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Article: The-Coast-Guard-along-the-North-Atlantic-Coast-part-III
Guardians of the Sea
The era of sail was ending with the close of the 1800s. The expansion of railroads reduced the coasting trade. Fewer sailing ships were built and technology made navigation safer. By World War I, steamships and motorboats, many equipped with wireless radios were common. The new century brought changes that would make Hamilton, Fraser and Kimball proud. In fact, Kimball helped create the biggest change. As superintendent, he helped draft legislation that merged the Life-Saving Service with the Revenue Cutter Service.
In 1915, Congress created the United States Coast Guard. Hamilton’s fleet of 10 cutters had grown to 43 and Ottinger’s eight huts had increased to 279 along both coasts, the Great Lakes and some inland rivers . The Lighthouse Service was added in 1939. The new service would continue the missions of its predecessors, and take on several new ones as well. The first of these was commercial vessel safety and inspection.
Lives at sea are only as safe as the ships they sail upon. From the earliest days, steamboats had a poor safety record. Faulty boilers exploded, catching the wooden decks afire. The excursion steamer General Slocum burned in New York’s East River, in 1904. The fire claimed 957 lives, mostly women and children. The Steamboat Inspection Service was unpopular because many people felt the federal government was interfering with the private sector.
Gradually, public sentiment grew to support needed regulation. The lack of sufficient lifeboats on the Titanic and other incidents of negligence prompted strong federal safety measures. The Coast Guard gradually took over the job of the Steamboat Inspection Service. After 1936, the Coast Guard enforced all federal laws, including the safety statutes, on the high seas and in U.S. navigable waters. During World War II, Coast Guard personnel inspected vessels and supervised cargo loadings as part of the port security operations. After the war, the Bureau of Marine Inspection and Navigation was added to the Coast Guard.
The first test of the young Coast Guard was Prohibition. The 18th Amendment outlawed making, transporting or selling liquor. But soon outlaws were everywhere, and the same gangsters who fought the FBI in Chicago and New York challenged the Coast Guard at sea.
The easiest way to get illegal liquor was to bring it from outside the country. Ships loaded with liquor waited offshore, outside U.S. waters, for small speedboats that ferried the contraband ashore in the dark of night. The job of stopping the flow of illegal booze fell to the Coast Guard. Of course, fighting smugglers was nothing new for the Coast Guard —the Revenue Cutters had done it for 125 years. These new smugglers were called "rum-runners."
At first the service had neither the men nor cutters to fight the rum war. In 1925, large numbers of new recruits were sworn into the service and 20 aging destroyers were borrowed from the Navy. The destroyers were based at Boston, New York and New London, Conn. The destroyers couldn’t catch the smaller, more maneuverable speed boats used by the rum-runners. So the Coast Guard built new patrol boats; thirteen 100-footers and thirty-three 125-footers, and small boats 75 feet long. More than 200 seized boats were turned over to the Coast Guard as well.
Bootleggers and gangsters were notoriously violent and smugglers traded gun fire with Coast Guard cutters. Three rum runners were killed in Narragansett Bay when they turned abruptly and were struck by warning shots as they tried to elude a patrol boat. Chief Boatswain’s Mate Carl Gustafson was killed by machine gun fire while pursuing a smuggler off Montauk Point, N.Y. in 1925.
Prohibition ended in 1933 but the Coast Guard soon had new interests and another war to fight. In 1941, another war came to the North Atlantic coast. Boston and New York were primary ports for supply convoys bound for embattled England. German U-boats attacked ships within sight of the coast and saboteurs threatened American ports and ships.
The Coast Guard operated under the Department of the Navy during World War II. Cutters moored in the Northeast were assigned to escort the convoy ships across the Atlantic. Beach patrols were assigned to watch for saboteurs and invasion. Coast Guard personnel supervised the operations of major ports to insure the safety of war materials. Personnel assigned to the Coast Guard when the U.S. entered the war were quickly assigned to duty afloat on Coast Guard and Navy ships. To handle the work they left behind, ten thousand men were recruited in New England for the Temporary Reserve. TRs served on coastal boats, walked beach patrols and worked as signalmen. Training schools for the TR’s were established at Bourne, Fairhaven and Gloucester, Massachusetts.; and Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Volunteers also patrolled the coast, watching for German submarines. The 2,000 boats of the Coastal Picket Patrol were operated by Temporary Reservists, Coast Guard Auxiliarists and members of the Cruising Club of America. They were later replaced by regular and reserve personnel of the Coast Guard. Beach patrols, once a vital part of the Life-Saving Service, were revived. Coast Guardsmen and Temporary Reservists walked more than 3,000 miles of coastline, watching for enemy agents as well as ships in distress. The patrols, with dogs and horses, plodded along the beach around the clock, in any weather, all months of the year.
On the foggy night of June 13, 1942, Seaman John C. Cullen, of the Amagansett Station on Long Island, New York was making his six mile patrol when he spotted four men on the beach. While questioning the men, Cullen became suspicious. The group’s spokesman first threatened the sailor, then tried to bribe him. Cullen, outnumbered, accepted the money and then, when out of sight of the men, raced to his station. An armed party of Coast Guardsmen returned to the beach, but the four men had disappeared. A search of the area uncovered four boxes of explosives buried in the dunes. The FBI was notified and the four enemy agents were caught. Their capture led to the arrest of four more saboteurs who had landed in Florida.
After the war, the service concentrated on organizing its varied missions. The official list of Coast Guard duties included: aids to navigation, law enforcement, military readiness, search and rescue, ice patrol, icebreaking, commercial vessel safety and motorboat safety. Growing concern for the environment added another mission in the 1970s. Shipwrecks involving oil tankers spewed thousands of gallons of crude oil on American shores fouling beaches, killing fish and wildlife. Already responsible for the safety of these vessels, the Coast Guard now tried to limit the damage they could cause.
In December, 1976, the Liberian tanker Argo Merchant ran aground 29 miles off Nantucket, threatening the Georges Bank fishing grounds with 7.3 million gallons of thick fuel oil. In the following six days, members of the Boston Marine Safety Office and the Atlantic Strike Team, a special pollution response unit, attempted to offload the cargo and refloat the tanker. Gradually, the weather worsened. Winds increased to 30 knots and seas reached eight feet. Suddenly Argo Merchant split in two. The oil emptied into the ocean.
Although the spill did not have the devastating environmental impact many people expected, the incident led to broad new laws and new Coast Guard involvement in tanker safety. The passage of the Tank Vessel Safety Regulations, a direct result of the Argo Merchant disaster, required tankers to carry current charts and navigation gear.
The Coast Guard earns its wings
1942. FDR was president. Clark Gable was the biggest star in Hollywood. And Coast Guard helicopters arrived at Floyd Bennett Field in New York. The air station was crucial in developing the helicopter for use in search and rescue. CDR Frank Erickson made one of the first landing on a ship’s deck in 1944 when he landed an HNS-1 on the deck of the Coast Guard Cutter Cobb in Long Island Sound. Erickson pioneered helicopter search and rescue by developing much of the equipment himself. He also flew the first life-saving flight when he delivered two cases of blood plasma to the Navy destroyer Turner after an on board explosion near Sandy Hook, New Jersery, January 3,1944.
Erickson made the first helicopter hoist of a man in 1945. The technique he developed is still used in rescue operations today. One of Air Station Brooklyn’s most dramatic rescues took place in 1945 when a Canadian Air Force plane crashed in a remote area of Labrador. An HNS-1 helicopter was disassembled at Brooklyn and loaded on a cargo plane. It was reassembled in Labrador to fly the rescue mission. Only 48 hours elapsed from the first distress message until the survivors were safe in hospitals.
"Call the Coast Guard!"
Whenever there’s trouble on the water, whether it’s a boat accident or waste washing ashore, people know to call the Coast Guard. From Toms River, New Jersey to Eastport, Maine, they call the First Coast Guard District. On any day you’ll see the 3,000 men and women of the First District working hard at nearly a dozen jobs: safety inspectors aboard a foreign freighter, an aircrew flying a desperately ill infant ashore from a remote island, boarding officers counting and measuring the catch of a commercial fishing boat, a boat crew searching for a sailor lost at sea. In winter, our tugs break ice in New England’s harbors and rivers.
These many jobs require coordination and careful planning. The staff offices in Boston oversee the operations of 32 cutters, 15 aircraft and more than 200 small boats to insure the safety of more than a million recreational boats and thousands of commercial vessels that sail the North Atlantic coast. Just 100 years ago, navigation was uncertain at best, and ships often ran aground along the Atlantic coast. Today, radar and radio navigation is very precise and major accidents are infrequent.
The mariner can depend on many different aids to navigation to plot a course. The First District maintains 4,700 buoys that mark clear channels and dangerous areas. Some buoys and lighthouses are equipped with radio beacons and radar beacons. Radio beacons emit a designated tone that is indicated on a chart, and can be tracked by a radio direction finder. Radar beacons transmit a signal that appears on the radar screen as a Morse code symbol and also appears on a chart.
Many sailors use LORAN (Long Range Aid to Navigation), basically a grid of radio waves in many areas of the globe that allows exact precision plotting. Two LORAN transmitting stations are located in the First District. As navigation improved, it was no longer necessary to use every lighthouse along the coast and some were extinguished. The technology that improved the lighthouses over the past 200 years also made it possible to replace the keepers. Some lighthouses are even solar-powered now, and many automated lights are equipped with radio relays to notify the closest Coast Guard station if there is a problem with the light.
The First District maintains 141 lighthouses, including many of the oldest in the country. Seven lights are still manned and will be automated within the next two years. Because it was the first built in America, Boston will be the last light to be unmanned, now scheduled for 1990. To help preserve these historic structures, the Coast Guard attempts to find alternate uses for the keeper’s quarters and other buildings at automated lighthouses. Many are used for Coast Guard housing or by other government agencies. Others are leased to non-profit groups for use as museums and hostels. Some people call the Coast Guard the law of the sea. Alexander Hamilton designed the Revenue Cutter Service to stop smuggling and enforce customs laws. Today the Coast Guard does that and much more.
Boarding officers enforce all applicable federal laws aboard U.S. vessels and all vessels operating in U.S. waters. The Coast Guard stops drugs, combats piracy, and inspects vessels for compliance with safety and pollution regulations. The First District is home to several large commercial fishing fleets. Working with the National Marine Fisheries Service, the Coast Guard enforces federal fisheries laws to protect our national resource. Boarding officers inspect nets and equipment, and routine patrols keep boats away from restricted areas during spawning season.
The Coast Guard works closely with other federal, state and local law enforcement agencies to stop drug smuggling. The popularity of cocaine has reduced the amount of high bulk marijuana smuggling in the northwest Atlantic area. The harbors of the First District are some of the most strategic ports for the military resupply effort. In addition to Boston and New York, the Navy operates critical bases at Groton, Connecticut, and Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Maine’s Bath Iron Works’ shipyards in Portland and Bath are key ship repair facilities for both the Coast Guard and Navy.
In wartime, the Coast Guard must defend these vital areas from attack and sabotage. To prepare its personnel for that job, the Coast Guard trains with Department of Defense forces in realistic war games in the actual ports. In recent years, First Shield exercises have been held in Narragansett Rhode Island, Portland, Maine, and Groton, Connecticut.
Under an agreement between the Department of Transportation and Secretary of the Navy, the First District Commander is also Commander of the Maritime Defense Zone Sector One, and in charge of all military forces assigned to coastal protection in the region. Sector One includes all the coast line of the First District and waters out to 200 miles. During a war, Coast Guard personnel would provide security at pier and dockside facilities, keep the snipping lanes clear of underwater mines and conduct search and rescue missions. Other jobs might include anti-submarine warfare, salvage work, explosive ordinance disposal and surveillance and interdiction. Things go wrong. Even against the best precautions, accidents happen. And when they do, the Coast Guard is ready to respond on a moment’s notice, literally. The small boats and helicopter crews are on immediate stand-by, and when the alarm sounds they drop everything and scramble to launch. Personnel are specially trained for this work. Boat coxswains and crews practice plucking people from rough water. Many boats carry qualified emergency medical technicians. Helicopter pilots are trained to make difficult hoists to lift an injured person from the water or off the deck of a rolling boat.
When they go out, crews don’t depend much on luck. Search and rescue is a science and Coast Guard personnel are experts. A search pattern is developed by the group or district operations center based on weather and sea conditions, type of resource used, and size of object. In addition to boats, cutters, helicopters and jets, the Coast Guard coordinates with state and local resources. Our communications network also puts other recreational boaters and commercial vessels on alert to watch for the distress.
With more than a million recreational boats registered in the First District, there is potential for accidents. The Coast Guard works to reduce the danger on the waterways through several programs. Coast Guard boat crews conduct thousands of safety inspections each year. Boarding officers check life preservers, fire extinguishers and distress markers. Enforcing all applicable laws, the officers may also cite boaters for reckless operation and drunk boating.
The Coast Guard Auxiliary is a group devoted to boating safety. These volunteers teach free courses in boating skills and seamanship. Boaters may also get a Courtesy Motorboat Examination to insure their boats are ready for the water. Auxiliary members also use their own vessels to patrol and assist boaters. The boating safety office coordinates major boating events such as regattas, processes boarding violation reports and registers boats used in salt water for the state of New Hampshire. Oil tankers, foreign freighters, tankers loaded with liquified natural gas, barges, ferry boats; thousands of commercial vessels that pass through First District waters. The Coast Guard helps them sail safely.
Marine safety offices provide many services to the commercial mariner. All vessels more than five net tons are documented. The owner is given paperwork similar to an automobile registration that lists a document number, a description of the vessel and ownership. This paperwork must be completed before the vessel gets underway, and is inspected each time the Coast Guard boards the ship.
Merchant seamen must be qualified to work onboard commercial vessels. They are tested by the regional exam centers for a basic seaman’s license and each subsequent advancement. The vessels themselves are examined too. Inspectors check the vessel’s seaworthiness, lifesaving equipment and proper crew size. Vessels and seamen that fail don’t sail. The daily traffic of New England’s busy harbors is monitored by port operations personnel who conduct routine safety inspections of shore facilities and establish safety and security zones in the harbor. Marine safety units also protect the environment. If there is an accident or chemical spill, personnel from the pollution response section assess the damage and investigate the cause. When the source of a spill is determined, the Coast Guard can recover the cost of the clean-up work.
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