set common regulations, including the prohibition on carrying weapons and conducting police work.
In 1973, Maritime Rescue units were reorganized to place them under the control of provincial and directly-controlled municipal governments, much like the Maritime Border Police Force, which was similarly reorganized in 1975. In line with this reorganization, landlocked provinces and directly-controlled munitipalities were also allowed to create their own maritime rescue bureaus to patrol rivers, canals, and lakes. Even after this reorganization, however, the Maritime Rescue Service remained highly decentralized, with individual provincial and municipal governments responsible for funding and procurement. Most maritime rescue ships commissioned before the late 1990s were civilian-model tugboats or speedboats purchased directly from state-owned shipbuilders and modified accordingly.
Menghean maritime traffic increased dramatically during the Menghean economic miracle, driven by a surge in economic growth, international trade, and domestic inter-provincial commerce. After a rise in accidents during the early 1990s, some of them compounded by delayed, inadequate, or incompetent rescue efforts, the Maritime Rescue Service was reorganized in 1995. Following prior changes in the Maritime Border Security Force, which was civilianized in the same year, the provincial and municipal Maritime Rescue Flotillas were placed under the direct control of the Maritime Rescue Agency, with two-way liaison offices to coordinate with local governments in day-to-day operations but centralized control of training, procurement, and major operations. Two years later, in 1997, Menghe began work on the first class of standardized patrol ships for the Maritime Rescue Service.
The division of labor between the Maritime Rescue Service, the Maritime Enviroonmental Service, and the Maritime Traffic Control Agency created issues with redundancy, as similarly-sized large ships could not take on one another's missions. In particular, while personnel aboard the other agencies' ships were trained in basic search-and-rescue operations and could be called upon to aid in a search if already in the area, personnel in the Maritime Rescue Service were formally prohibited from engaging in law enforcement work, and would have to call upon the Maritime Patrol Force or Maritime Traffic Control Agency if they spotted suspected illegal activity, potentially giving criminals or smugglers time to escape. Even within the realm of law enforcement, the MTCA was responsible for enforcing safe navigation laws, the MES was responsible for enforcing environmental laws, and the MPF's core authority over smuggling, cross-border travel, and organized crime had no clear legal boundaries. To address these redundancies, and to remove control of maritime policing from the Menghean Navy, these four agencies were combined into the Menghean Maritime Security Force in 2017. On 1 June of that year, all assets of the Menghean Maritime Rescue Service were formally transferred to the control of the new agency, bearing its flag and paint schemes.
After this merger, it took some time to train former Maritime Rescue Service personnel in other Maritime Security missions, and in practice former Maritime Rescue Service assets were reserved for search and rescue work during the first few years after mid-2017. As of 2022, however, the combination of the two agencies has been fully implemented. Most former Maritime Rescue Service ships have been equipped with pintle mounts for heavy machine guns, though structural evaluations determined that it would not be feasible to refit these ships with heavier weapons like remote-controlled autocannons. Ex-Maritime Rescue ships appear to operate most commonly in the East Menghe Sea, where the risk of encountering hostile forces or armed smugglers is lower.
Missions
Under the division of labor that existed in the 2000s, the Maritime Rescue Service was primarily responsible for search and rescue, at-sea firefighting, and the recovery of vessels in distress. It complemented the Maritime Traffic Control Agency, which was responsible for placing buoys, plotting channels, and marking underwater obstacles; the Maritime Environmental Service, which was responsible for monitoring ecosystem health and enforcing environmental law; and the Maritime Border Security Force (1988-2011) or Maritime Patrol Force (2011-2017), which were responsible for at-sea police operations, especially border police operations.
Though the Maritime Rescue Service was legally and organizationally a civilian organization, its charter allowed the Menghean Navy and Maritime Patrol Force to summon its assets in wartime. Wartime operations of the Maritime Rescue Service would include:
- Finding and recovering downed pilots;
- Recovering personnel from lifeboats and sinking ships;
- Supporting firefighting operations on damaged ships;
- Evacuating sick or wounded personnel from ships at sea;
- Rescuing personnel trapped in shipwrecks and submarines; and
- Towing immobilized ships, including captured enemy ships, to port.
Nevertheless, the Maritime Rescue Service's charter firmly forbade its ships from taking part in combat operations, including patrol and surveillance missions. As a rule, ships of the Maritime Rescue Service did not carry any mounted weapons, and were not fitted with positions for mounting weapons in wartime. Their crews were only permitted a minimal locker of small arms for defense against pirates or criminal vessels. On this basis, the Menghean government maintained that the Maritime Rescue Service was not a military organization and that its assets enjoyed the same protection as civilians and hospital ships under international law.
Legally, the Maritime Rescue Service did not have the authority to arrest and detain individuals against their will, as it was not a police force. However, ships of the Maritime Rescue Service could hold suspects on board and summon ships of the Maritime Border Security Force, Maritime Border Patrol Force, or Maritime Environmental Service to conduct a formal arrest. In general, Maritime Rescue Service ships would call on formal at-sea policing assets if they spotted possible illegal activity, but there were several credible reports of Maritime Rescue personnel detaining suspicious individuals and delivering them to other policing agencies.
Symbols
Prior to 1973, the Menghean Maritime Rescue Service had no standard uniform or color scheme, though their ships were permitted to fly the flag of the Menghean Red Manja Society to signal their status as noncombatant rescue ships. Some painted red or orange stripes on their hulls, or "Maritime Rescue" (海洋救助 or 해양 구조) on their hulls or superstructures, but there was no nationwide standard for applying these markings.
In 1976, the Maritime Rescue Agency issued a set of common visual guidelines for the Maritime Rescue Service. Ships would be painted with a red hull and white superstructure, with "Maritime Rescue" spelled in white Sinmun letters (해양 구조) on each side. This would further distinguish them as noncombatants, and make them easily visible at sea. The 1976 guidelines also established standard nationwide uniforms for Maritime Rescue personnel.
As part of a broader traditional turn, in 1989 Maritime Rescue ships began using the Gomun form of "Maritime Rescue" (海洋救助) on their hull sides instead. This transition was gradual, and apparently left up to the judgment of local Maritime Rescue Bureaus; there is one documented case of a tugboat with Gomun writing on one side and Sinmun writing on the other. A new design regulation issued in 2000 mandated the use of Gomun text, which was by that point nearly universal, and also added a white racing stripe with a red manja symbol to the standard color scheme. The Maritime Traffic Control Agency mandated in 1996 the use of bright red-orange paint on life jackets and lifeboats, including those used by Menghean Maritime Rescue ships.