Security Levels

December

Daily Chronology of Coast Guard History

1 December

1844-Captain Alexander Fraser of Revenue Marine Bureau reported to Congress on the failure of the service's first steam cutters Spencer and Legare.

1944-Office of Air-Sea Rescue set up in the Coast Guard. The Secretary of the Navy at the request of the Joint Chiefs of Staff early in 1944 established the Air-Sea Rescue Agency, an inter-department and inter-agency body, for study and improvement of rescue work with the Commandant of Coast Guard as head.

2 December

1883-The schooner Champion with a crew of two men stranded on Dick’s Flat, Plymouth Harbor, near Duxbury Pier lighthouse, at about 6 am. The shoal where she struck was about three miles west-southwest of the Gurnet Point Station (Second District), and the crew of the station were not sure she was aground until about 10 o’clock. The life-saving crew therefore arrived on board a little before 2 o’clock in the afternoon. They found one of the men, the captain, at the pumps and the other bailing from the hatch. The vessel was leaking badly. The two men on board were wet, cold, and very glad of the assistance of the life-saving crew. The keeper, at the captain’s request, took charge. The pumps were manned while another gang went to work bailing. When she began to right with the incoming tide, they shifted the booms over and canted her the other way, so as to bring the leaky seams out of the water to chinse them with oakum and nail canvas over all to stop the leaks. After doing this and getting most of the water out, they carried out an anchor into the channel, set all sail and by heaving hard on the hawser, they brought her on an even keel. She was hauled off the shoal at about 4 o’clock and got safely under way. As the weather looked bad, the captain concluded to remain in port for the night and accordingly anchored.

3 December

1852-Georgia grounded in a gale off Bonds, New Jersey with 290 persons on board. The life car was used to save them and all survived.

1883-The schooner Pallas with a crew of three men encountered strong head winds and heavy seas off Cape Cod, MA. About half past 5 in the morning, abreast of Nausett lights, she sprung a leak and became unmanageable. Being close to the breakers, the crew was fearful they would be washed overboard as soon as she struck and took to their boat. Fortunately, they were discovered by the Nausett Station keeper, pulling vigorously to keep away from the surf. The surfboat was launched and the three men rescued. They were brought ashore by the life-saving crew, though not without a thorough drenching because the station boat was nearly swamped on the bar. The schooner meanwhile drifted into the surf, three quarters of a mile north of the station and soon broke up.

1982-MSO St. Louis took charge of the response when the Mississippi, Missouri, and Illinois rivers flooded their banks. In all over 100 Coast Guardsmen took part in the relief efforts that covered an eight-state area.

2001- Coast Guard forces, including the cutters Chandeleur and Farallon as well as aircraft from Air Station Miami and boat crews from Station Miami Beach rescued 185 Haitian migrants from the grossly overloaded 31-foot sailboat Simapvivsetz off Old Rhodes Key, Florida.

4 December

1989: The cutter Mesquite ran aground near Keweenaw Point in Lake Superior. She was deemed damaged beyond repair and was sunk as an artificial reef. There was no loss of life.

5 December

1933-The ratification of the 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that repealed the 18th Amendment, thereby ending Prohibition, occurred on this date.

6 December

1917- The French freighter Mont Blanc, loaded with 5,000 tons of high explosives, collided with the Norwegian steamer Imo in the harbor of Halifax, Nova Scotia. The resulting fire detonated the munitions, killing 1,635 people and leveling much of Halifax and its environs. Coast Guardsmen from the CGC Morrill were landed to provide assistance. This disaster led to the creation of captains of the ports for the major U.S. ports. The Coast Guard was tasked with the new duty.

1944-Coast Guardsmen participated in the landings at Ormoc, Philippine Islands.

1946-The number of Coast Guardsmen on active duty had been dropped to 22,156 in order to meet budgetary requirements. Many lifeboat stations had to be placed in a limited caretaker or inactive status and some vessels tied up because they lacked complements .

1953- Coast Guard search and rescue facilities at the Naval Base in Bermuda were instrumental in rescuing four survivors and recovering 17 bodies from the Cuban aircraft Cubana 471, which crashed on take-off from the airport at Kindley Field, Bermuda.

1999- The cutter Munro intercepted the vessel Wing Fung Lung, a vessel loaded with more than 250 Chinese migrants headed for the Guatemala/El Salvador border. After refusing permission to board, the Munro tracked the vessel for three days when lookouts spotted flares over the ship. When the Munro's small boat approached, panicked migrants began jumping into the water. They were pulled to safety and returned to the Wing Fun Lung while boarding parties finally went aboard the crowded vessel. Someone apparently tried to scuttle the vessel and the boarding teams were able to stop the flooding and dewater the engine room. The threat to the Munro crewmen on the vessel was made worse because the migrants had not been fed or had water for more than a day. They were at the point of total rebellion, according to the Munro's boarding team members. Other boarding teams from the CGC Hamilton then arrived and helped to control the situation. The vessel was finally taken into Puerto Quetzal, Guatemala, where the migrants were taken into custody by INS agents. The master of the vessel was arrested.

7 December

1793-The first Revenue Cutter Service court martial occurred on this date aboard the cutter Massachusetts. The offender, Third Mate Sylvanus Coleman of Nantucket, was summarily dismissed from the service for "speaking disrespectfully of his superior officers in public company. . . .insulting Captain John Foster Williams [the commanding officer] on board, and before company. . . .for keeping bad women on board the cutter in Boston and setting a bad example to the men by ordering them to bring the women on board at night and carrying them ashore in the morning. . . ." and for writing an order in the name of the commanding officer.

1830-President Andrew Jackson announced an ambitious plan to add a large number of lighthouses to the federal system, with a total of 51 more lighthouse keepers. In explanation, he supported the practice of offsetting the costs of keeping aids to navigation on the coasts, lakes and harbors "to render the navigation thereof safe and easy" since "whatever gives facility and security to navigation cheapens imports; and all who consume them are alike interested in whatever produces this effect. The consumer in the most inland State derives the same advantage . . . that he does who lives in a maritime State."

1941-The Imperial Japanese Navy launched a surprise aerial attack on Pearl Harbor and surrounding Army Air Force airfields in Hawaii. Stationed in Honolulu were the 327-foot cutter Taney, the 190-foot buoy tender Kukui, two 125-foot patrol craft, Reliance and Tiger, two 78-foot patrol boats and several smaller craft. At the time of the attack, Taney lay at pier six in Honolulu Harbor, Reliance and the unarmed Kukui both lay at pier four and Tiger was on patrol along the western shore of Oahu. All were performing the normal duties for a peacetime Sunday. Tiger conducted anti-submarine sweeps outside of Pearl Harbor and Taney opened fire on Japanese aircraft that appeared over Honolulu Harbor during the attack.

1968- The cutter White Alder sank after colliding with the M/V Helena near White Castle, Louisiana. Seventeen Coast Guard personnel were killed.

1988- The Coast Guard hosted an international summit between Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, President Ronald Reagan, and President-elect and then-Vice President George H. W. Bush on Governors Island on 7 December 1988 after Gorbachev had addressed the United Nations. In planning his trip to the UN, Gorbachev requested a meeting with Reagan. Reagan was in final weeks of his presidential term and his advisors felt it important that the visit remain low profile, so a large-scale summit or state visit to the White House was not in the cards. Yet, a short and informal meeting between the heads of state and newly elected President George Bush was possible. The White House selected the Coast Guard base at Governors Island as a meeting site since it was a secure military installation in the middle of New York harbor and just minutes away from the United Nations. The leaders met for lunch at the LANTAREA commander's [VADM James Irwin] home. The summit was characterized as "just a luncheon" and the meeting was the last time President Reagan and Gorbachev would meet during Reagan's remaining term.

8 December

1904-An Executive Order extended the jurisdiction of the Lighthouse Service to the noncontiguous territory of the Midway Islands.

1941-Coast Guardsmen seized all nine Finnish vessels that were currently in U.S. ports and placed them in "protective custody" to "prevent the commission of any acts of sabotage" on orders from the Navy Department. Twenty-four hours later the Coast Guard removed the crews from each of the vessels. This action was ordered soon after the break in diplomatic relations between Great Britain and Finland. The following Finish vessels were seized: SS Olivia, at Boston, Massachusetts; SS Kurikka, SS Jourtanes, and SS Saimaa at New York, New York; SS Advance, at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; SS Aagot and SS Marisa Thorden at Baltimore; SS Aurora, at Newport News, Virginia; and SS Delaware, at Galveston, Texas.

1983- Four cutters arrived off of the island of Grenada to replace U.S. Navy surface forces conducting surveillance operations after the U.S. invaded the island earlier that year. The cutters involved were the Cape Gull, Cape Fox, Cape Shoalwater, and the Sagebrush.

2004-The 738-foot freighter Selendang Ayu grounded and broke in two December 8, 2004, offshore of Spray Cape, Unalaska. A Coast Guard HH-60J crashed after rescuing seven of the freighter's crew; a helicopter from the CGC Alex Haley rescued the survivors, including all of the Coast Guard personnel. The Alex Haley then rescued the remaining crewmen still aboard the freighter. The vessel was carrying soybeans and approximately 470,000 gallons of fuel oil (IFO380), of which roughly 144,000 gallons were removed during lightering operations in January and February of 2005. [Click here for more information.]

9 December

1899-A Treasury Order entrusted the Bureau of Navigation "with the duty of examining and disposing of petitions for the remission of fines, penalties, and forfeitures under the laws relating to navigation, vessels, steamboat-inspection, and passengers."

1959- At the request of the Russian Embassy, the crew of a US Coast Guard UF-1 amphibious aircraft removed an ill Russian seaman from the merchant ship Jana in the Bering Sea. The plane, with an interpreter and a doctor aboard, landed in a blinding snow storm at Dutch Harbor, where the patient was transferred to a hospital.

1981-The icebreaker CGC Westwind departed her homeport of Milwaukee for the Caribbean. She was assigned to relieve a high-endurance cutter on a counter-drug patrol.

1996- Two Coast Guard HH-60 helicopters with support from an HC-130, all from AIRSTA Elizabeth City, rescued the seven crewmembers of the 67-year old schooner Alexandria when she went down in a fierce storm 50 miles southwest of Cape Hatteras.

10 December

1905-"To evaluate its use in lighthouse work, radio equipment was installed experimentally on Nantucket Lightship in August of 1901. On December 10, 1905, while riding out a severe gale, Lightship No. 58 on the Nantucket Shoals Station sprang a serious leak. There being no recognized radio distress signal at that time, the operator could only repeatedly spell out the word "help". Although no reply was received Newport Navy station (radio) intercepted the call and passed it on to the proper authorities. The lightship tender Azalea was dispatched to the assistance of Lightship No. 58, and upon arrival at the scene passed a towline. The long tow to a safe harbor began, but after a few hours it was quite evident that Lightship No. 58 was sinking. Azalea took off her crew of thirteen men only minutes before she sank. This pioneer use of radio had indeed proved Its worth in rescue operations."

1941-Germany and Italy declared war on the United States.

1981-A Coast Guard HH-52A landed on CGC Dependable's flight deck, marking the 5,000th helicopter landing on board the ship. According to AVTRACEN records, this was the most helicopter landings ever recorded aboard a cutter. The landing occurred off Dauphin Island in the Gulf of Mexico.

1993- Secretary of Transportation Andrew H. Card, Jr., awarded the military members of the Coast Guard the Humanitarian Service Medal and the civilian employees the Coast Guard Public Service Commendation for their services during the Haitian migrant crisis from October 1991 through November 1992. During that period, a flotilla of over 27 Coast Guard cutters rescued 35,000 Haitian migrants from hundreds of overcrowded and unseaworthy vessels.

1994- Due to budget constraints and White House efforts to "streamline" government operations, ADM J. William Kime, Commandant, issued an ALCOAST that announced an involuntary performance-based reduction-in-force of the active-duty enlisted work force in an effort to reduce the size of the enlisted force of the service.

11 December

1881-Six men landed from a boat on Race Point, Cape Cod, and were soon after found, wet, chilled through, and much exhausted, by the patrolman from Station No. 6, Second District. He learned that they were the captain and crew of the Canadian schooner J .A. Hatfield that had been sunk in a collision with an unknown bark the night previous. The patrolman conducted them to the light keeper's dwelling nearby.

12 December

1876-First examination for Revenue Cutter cadets held in Washington, D.C.

1995-The CGC Munro responded to a mayday from the Greek-registered 798-foot container ship Hyundai Seattle approximately 550 nautical miles south of Adak, Alaska. The freighter reported an engine room fire that left the ship dead in the water. The cutter rescued all 27 crewmen before the freighter sank.

14 December

1846-Revenue Captain Alexander Fraser protested in a report to Congress against "unjust imputations" made against the Service for its involvement in the failure of the first steam cutters. He also requested the authority to employ medical aid on cutters and to provide pensions for personnel disabled in service.

1854-Congress authorized appointment of first lifeboat station keepers at $200 per year each and superintendents for Long Island and New Jersey serving under Secretary of Treasury who "may also establish such stations at such lighthouses, as, in his judgment, he shall deem best."

1996: The 735-foot M/V Bright Field collided with the New Orleans Riverwalk, causing substantial damage and injuring over 100 people.

15 December

1835-The superintendent of the lighthouse system wrote to Winslow Lewis, "I perceive by a Mobile paper which I received this morning that the Mobile Point light has been fitted by you as a revolving light" similar to the nearby Pensacola lighthouse. "I am very sorry that you have don so." Lewis was a contractor who -- almost by himself -- virtually controlled the administration of the lighthouse system. The incident helped cause a Congressional investigation that ultimately created a modern lighthouse system in this country.

1839-Near Gloucester, Massachusetts, a storm from the southeast caught and dragged ashore or drove to sea over fifty vessels. An eyewitness wrote: "From one of the beach to the other, nothing could be seen but pieces of broken wrecks; planks and spars...ropes and sails...flour, fish, lumber...soaked and broken..." The local fishermen manned two boats, the Custom House boat and the newly launched Revenue Cutter Van Buren and "fearlessly risked their lives for the safety of their fellow creatures" and brought many safely to shore.

1943-Coast Guardsmen participated in the landings made on Arawe Peninsula, New Britain.

1944-Coast Guardsmen participated in the landings made on Mindoro, Philippine Islands.

1976: The Liberian-flagged 644-foot tanker Argo Merchant, with 7.5 million gallons of oil on board, grounded on a shoal 28 miles southeast of Nantucket. Coast Guard helicopters from AIRSTA Cape Cod rescued her 38-man crew. The cutters Sherman and Vigilant responded, along with other vessels, but heavy weather prevented the containment of the spill. The tanker broke in two on 21 December.

16 December

1831-Secretary of Treasury John McLane ordered Revenue cutters to conduct "winter cruises." The USRC Gallatin became the first cutter "directly authorized by the government to assist mariners in distress."

1960- A United Airlines DC-8 with 83 passengers on board collided with a TWA Super Constellation carrying 42 in the New York City area. Coast Guard helicopters, working with the aircraft of the Army, Navy and New York Police Department, transported the injured passengers from the Constellation's wreck on Staten Island to a nearby hospital. Coast Guard vessels also searched the New York harbor area. The debris they picked up was used by the Civil Aeronautics Board in its determination of the cause of the mishap.

17 December

1897-The Overland Expedition, consisting of three officers from the Revenue Cutter Service, departed from the cutter Bear off Nunivak Island to rescue 300 whalers trapped in the ice at Point Barrow, Alaska. The rescuers were First Lieutenant D. H. Jarvis, Second Lieutenant E. P. Bertholf (later a commandant), and Surgeon S. J. Call. The rescuers had to travel over 1,000 miles overland to reach the whalers.

1903-Life-Saving Service personnel from Kill Devil Hills Life-Saving Station helped carry materials to the launch site for the first successful heavier-than-air aircraft flight by the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina and then assisted the brothers in their flights that day. The life-savers were John T. Daniels, W.S. Dough and A.D. Etheridge.

1942-CGC Natsek, part of the Greenland Patrol, disappeared in Belle Isle Strait. There were no survivors. It was thought that she capsized due to severe icing.

1942-The Navy credited the CGC Ingham with attacking and sinking the submerged U-boat U-626 south of Greenland.

1951-President Harry Truman presented the Collier Trophy to the Coast Guard, the Department of Defense and the "helicopter industry" in a joint award, citing "outstanding development and use of rotary-winged aircraft for air rescue operations." Coast Guard Commandant VADM Merlin O'Neill accepted the trophy for the Coast Guard.

18 December

1912-The premier issue of The Lighthouse Service Bulletin (January, 1912), described an incident on board the lighthouse tender Amaranth in connection with a Pintsch gas buoy. According to the documentation: “On the morning of the 18th of December [1910], at the Detroit lighthouse depot, eleventh district, during a pressure test of the B III type Pintsch gas buoy, the buoy blew up, and John A. Dunbar, machinist attached to the tender Amaranth, was killed. The test was made with Pintsch gas at a pressure of 18 atmospheres (approx. 270 pounds), and the buoy exploded as Mr. Dunbar closed the valve, the compressor having been shut down about five minutes before the accident. The top of the buoy separated from the barrel portion of the buoy at or near the weld, taking the cage work with it. The cage carried away the mainmast of the Amaranth and fell to the dock. The cone landed on and broke through the roof of the lamp shop some distance away. The barrel portion of the buoy and counterweight went through the dock. Paragraph: ‘Test of gas buoys and tanks,’ page 34 of the Regulations of the United States Lighthouse Service [sic], provides for the test of buoys by hydrostatic pressure and not by gas or air. The bureau regrets the loss in the line of duty of an efficient and conscientious employee. This is the first buoy accident of this character in the United States Lighthouse Service.”

19 December

1881-While the head keeper and six men of his crew were conducting drills away from their Gurnet Point, Massachusetts, Life-Saving Station, the surfman who remained in charge at the station saw a schooner standing inside of Brown’s Island Shoals. He realized that unless the vessel was warned she would go aground. So he rowed out to the schooner in a small boat and piloted her clear. She proved to be the schooner Milton and had mistaken the channel entrance to Plymouth Harbor.

20 December

1943-CGC Bodega grounded off the Canal Zone. No lives were lost.

1991- On 20 December 1991, the United Nations adopted General Assembly Resolutions (UNGAs) 44-225, 45-197, and 46-215, thereby establishing a worldwide moratorium on all high seas drift net fishing that was to be in effect by 31 December 1992.

21 December

1936-Ice breaking by the Coast Guard was authorized by Executive Order No. 7521.

1960- The tanker Pine Ridge, with 37 crewmen on board, reported it was breaking in two about 120 miles off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. Immediately, the Coast Guard dispatched aircraft and vessels to the scene and alerted nearby US Navy and merchant vessels. After the arrival of a Coast Guard UF-2G amphibian aircraft, the bow section of the Pine Ridge capsized, throwing some members of the crew overboard; the stern section, however, remained afloat and upright. Mountainous seas rebuffed every attempt of the tanker Artemis to rescue the seamen in the water. Life rafts and emergency equipment, meanwhile, were airdropped, and the helicopters from the aircraft carrier Valley Forge successfully removed the 28 survivors from the still floating stern section. Of the bow section and the 9 missing crewmen, only debris and lifejackets were found, despite a widespread air and surface search.

22 December

1819-The Revenue cutter Dallas seized a vessel laden with lumber that had been unlawfully cut from public land in one of the first recorded instances of a revenue cutter enforcing an environmental law.

1837-Congress authorized President "to cause any suitable number of public vessels, adapted to the purpose, to cruise upon the coast, in the severe portion of the season, and to afford aid to distressed navigators." This was the first statute authorizing activities in the field of maritime safety, thus interjecting the national government into the field of lifesaving for the first time. Although revenue cutters were specifically mentioned, the performance of this duty was imposed primarily upon the Revenue Marine Service and quickly became one of its major activities.

23 December

1904-Near Oak Island and Fire Island, New York the American schooner Frank W. McCullough ran aground on Fire Island Bar, 2 miles from the former station and 4 from the latter, at about 9 am. The Oak Island crew reached the vessel at 10:30 am and the Fire Island crew a half hour later. They found her pounding heavily and leaking badly. They manned the pumps and assisted the crew in throwing overboard the cargo of lumber; but on the flood tide the sea began to break over the wreck and the were obliged to give up for fear of being washed overboard. The Fire Island surfboat filled in the seaway and foundered. At midnight the sea moderated and all hands, 14 surfmen and 5 of schooner crew, abandoned the wreck in the Oak Island surfboat and at 2 a.m. reached the shore. The vessel was lost.

24 December

1955- A Coast Guard helicopter was the first rescue unit to reach a flood disaster scene in northern California. Its crew hoisted 138 persons to safety within 12 hours. The first 58 were made possible because of the light from a small handheld searchlight from positions of peril among chimneys, television antennas, and trees. In all, the Coast Guard assisted Federal, state, and local agencies in saving over 500 persons by helicopters and boats.

25 December

1944- Allied forces liberated and occupied Palompon and Leyte in the Philippines.

1999- Coast Guard helicopters from Air Station Barbers Point rescued balloonists Richard Branson, a British billionaire, American millionaire Steve Fossett, and Per Lindstrand when bad weather forced them to ditch their balloon off Hawaii during their attempt to be the first balloonists to circle the globe.

26 December

1943-Landings at Cape Gloucester were conducted by Coast Guard-manned LST’s 18, 22, 66, 67, 68, 168, 202, 204, and 206. The LST-22 shot down a Japanese "Val" dive bomber while LST-66 was officially credited with downing three enemy aircraft. Two of her crew were killed by near misses. LST-67 brought down one Japanese dive bomber while LST-204 shot down two and the gunners aboard LST-68 claimed another. The LST-202 claimed three enemy planes shot down.

2004-Following a 9.0 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Sumatra, a massive tsunami and tremors struck Indonesia and southern Thailand, killing over 104,000 people in Indonesia and over 5,000 in Thailand. The CGC Munro, deployed as part of Expeditionary Strike Group 5 (ESG-5), along with the other units in the Group, responded. The cutter shuttled more than 80 tons of humanitarian relief supplies from Singapore to the USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD-6), also part of ESG-5, for distribution to the victims of the tsunami.

27 December

1968-In October 1968, the United States Air Force requested additional LORAN-C coverage in Southeast Asia and by 27 December 1968 the Coast Guard had received authorization to proceed with the project. This led to the construction of a number of LORAN sites in the area, including South Vietnam, in an operation code-named Tight Reign.

28 December

1835-The "Dade Battle" occurred when Seminole Indians ambushed and killed Major Francis Langhorne Dade and his Army command while they were on the march on Fort King Road from Fort Brooke to reinforce the troops at Fort King (Ocala). This battle was the immediate cause of the Second Seminole War, a war in which the Revenue Cutter Service played an important role.

1857-The light was first illuminated in the Cape Flattery Lighthouse, located on Tatoosh Island at the entrance to the Straits of Juan de Fuca, Washington. "Because of Indian trouble it was necessary to build a blockhouse on Tatoosh Island before even commencing the construction of the lighthouse. Twenty muskets were stored in the blockhouse, and then the lighthouse work began."

1903-An Executive Order extended the jurisdiction of the Lighthouse Service to the non-contiguous territory of the Hawaiian Islands.

29 December

1897-Congress prohibited the killing of fur seals in the waters of the North Pacific Ocean.

1903-An Executive Order extended the jurisdiction of the Lighthouse Service to Guantanamo, Cuba.

1999- The 578-foot cargo vessel Violetta caught fire in the Houston ship channel. Twenty-three of her crew were rescued. The CGC Point Spencer spent several days fighting the fire on board the vessel.

30 December

1876-The British ship Circassian was destroyed off Bridgehampton, Long Island, following a successful rescue of 49 persons on December 11 by the Life-Saving Service. During later salvage operations in a storm the ship drifted out of the sand, resulting in the loss of 28 of its salvage crew including 12 Shinnecock Indians.

1944-Coast Guard-manned USS FS-367 rescued survivors from USS Maripopsa at San Jose, Mindoro, Philippine Islands.

1958- The 590-foot tanker African Queen ran aground and split in two 10 miles off Ocean City, Maryland. Within two hours 15 helicopters from the nearby Coast Guard, Navy and Marine Corps bases evacuated all 47 crewmen successfully. The Coast Guard Rescue Coordination Center at New York coordinated the operations.

1997- The 493-foot freighter Merchant Patriot began taking on water in stormy seas. Coast Guard air assets from AIRSTA Clearwater arrived on scene and, along with Air Force units, rescued the ship's captain and her 27 crewmen. The vessel, however, remained afloat and was later towed to Freeport, Bahamas.

31 December

1881-At 4 a.m. the patrolman from Station No. 34, Fourth District, New Jersey, discovered a vessel ashore on the south bar at Townsend’s Inlet, NJ about three miles south of the station and a mile offshore. He reported at the station at once and the vessel was boarded by the life-saving crew within an hour and a half. She proved to be the schooner Joseph F. Baker with a crew of eight persons. After endeavoring to work the vessel off with her sails, the keeper made preparations to run an anchor and heave her off. By this time a wrecking vessel came alongside, and her captain arranged with the master of Baker to take his vessel off. The life-saving crew, which had meantime been joined by the keepers of Station 33 and 35, finding they could be of no further service, left the vessel, taking ashore dispatches for the captain. A steamer towed the vessel off the bar.

1891-Act of 1894 that created the office of Captain Commandant of the Revenue Cutter Service also had a provision that created the office of Engineer-in-Chief. Captain Russell John W. Collins, USRCS, was the first RCS Engineer-in-Chief, being appointed to that position on 31 December 1891.

1952- Sinbad, the canine-mascot of the cutter Campbell during World War II, passed away at his last duty station, the Barnegat Lifeboat Station, at the ripe old age of 15. He served on board the cutter throughout World War II and earned his way into Coast Guard legend with his shipboard and liberty antics. To date he is the most decorated mascot to have ever served in the Coast Guard.

1981- The 14 remaining LORAN-A stations closed down at midnight, ending Loran-A coverage, which began during World War II.

1985-Vice President George Bush paid an official visit to the officers and crew of the CGC Steadfast while the cutter was in Nassau, Bahamas. Accompanied by RADM Richard P. Cueroni, commander, 7th District and various other U.S. and Bahamian officials, the vice president officiated at an awards and wreath-laying ceremony in honor of the National Narcotics Border Interdiction System and the joint U.S. Bahamian operations.

Download Plug-Ins

Last Modified 12/23/2008