In March 2018 The SandPaper reported that Boatswain’s Mate 2nd Class Eric Thornton had become one of the U.S. military’s elites, having been awarded a Coast Guard surfman pin, only the 533rd Coastie to qualify for that honor in his service’s long and illustrious history.
Earning a surfman pin is an arduous process. A surfman, who already has to have been certified as a coxswain and a heavy weather coxswain, is trained to make rescues in one of the most dangerous conditions the ocean can throw at…
Subscribe to keep reading
This story is from our archive. Get your SandPaper Annual Pass for access to our digital archive, plus everything else a pass includes. Details below.
Annual Pass — $18 Details
365-day access to:
- The complete SandPaper digital archive (stories date back to 2012).
- Full photo galleries from our photographers.
- The entire catalog of SandPaper games, puzzles and quizzes.
How it works
- Enter your email below and click to pay the one-time $18. Card details are entered on Stripe’s secure page.
- You’re in straight away — no password to create, and nothing to set up or manage.
- You stay signed in. If you’re ever signed out, or you read on a new phone or computer, we’ll email you a code to get you back in.
- Never auto-renews. Your pass is good for one year. We will email you when it expires so you can renew if you’d like.
See our site policies for more information.
Already a subscriber? We’ll email a code to get you back in.
