In addition, five SEAL platoons supported operations in the delta. In total, Sealords employed 586 American vessels of the Coastal Surveillance Force (Task Force 115), the River Patrol Force (TF 116), and the Mobile Riverine Assault Force (TF 117). Complementing the American naval contingent were the RVNN's 655 ships, assault craft, patrol boats and other vessels. To focus the allied effort on the Sealords campaign, COMNAVFORV appointed his deputy, Rear Admiral William Hiram House, USN, the operational commander, or "First Sealord," of the newly activated Task Force 194 in December 1968. Although continuing to function, the Game Warden, Market Time and Riverine Assault Force operations were scaled down and their personnel and material resources increasingly devoted to Sealords. PCFs, because of their shallow drafts and limited capacity for off-shore operations were tasked for incursions up rivers and canals, while the Coast Guard's Point-class cutters were assigned coastal areas previously assigned to the PCFs. Task Force 115 PCFs mounted lightning raids into enemy-held coastal waterways and took over patrol responsibility for the delta's larger rivers. This freed the PBRs for operations along the previously uncontested smaller rivers and canals. These incursions into former Vietcong bastions were possible only with the on-call support of naval aircraft and the heavily armed riverine assault craft. Operations In the first phase of the Sealords campaign allied forces established patrol "barriers," often using electronic sensor devices, along the waterways paralleling the Cambodian border. In early November 1968, PBRs and riverine assault craft opened two canals between the Gulf of Siam at Rach Gia and the Bassac River at Long Xuyen. South Vietnamese paramilitary ground troops helped naval patrol units secure the transportation routes in this operational area, soon named Search Turn. Later in the month, Swift boats, PBRs, riverine assault craft, and Vietnamese naval vessels penetrated the Giang Thanh-Vinh Te canal system and established patrols along the waterway from Ha Tien on the gulf to Chau Doc on the upper Bassac. As a symbol of the Vietnamese contribution to the combined effort, the allied command changed the name of this operation from Foul Deck to Tran Hung Dao I. Then in December American naval forces pushed up the Vam Co Dong and Vam Co Tay Rivers west of Saigon, against heavy enemy opposition, to cut infiltration routes from the "Parrot's Beak" area of Cambodia. Operation Giant Slingshot, so named for the configuration of the two rivers,