October
Daily Chronology of Coast Guard History
1 October
- 1926-An airways division, headed by a chief engineer, was set up as a part of the Lighthouse Service, its work covering the examination of airways and emergency landing fields and the erection and maintenance of aids to air navigation.
- 1943-Coast Guard-manned USS LST-203 was stranded in Southwest Pacific but there were no casualties.
- 1976- Coast Guard personnel were required to change to the new "Bender Blues" uniforms by this date.
- 1991- The CGC Storis became the oldest commissioned cutter in the Coast Guard when the CGC Fir was decommissioned. The Storis's crew painted her hull number "38" in gold in recognition of her status.
- 1996- Operation Frontier Shield commenced. It was the largest counter-narcotics operation in Coast Guard history to date.
2 October
- 1789-Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton asked collectors of customs to report on expediency of employing boats for the "security of the revenue against contraband." Hamilton's interest in such vessels led to his request to Congress to fund the construction of 10 such revenue "boats" the following year, leading to the creation of what is now the U.S. Coast Guard.
3 October
- 1898-The American barkentine, Wanderinq Jew lost her sails and sprung a leak during the severe hurricane of October 2. Stranded and sunk during the night. 11 miles east by south from station at Sullivans Island, South Carolina. On account of distance and frequent heavy rain squalls, she was not sighted by station lookout until 3:30 pm on the following day. A surfboat was launched and the ship was found abandoned by her crew.
4 October
- 1918-There was an explosion at the T.A. Gillespie Company munitions yard in Morgan, New Jersey. Coast Guardsmen from Perth Amboy responded. When fire threatened a trainload of TNT, these men repaired the track and moved the train to safety, thus preventing further disaster. Two Coast Guardsmen were killed in this effort.
- 1956-Two U.S. Air Force F-89 aircraft crashed in rugged mountain terrain about four miles from Mount Olympus, Washington. For seven days, the Coast Guard directed a highly coordinated search for the lost plane and crews. Finally, aircraft and helicopters from the CG Air Station, Port Angeles, Washington, assisted by aircraft and ground search elements from other services, located and evacuated the two crew members on 5 October. Another walked out on his own to Hoods Canal on 6 October and was picked up by the Coast Guard in Brinnon, Washington after phoning in his location. He then assisted the Coast Guard in locating the crash site. A fourth crewman went down with his aircraft and was killed.
- 1980- A fire broke out on the Dutch cruise vessel Prinsendam off Ketchikan, Alaska. Coast Guard helicopters and the cutters Boutwell, Mellon, and Woodrush respond in concert with other vessels in the area and rescue all of the passengers and crew without loss of life.
- 1995- Hurricane Opal hit the Gulf of Mexico and made landfall in Destin, Florida. Coast Guard units provided relief efforts, surveyed damage, and restored aids to navigation. The CGC Kodiak Island contacted the CGC Courgeous and requested assistance. The Kodiak Island was battling 10 to 12-foot waves 100 miles west of Gasparilla, Florida, and experiencing flooding and a loss of steering control due to a hydraulic fluid leak. A HC-130 from AIRSTA Clearwater flew to the scene to provide assistance and the Courageous went to escort the Kodiak Island to Group St. Petersburg.
5 October
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1938- The first members were enrolled in the Coast Guard Reserve.
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1943- Patrol Squadron 6 (VP-6 CG) was officially established. This was an all Coast Guard unit. Its home base was at Narsarssuak, Greenland, code name Bluie West-One. It had nine PBY-5As assigned. CDR Donald B. MacDiarmid, USCG, was the first commanding officer. As additional PBYs became available, the units area of operation expanded and detachments were established in Argentia, Newfoundland and Reykjavik, Iceland, furnishing air cover for US Navy and Coast Guard vessels. Hundreds of rescue operations were carried out during the 27 months the squadron was in operation.
6 October
- 1881-At daylight the crew of Station No. 1, First District (Carrying Point Cove, West Quoddy Head, Maine), sighted a schooner at anchor some four miles east-southeast of the station. She did not appear to be in distress, and as no signal was made it was supposed she had simply anchored to await the abatement of the winds, which at the time was blowing strong from the northwest. The keeper ordered a close watch on the schooner, in case she should signal for assistance. At 11 a .m. the lookout observed a boat leave her side and attempt to reach land, but the gale was too much for it and the effort had to be abandoned. The boat returned to the schooner. Upon arriving alongside, the keeper found the schooner to be Eclipse, of Eastport, Maine and that she had encountered a heavy squall the afternoon previous. It had split her sails and started her leaking badly. In this condition they had anchored her during the night, about two miles from the land, her crew, three in number, being almost exhausted by their efforts to keep her free. The life-saving crew at once turned to and pumped her out and made temporary repairs on the sails, and then worked her up into a safe harbor.
- 1990- NASA astronaut and Coast Guard CDR Bruce Melnick made his first space flight when he served as a Mission Specialist aboard the space shuttle Discovery on Space Shuttle Mission STS-41, which flew from 6 to 10 October 1990. Discovery deployed the Ulysses spacecraft for its five-year mission to explore the polar regions of the sun. CDR Melnick was the first Coast Guardsman selected by NASA for astronaut training.
7 October
- 1986-An HC-130 from AIRSTA Elizabeth City located the disabled 44-foot Polish sailing vessel Gaudeamus with six Polish citizens aboard about 400 miles east of New York. A motor vessel was on scene with the Gaudeamus when it was found by the HC-130 and remainded there until CGC Taney arrived the next day and took the boat in tow. CGC Cape Henlopen rendezvoused with Taney and took over the tow to Newport, Rhode Island. The Polish Embassy sent the Coast Guard a diplomatic note extending the thanks of the Polish government for the Coast Guard's assistance in this case.
8 October
- 1986-Coast Guard units evacuated flood victims from the St. Louis area using punts, helicopters and trucks after the Mississippi and Missouri rivers flooded. In all, 150 Coast Guardsmen participated in the emergency flood relief efforts. Coast Guard units that sent relief teams were: MSO St. Louis; Base St. Louis; CGCs Sumac, Cheyenne and Cimarron. ATON Facility Leavenworth, Kansas; 2nd District office; and AIRSTAs New Orleans and Traverse City.
8 October
- 1847-To reduce the expenditures of the Treasury Department, Secretary of the Treasury Robert J. Walker ordered a reduction of the complements on revenue cutters.
9 October
- 1852-The Lighthouse Board, which administered the lighthouse system until 1 July 1910, was organized. "This Board was composed of two officers of the Navy, two officers of the Engineer Corps, and two civilians of high scientific attainments whose services were at the disposal of the President, and an officer of the Navy and of the, Engineers as secretaries. It was empowered under the Secretary of the Treasury to "discharge all the administrative duties" relative to lighthouses and other aids to navigation. The Secretary of the Treasury was president of the Board, and it was authorized to elect a chairman and to divide the coast of the United States into twelve lighthouse districts, to each of which the President was to assign an army or navy officer as lighthouse inspector."
- 1858-The Secretary of the Treasury appointed a three-man board of U.S. Revenue Marine officers to consider a lifeboat design best adapted for life-saving work.
- 1945-USS PC-590 (Coast Guard-manned) grounded and sank in typhoon off Okinawa. All hands were rescued.
- 1993-Crews from seven 8th District units and several civilian vessels joined forces in response to an explosion and fire aboard the 660-foot bulk-liquid carrier OMI Charger near the Houston Ship Channel. She had no fuel aboard when the explosion occurred the night of 9 October. The CGC Point Spencer served as the command platform and personnel and boats from ATON Team Galveston joined the response effort, which included fire-fighting, SAR, and pollution response assistance. The fire was extinguished five hours after the initial explosion. Two of the tanker's crewmen were killed in the blast. Personnel from the Gulf Strike Team arrive on scene on 10 October and determined that the vessel's fuel was still all aboard. It was removed prior to the vessel being towed to port where it was declared a total loss. A joint Coast Guard and National Transportation Safety Board met to investigate the explosion.
10 October
- 1798-Secretary Benjamin Stoddert, first Secretary of the Navy, sent the first instructions to cutters acting in cooperation with the Navy in support of the Quasi-War with France, via the various collectors of customs.
- Clarence Samuels, commanding CG Patrol Boat AB-15, was promoted to Chief Quartermaster, thereby becoming the Coast Guard's first African-American chief petty officer.
11 October
- 1896- The crew of the Pea Island (North Carolina) Life-Saving Station, under the command of Keeper Richard Etheridge, performed one of their finest rescues when they saved the passengers and crew of the schooner E.S. Newman, after that ship ran aground during a hurricane. Pushed before the storm, the ship lost all sails and drifted almost 100 miles before it ran aground about two miles south of the Pea Island Lifesaving Station. Etheridge, a veteran of nearly twenty years, readied his crew. They hitched mules to the beach cart and hurried toward the vessel. Arriving on the scene, they found Captain S. A. Gardiner and eight others clinging to the wreckage. Unable to fire a line because the high water prevented the Lyle Gun’s deployment, Etheridge directed two surfmen to bind themselves together with a line. Grasping another line, the pair moved into the breakers while the remaining surfmen secured the shore end. The two surfmen reached the wreck and tied a line around one of the crewmen. All three were then pulled back through the surf by the crew on the beach. The remaining eight persons were carried to shore in this fashion. After each trip two different surfmen replaced those who had just returned. For their efforts the crew of the Pea Island Life-Saving Station were awarded the Gold Lifesaving Medal in 1996.
- 1897-Property saved at Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. During a severe storm the surf threatened to wash away a fish house, with valuable nets and other gear. Surfmen saved the property and took it to a place of safety. They also assisted lighthouse keeper to remove lenses of beacon to secure place. The lighthouse was in danger of being washed down by the sea.
12 October
- 1897- Near Corson Inlet, New Jersey, a man and two women were endangered by the sea sweeping around a their house 1/2 mile from the station. Life-savers answered signal of distress and rescued them in the surfboat.
13 October
- 1775-This is the date that the Navy recognizes as it's
"official" birthday. The United States Navy traces its
origins to the Continental Navy, which the Continental Congress
established on 13 October 1775 by authorizing the procurement, fitting
out, manning, and dispatch of two armed vessels to cruise in search of
munitions ships supplying the British Army in America. The legislation
also established a Naval Committee to supervise the work. All together,
the Continental Navy numbered some fifty ships over the course of the
war, with approximately twenty warships active at its maximum strength.
After the American War for Independence, Congress sold the surviving
ships of the Continental Navy and released the seamen and officers. The
Constitution of the United States, ratified in 1789, empowered Congress
"to provide and maintain a navy." Acting on this authority,
Congress ordered the construction and manning of six frigates in 1794,
and the War Department administered naval affairs from that year until Congress
established the Department of the Navy on 30 April 1798. In
1972, however, Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt
authorized recognition of 13 October 1775 as the Navy’s birthday
Happy Birthday Navy! There is no official motto for the U.S. Navy. However "Non sibi sed patriae" (Not self but country) is often cited as the Navy's "unofficial" motto.
- 1883-Between 4 and 5 o’clock in the afternoon, a small sailboat, owned at West Hampton, New York, capsized In crossing the bay with one man on board. Three of the crew of the Petunk Station (Third District) sprang into a skiff, rowed out, rescued the man, and towed the boat ashore.
- 1988: The first U.S. merchant marine World War II veterans received their Coast Guard issued discharge certificates. Congress gave the merchant mariners veterans' status and tasked the Coast Guard with administering the discharges.
- 1995: The cutter Ida Lewis was launched, the first of the new 175-foot Keeper class buoy tenders.
14 October
- 1801-Secretary of the Treasury Gallatin announced the decision to reduce "Revenue Cutter Establishment" as near as circumstances will permit within its original limits.
- 1943-CGC E.M. Dow grounded and was abandoned near Mayaguez, Puerto Rico. All hands were saved.
- 1944-CGCs Eastwind and Southwind captured the Nazi weather and supply vessel Externsteine off the coast of Greenland after a brief fire-fight. There were no casualties. The Coast Guardsmen christened their prize-of-war USS Eastbreeze and placed a prize crew on board. The prize crew was commanded by LT Curtiss Howard and consisted of 36 men, including some from Southwind. After sailing with the Greenland Patrol for three weeks, Eastbreeze sailed on to Boston where the Navy renamed it as USS Callao. The Externsteine/Eastbreeze/Callao was the only enemy surface vessel captured at sea by U.S. naval forces during the war. The Eastwind and Southwind had gone farther north and returned under their own power than any vessel ever before. Finally, this naval battle had taken place farther north than any previous battle, laurels enough for the Greenland Patrol.
- 1947-CGC Bibb rescued 62 passengers and 7 crew members of the transatlantic flying boat Bermuda Sky Queen in mid-Atlantic in one of the most dramatic rescues undertaken by the Coast Guard in the open ocean.
- 1961-After US Air Force B-52G [serial number 58-196??] with eight persons aboard was reported overdue and possibly down in the Atlantic Ocean somewhere off Newfoundland, the Coast Guard commander, Eastern Area, coordinated the extensive search that resulted. Participating in it were 79 US Coast Guard, Navy, Air Force, and Canadian aircraft, 5 US Coast Guard cutters, and 2 merchant ships. Despite this search that lasted through 18 October and covered 286,225 square miles, no trace of the missing B-52 or its crew was found.
15 October
- 1846-USRC McLane ran aground while attempting to cross the bar of the River Alvarado during the Mexican War.
- 2001- On October 15, 2001, President George W. Bush announced that a letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle had anthrax in it. This followed a number of other anthrax attacks in Florida and New York. The EPA requested Coast Guard assistance. Members of the Atlantic Strike Team deployed to Washington, D.C., while Gulf Strike Team members were deployed to Florida. Strike team members conducted entries into the affected areas, collected samples, and assisted in the cleanup of those areas. The AST members in Washington coordinated entries into the U.S. Capitol, Hart Senate Building, the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Government Printing Office, among others. The GST members took samples and provided decontamination stations at the American Media Inc. headquarters building and post offices in Boca Raton, Florida, the site of the first reported anthrax attack.
16 October
- 1790-Contract entered into for the construction of the "first" of the 10 revenue cutters, Massachusetts, at Newburyport, Massachusetts.
- 1952-A Merchant Marine Detail was established at Yokohama, Japan to handle increased merchant marine problems occurring there as a result of the Korean Conflict.
- 1956- CGC Pontchartrain, on Ocean Station November, rescued the passengers and crew of Pan American Clipper Flight 943 after the clipper ditched between Honolulu and San Francisco.
17 October
- 1814-The crew of USRC Eagle, which had been driven ashore near
Negros Head, New York in an encounter with the British brig HMS Dispatch,
dragged the cutter's guns up a bluff in an effort to continue the
battle. The New York Evening Post gave an account of what
happened next to the out-gunned cutter:
"During the engagement between the Cutter EAGLE and the enemy, the following took place which is worthy of notice. Having expended all the wadding of the four-pounders on the hill, during the warmest of the firing, several of the crew volunteered and went on board the cutter to obtain more. At this moment the masts were shot away, when the brave volunteers erected a flag upon her stern; this was soon shot away, but was immediately replaced by a heroic tar, amidst the cheers of his undaunted comrades, which was returned by a whole broadside from the enemy. When the crew of the Cutter had expended all their large shot and fixed ammunition, they tore up the log book to make cartridges and returned the enemy's small shot which lodged in the hull. The Cutter was armed with only 6 guns, 4 four-pounders and 2 twos with plenty of muskets and about 50 men. The enemy being gone and provisions scarce the volunteers from this city left Captain Lee and his crew and arrived here on Thursday evening the 13th instant, in a sloop from Long Island. . .We have since learned that Captain Lee succeeded in getting off the Cutter and was about to remove her to a place of safety when the enemy returned and took possession of her. She was greatly injured, but it is expected that the enemy will be able to refit her to annoy us in the sound."
- 1989- An earthquake registering 7.1 on the Richter Scale hit Northern California, killing 67 people. Coast Guard units assisted state and local agencies in rescue and relief operations.
18 October
- 1799-USRC Pickering (70 men) captured the French privateer L’Egypte Conquiste (250 men).
- 1848-Captain Douglas Ottinger, USRM, was designated by the Secretary of the Treasury to supervise the construction of the first Life-Saving Stations and the equipment and boats to be place at them.
19 October
- 1881-The sloop Zulu Chief with four passengers and a crew of two men struck the bar off Hog Island Inlet, Virginia at a point about half a mile from the beach. The accident occurred at 11 o’clock am in plain view of the crew of Station No. 9, Fifth District, on Hog Island. They launched the surfboat and went to the sloop’s assistance. She was pounding heavily and lay in a very dangerous position. The life-saving crew went to work without delay and carried out her anchors and succeeded in saving the vessel.
20 October
- 1892-After ten years of difficult and costly construction, the St. George Reef Lighthouse, built on a rock lying six miles off the northern coast of California, midway between Capes Mendocino and Bianco, was first lighted.
- 1920-The Superintendent of the 5th Lighthouse District inspected the aids to navigation "in New River Inlet and Bogue Sound, North Carolina by hydroplane in two hours, which would have required at least four days by other means of travel, owning to the inaccessibility of the aids inspected."
- 1944-Landings on Leyte, Philippine Islands. Many Coast Guard units participated in the landings, which marked the the fulfillment of General Douglas MacArthur's promise to the Filipino people that he would return to liberate them from the Japanese.
- 1950- President Harry S. Truman issued an executive order "activating" the Magnuson Act, which had been passed by Congress earlier that month. This act, authorizing the president to invoke the Espionage Act of 1917, tasked the Coast Guard with the port security mission.
- 1978- The cutter Cuyahoga sank after colliding with M/V Santa Cruz II near the mouth of the Potomac River. Eleven Coast Guard personnel were killed.
22 October
- 1853-The English ship Western World grounded off Spring Lake, New Jersey, during a gale with about 600 persons on board. Everyone was rescued using equipment at the nearby station.
- 1960-Early in the morning, SS Alcoa Corsair and SS Lorenzo Marcello collided near the mouth of the Mississippi River. Although the Lorenzo Marcello suffered no casualties and proceeded to New Orleans, Alcoa Corsair had 8 fatalities, 9 injured, and 1 missing, besides being forced to beach because of severe damages. A Coast Guard helicopter removed 4 of the critically injured crewmen, while Coast Guard boats and other craft ferried the remaining ones ashore to waiting ambulances.
- 1962- Shortly after a Northwest Airlines DC-7 with 102 occupants ditched in the waters of Sitka Sound, Alaska, a Coast Guard amphibian sighted five life rafts. All on board survived, although three suffered minor injuries. A Federal Aviation Administration supply boat picked up the survivors, later transferring them to the CGC Sorrel, which took them to Sitka, Alaska.
23 October
25 October
- 1985-CGC Polar Sea arrived home to Seattle after a voyage through the Northwest Passage by way of the Panama Canal, the east coast, and then Greenland, sparking an international incident with Canada. She completed the first solo circumnavigation of the North American continent by a U.S. vessel and the first trip by a Polar-Class icebreaker. She also captured the record for the fastest transit of the historic northern route. She had departed Seattle to begin the voyage on 6 June 1985.
27 October
- 1997- The crew of the CGC Baranof confiscated two .50-caliber sniper rifles, ammunition and other military supplies that were allegedly to be used in an assassination attempt against Cuban President Fidel Castro. Four Cuban exiles were arrested for illegal possession of firearms after the 46-foot La Esperanza was ordered into Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, by the Baranof. There a search of the vessel turned up the weapons. One suspect confessed that the sniper rifles were to be used to assassinate Castro on his arrival on Venezuela's Margarita Island for the Ibero-American Summit Conference. A magistrate in the U.S. District Court in San Juan later dismissed the charge of conspiracy to assassinate Castro but let the charges of illegal importation of firearms and making false statements stand.
28 October
- 1919-Congress passed the National Prohibition Enforcement Act, otherwise known as the Volstead Act, on this date. The Volstead Act authorized the enforcement of the 18th Amendment, ratified on 29 January 1919. The Act authorized the Coast Guard to prevent the maritime importation of illegal alcohol. This led to the largest increase in the size and responsibilities of the service to that date.
- 1943-Choiseul, Treasury Islands landing (Coast Guard-manned LST-71 was in second echelon November 1, 1943).
- 1991-Thousands of Haitian migrants began fleeing their homeland after the overthrow of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, prompting one of the largest SAR operations in Coast Guard history. Cutters and aircraft from as far north as New England converged on the Windward Passage. In the first 30 days of the operation, Coast Guard forces rescued more than 6,300 men, women, and children who left Haiti in grossly overloaded and unseaworthy vessels. 75 Coast Guard units ultimately took part in the massive SAR operation and by the end of the year over 40,000 Haitian migrants were rescued.
29 October
- 1883-At a quarter before 4 o’clock In the morning the two surfmen on patrol from the Plum Island Station (Second District), below Newburyport, Massachusetts, discovered a vessel ashore on the south breaker at the entrance of Newburyport Harbor, about half a mile northeast of the station. A signal was made to her that she was seen and the men hurried to the station and gave the alarm. The boat reached her shortly after 4 o’clock. She was the schooner Forest Maid with a crew of seven men bound on a fishing cruise. While going out over the bar, the wind being light, she had been carried by the strong ebb tide on to the shoal. The first thing done by her crew was to let go an anchor to hold her, but finding she continued to drive farther on they veered away. They were disappointed, for she soon fetched up hard and fast with ninety fathoms of cable out. As the water was still falling nothing could be done until the flood tide. The life-saving crew remained on board and when the tide began to rise at 8 o’clock, commenced operations by heaving in on the cable, The wind freshened considerably while they were at work, raising quite a swell, which caused the schooner to pound heavily. They persevered, however, gaining a little every time she lifted on the seas, so that by 9 o’clock the schooner was safely afloat and on her way back into the harbor, apparently none the worse for the accident.
30 October
- 1956-CGC Chincoteague manning Ocean Station Delta in the North Atlantic, received a distress message that the German freighter Helgs Bolten was taking on water and wished to abandon ship as soon as possible. After reaching the scene some hours later, the cutter found that the high winds and 25-foot seas made it impossible to launch lifeboats. Two inflatable lifeboats, therefore, were passed by shot line to the freighter, and the 33 crewmen aboard were removed to the cutter unharmed. Chincoteague then stood by the drifting vessel for seven days, while commercial tugs made salvage attempts. All of the survivors returned on board the cutter to Norfolk, Virginia, while a tug towed Helg Bolten to the Azores.
- 1991-CGC Tamaroa attempted to rescue three persons on board the disabled sailing vessel Satori 75 miles south of Martha's Vineyard during a severe winter storm. Tamaroa launched an RHI which was damaged by the tossing Satori as it drew near the crippled sailing vessel. HH-3F CG-1493 hoisted the RHI's crew as well as the three on board Satori to safety. Tamaroa was then diverted to rescue the crew of a downed Air National Guard H-60. See 31 October entry below.
31 October
- 1904-Cape Elizabeth, Maine- The morning watch reported a dory adrift 2 miles off the station, and the crew put out in surfboat and towed It to shore.
- 1984-The tanker Puerto Rican exploded outside of San Francisco Bay. Coast Guard units responded.
- 1991-During an extremely severe winter storm, CGC Tamaroa rescued four of five Air National Guard crewmen from an H-60 that had ditched south of Long Island due to fuel exhaustion. The Tamaroa had been attempting to rescue three persons off the sailing vessel Satori (as had the ANG H-60) the previous day (see 30 October entry above) when she was diverted to assist the Air National Guard pararescuemen. The fifth pararescueman was never found. The Tamaroa was awarded the Coast Guard Unit Commendation for these rescue attempts and the events were chronicled in the best selling book and movie "The Perfect Storm."
- 1999-Egypt Air Flight 990 crashed about 60 miles southeast of Nantucket. Coast Guard units, including the CGCs Monomoy, Spencer, Reliance, Bainbridge Island, Juniper, Point Highland, Hammerhead, a HC-130 from Elizabeth City and an HH-60 from Air Station Cape Cod, searched unsuccessfully for any survivors. All 217 persons on board were killed in the crash. Coast Guard units then assisted in the recovery effort.
Last Modified 6/30/2009