The origins of the multifaceted U. S. Coast Guard can be traced to four small federal maritime organizations. Although their primary functions varied greatly, they all had a common thread: concern for those in peril upon the sea. This humanitarian characteristic persisted after they all had been brought together into one service. No wonder that the general public most commonly identifies search and rescue (SAR) as the main mission of the Coast Guard.
The U. S. Coast Guard traditionally has celebrated its birthday as 4 August 1790, when Congress approved Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton’s request for ten boats to prevent the loss of revenue by smugglers. As the nation grew, the need arose for more cutters to enforce the customs and other laws. While performing its duties as the only federal seagoing police force, the U. S. Revenue Cutter Service followed the tradition of the sea and rendered assistance to those in distress.
This age-old custom became official policy in 1837, when the Treasury Department ordered the cutters to undertake winter cruising. Thereafter, they patrolled the stormy North Atlantic when sailing vessels most likely would need their assistance. Almost a hundred years later, after the sinking of the passenger liner Titanic with great loss of life in 1912, the service carried on this long tradition of SAR upon the high seas by establishing the International Ice Patrol to warn shipping in the North Atlantic of the location of hazardous icebergs and rendering assistance as needed to endangered ships.
The second predecessor dates back to the construction of the first lighthouse in North America on Brewster Island in Boston harbor in 1716. A year later, the first fog signal, a cannon fired in foul weather, began operations at the same location. Over the centuries, the U. S. Lighthouse Service used all conceivable aids to navigation to mark hazards to shipping and permit a safe passage to port.
There are many examples of keepers rescuing those in distress near their lighthouses. Ida Lewis, probably the most famous female lighthouse keeper, saved 18 to 25 people near the Lime Rock Station at Newport, Rhode Island. One of her more spectacular rescues occurred in March 1869. A sailing boat carrying two soldiers and a boy capsized during a sudden icy rainstorm near the light. The boy drowned, but the soldiers managed to cling to the boat. Ida heard their cries for help and, although sick in bed, responded automatically, not bothering to dress or put on her shoes or coat. Racing to the station’s skiff with her brother, she took the oars—being a highly skilled oarsman—and rowed toward the men. Throughout the rescue, she skillfully kept the skiff steady in the strong wind and rising sea. For this and other rescues—the last performed at the age of 64—Ida Lewis received the Gold Life Saving Medal, the highest award that can be bestowed for saving lives.
At locations offshore, where the technology of the day could not erect fixed structures, the service maintained lightships. Life aboard these special vessels proved not only lonely and isolated—like all light tending duty—but also possessed the additional element of constant danger. All too often, violent storms blew lightships off station and sank them—or else a ship groping its way through foul weather collided with them.
Whenever the occasion arose, the crews aboard these lightships helped people in distress. Those manning the Diamond Shoals lightship during World War I did not hesitate, upon sighting a German U-boat, to radio a warning to nearby shipping. The enemy submarine intercepted the message, ordered the crew into their lifeboats, and then sent the lightship to the bottom.
When steam propulsion began replacing sail, numerous boiler explosions occurred with large losses of life. Public outcry over these disasters prodded the federal government into a more important role in the inspection of ships for safety. As early as 1839, the U. S. Steamboat Inspection Service was founded to perform this function. The tragic loss of more than 1,500 lives, when the grossly overloaded steamer Sultana suffered a boiler explosion in 1865, clearly called for better and stricter regulations. Eventually, the U. S. Steamboat Inspection Service became entrusted with the power to ensure that any steamship carrying passengers would have adequate safety devices and lifesaving equipment.
Of all the predecessors of the Coast Guard, the U. S. Life-Saving Service contributed the most to the service’s image as a lifesaver. The early economy of the United States depended heavily upon maritime trade. In the age of sail, once a ship came upon soundings, she entered her most hazardous period of transit. A vessel close to shore could be blown aground if a sudden squall caught a skipper by surprise. The approach to the busy 19th century New York harbor illustrates this danger.
A sailing ship had to make a long funnel-like approach to the port of New York City, with the coast of New Jersey on the one hand and Long Island, New York, on the other. During a strong northeaster, a vessel could be driven hard upon New Jersey’s beaches, which became a lee shore. Both coasts contained sandbars located some 300 to 800 yards offshore. In a gale, many ships quickly went to pieces upon striking the sandbars and under the relentless pounding of the surf, while few of their crews and passengers could survive the long swim in 40-degree storm- tossed seas. If, by fluke, a sailor managed to stagger ashore in winter, he stood a good chance of perishing due to exposure on the largely uninhabited beaches. On 2 January 1837, for example, the Mexico wrecked upon the New Jersey coast with a loss of 112.
The dangers illustrated on the Long Island-New Jersey coasts could be repeated in varying degrees from Maine to North Carolina. As maritime trade increased, so did the demand for assistance for those wrecked near the shore.
Captains commanding sailing ships, with only the wind for power, were not anxious to put their vessels too close to the surfline, even to assist another ship, as there was a real danger of a sudden wind shift placing them ashore. The best method then in use for helping those wrecked close to the beach was shore-based small boats. The first stations in the United States to specialize in this type of rescue work were organized by volunteer associations, such as the Massachusetts Humane Society, which established the first lifeboat station in 1807 at Cohassett, Massachusetts. The problem, however, was that the stations were located only near busy ports, so large gaps of the coastline remained without any rescue service. One of the reasons for the small number of stations was that the volunteer organizations depended upon donations for their funding.
In 1848, New Jersey Congressman William A. Newell made a successful appeal to Congress for $10,000 to provide “surfboats, rockets, carronades and other necessary apparatus for the better preservation of life and property from shipwrecks on the coasts of New Jersey . . . .” The Massachusetts Humane Society also requested, and received, funds for establishing additional stations. The stations were to be administered by the Treasury Department through the U. S. Revenue Marine Division (later called the U. S. Revenue Cutter Service). Once established, the stations operated like volunteer fire departments, but without any provisions for supervision or inspection.
The system of volunteers continued to expand for six years. When a strong storm swept the East Coast in 1854, many shipwrecked people lost their lives either from lack of stations or because the equipment in the existing ones had not been kept in condition for immediate use. One town, for example, used its lifeboat alternatively as a trough for mixing mortar and a tub for scalding hogs.
Congress was again goaded into appropriating more funds for the stations. This time the funds were used to employ a full-time keeper at each station and hire superintendents to oversee the units along New Jersey and Long Island. The problems continued, however. As one old waterman recalled, the only person on duty was a keeper and if he discovered a vessel in distress, he then had to search about for a volunteer crew. Along the “wilds” of New Jersey’s coast, the keeper could tramp for miles before rounding up a crew and, by that time, the sailors and passengers aboard the wreck could be beyond help.
The American Civil War spelled a period of complete neglect of the stations, a situation which continued until 1870, when another disastrous storm swept the eastern seaboard. Newspaper editors called for reform to “check the terrible fatalities off our dangerous coasts” and revamp the lifesaving system so that mariners could depend upon help in the future.
The year 1871 marked a watershed in the history of shore-based lifesaving stations in this country, for Sumner Increase Kimball, a lawyer from Maine and a Treasury Department employee, was appointed chief of the Revenue Marine Division. Kimball ordered Captain John Faunce of the Revenue Marine Division to investigate the conditions of the lifesaving network. Faunce found that rescue apparatus was “rusty for want of care and some of it ruined,” many keepers were too old, and politics often played a more important role in the selection of keepers than ability.
Armed with Faunce’s report, Kimball set about to put the network in order. He managed to obtain a $200,000 appropriation from Congress and the authority to employ crews for the season when they would be most needed. Kimball next built new stations, established strong and vigorous routines for the men, instituted an inspection program, set physical standards, and ensured that men were hired according to ability and not political influence. In short, he professionalized the organization.
The number of stations grew. In 1874, units were established along the East Coast from Maine to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. The next year, the shore-based rescue stations were further expanded to include the Delaware- Maryland-Virginia peninsula, the Great Lakes, and the coast of Florida. Eventually, the Gulf and West Coasts would be included, as well as one station at Nome, Alaska. In 1878, the network was finally organized as a separate agency of the Treasury Department and Kimball was appointed the General Superintendent of the U. S. Life-Saving Service, a position he held for the entire span of the service.
Stations fell into three classes. At lifesaving units, crews had to be able to perform open-beach launchings; that is, they were required to launch their boats directly from the beach into the surf. Lifeboat stations usually launched their boats from an inclined marine railway. Houses of refuge were located along the South Carolina, Georgia, and eastern Florida coasts. Since sailors cast ashore in this region would not freeze to death, but would need shelter until help arrived, houses with a single keeper were erected. In general, lifesaving stations were located along the isolated areas of the East Coast, while lifeboat stations were found on the Great Lakes and West Coast. The first stations were small 42- by 18-foot structures. As the service grew, so did the size of the units until, by the 1880s, some resembled seaside resort buildings, complete with gingerbread.
The man in charge of a station was officially known as a keeper, but crewmen and locals invariably referred to him as “captain.” Keepers had to be masters in working small boats in rough weather, able-bodied, of good character and habits, literate, and under 45 years of age. Most of the men tended to stay in one station for years and became experts on the surf and weather conditions in their area of operations.
The men who made up the crews, known as surfmen after the East Coast fishermen who launched their boats into the surf, could be no older than 45 and had to be physically fit and experts at handling an oar. Most crewmen listed fisherman or mariner as their previous occupations. The number of men making up a crew was determined by the number of oars needed to pull the largest boat at the station. This would vary from six to eight but, by the turn of the century, some had ten surfmen attached. Surfmen were ranked by their expertise, with the most experienced listed as Number 1 and second in command. The men were employed only during the period when wrecks were most likely to occur, which was known as the “active season.” The keeper was the only man who remained year round at the station.
The U. S. Life-Saving Service had two basic methods for rescuing those wrecked close to the beach: by boat and by a strong line stretched from the shore to the ship. The lifesavers relied on two types of boats. A 700- to 1,000- pound, self-bailing, self-righting, surfboat was pulled by six surfmen using 12- to 18-foot oars. This boat could be pulled on a cart by the men, or by horses, to the beach opposite the wreck and then be launched directly into the sea. Lifeboats—the second type of boat—following a design originated in England, could be fitted with sails for work further offshore. This boat weighed between two and four tons and, at first, some crews viewed it with skepticism because of its bulk and weight. This soon changed and surfmen began to regard it with awe, for it enabled them to push off into storms when the most powerful tugs and steam-craft refused to go out of the harbor.
If the surf was running too high for even small boats, and a ship had wrecked within 600 yards of the beach, the rescuers could establish a strong hawser between the stranded craft and shore by a line-throwing device known as a Lyle gun. This cannon-like device would hurl a projectile with a light messenger line attached out to the ship. The light line would then be used to pull out heavier lines until a strong hawser established a rope bridge to the craft. Then, one of two devices could be attached to the line: a lifecar, which held up to 11 people, or a breeches buoy, which resembled a life preserver ring with canvas pants attached.
When Kimball reorganized the U. S. Life-Saving Service he insisted that crews practice constantly with their equipment and lifesaving routines. Each day of the week, except Sunday, was devoted to practice or cleaning. On Mondays and Thursdays crews drilled with the beach apparatus, including firing the Lyle gun and rigging the breeches buoy. When the district inspectors visited the station, any man slowing the drill to more than the required five minutes could be dismissed. On Tuesdays, the men practiced with their boats, which included capsizing and righting the craft in order to be able to react quickly and automatically if their boat was flung upside down during a rescue. All of this, of course, paid great dividends when the surf was running high.
The last important routine duty of the surfmen was lookout and beach patrol. During the daylight hours, a man was detailed as a lookout to scan the water areas. At night, or when the weather was foul, surfmen then undertook beach patrol. The original plans called for the stations to be built close enough so that a patrol from one station would meet one from the neighboring station. When this proved impossible, the surfmen tramped a certain distance to a designated point—up to five miles—and found a key for a patrol clock to prove the duty had been carried out.
Surfmen bundled up in oilskins, armed with a patrol clock and pouch of Coston signals—flare-like devices to let a grounded ship know it had been spotted or to warn ships standing into danger. Statistics for 1899 amply illustrated the value of this duty, for surfmen warned off 143 ships in danger of going aground. While on patrol in October of the same year, Surfman Rasmus Midgett of the Gull I Shoal Station, in North Carolina, single-handedly performed the almost superhuman rescue of ten people from the wreck of the Priscilla.
A phrase was coined that describes what duty meant in the U. S. Life-Saving Service. When asked about the dangers of putting out to sea in small boats, one old keeper reportedly replied: “The regulations say you have to go out, they don’t say you have to come back.”
An example of the service’s dedication to those in distress occurred on a cold Thanksgiving Day in 1889, when the Calumet ran into one of Lake Michigan’s fierce winter storms and wrecked off the newly established Fort Sheridan in Illinois. This 1,500-ton steamer had run afoul of an anchor on the bottom of the Detroit River and sprung a leak, and the steam pumps keeping the ship afloat finally gave out. To save his crew of 17, the captain ran his vessel aground and ordered the valves in the bottom opened to flood the hold and prevent the ship from going to pieces in the pounding waves.
The Calumet grounded at 2230 and some time passed before a local resident discovered the wreck and wired the nearest lifesaving station, about 12 miles away at Evanston, Illinois. Keeper Lawrence O. Lawson received the telegram shortly after midnight and immediately checked with the local railroad station. A freight train to transport his boat and beach cart would not be available until 0730, but a passenger train could be stopped soon to carry his crew to the site. He next ran through the snow to a livery stable and rented teams of horses to pull the boat, beach equipment, and some of the crew by road, while he and the remainder went by train to survey the situation and be ready to act when the team arrived.
The Calumet lay submerged almost to her main deck, with 70- to 80-foot waves breaking over her, near brush covered bluffs. Once the horse-drawn beach apparatus arrived, about 0700, Keeper Lawson quickly rigged the Lyle gun. After two unsuccessful shots, he realized that the wreck lay well beyond the 600-yard range of the lines. His last recourse was the boat, despite the heavy surf that lashed the foot of the bluff, if the sailors were to be saved. Aided by about 50 soldiers from the Sixth U. S. Infantry and some civilians, the lifesavers cut brush and wrestled the boat down the bluff to the beach.
Working waist-deep in the icy water, the soldiers and civilians managed to get the boat into position, slightly windward of the wreck and facing lakeward. Then, as the next wave lifted the boat, they gave a mighty push, while the lifesavers sprang to their places at the oars. An immense breaker struck as the boat crossed the inner bar, almost throwing Lawson overboard from his position at the stern sweep oar and, before he could recover himself, a second wave dashed over the boat and filled it to the thwarts. Lawson ordered the stroke oarsman to ply the bailing bucket, while the five other lifesavers pulled at their oars to control the almost unmanageable boat until it was freed of water and beyond the heaviest line of surf. By this time, the strong current had driven the boat far to the leeward, giving them a long and hard pull directly into the gale.
Lawson stood in the stern, facing the full brunt of the storm and exhorting his crew. The 22-degree below freezing temperature encased the crew’s clothing, oars, and oarlocks with a glaze of ice. Despite these handicaps, the lifesavers stuck to their oars and eventually reached the ice-shrouded Calumet.
Once six passengers had been lowered by rope—all the boat could carry—the lifesavers bent to their oars and rowed shoreward. The awaiting soldiers and civilians rushed them to a blazing bonfire and gave them hot coffee. Two more times, the lifesavers beat their way through the towering, freezing waves until all 18 sailors on the steamer were safely ashore.
By the time that they reached shore on their last trip, the lifesavers were in almost as bad a plight as the men they had saved, being so numb they could scarcely walk. For their devotion to duty, the entire lifesaving crew— consisting of students from what is now Northwestern University, upon whose property the lifesaving station was sited—received the Gold Life Saving Medal.
The golden age of the U. S. Life-Saving Service stretched from 1871 to 1881—the years of its largest growth and some of its greatest rescues. As the 20th century neared, the service began to face major problems, being unequipped to handle the changes brought about by technology. With better ship construction and navigational equipment, larger ships were no longer at the mercy of the wind and less likely to run aground. Shortly after the turn of the century, the number of gasoline-powered recreational craft increased rapidly. During the period from 1905 to 1915, the number of cases involving this type of craft increased 58%. Keeper Henry Cleary of the Marquette, Michigan, station tested a motor lifeboat and, by 1905, 12 such boats operated within the service. This was, however, too little too late. The Life-Saving Service was essentially set up to rescue large ships with oar powered boats, and its procedures were fast enough for this type of duty, but not fast enough for large numbers of small gasoline-driven craft.
Other problems complicated the picture. The service had no retirement system, its crews grew old, and the low pay made it difficult to attract young men. In 1914, the heads of the U. S. Revenue Cutter and the U. S. Life- Saving services both agreed that an amalgamation of the two organizations was in their best interests and that of the nation. On 28 January 1915, the two were merged to form the U. S. Coast Guard.
The U. S. Life-Saving Service was a noble institution with a far-reaching legacy. Robert F. Bennett, a leading authority on the service, writes that in its 44 years of existence, “28,121 vessels and 178,741 persons became involved with its services,” and only “1,455 individuals lost their lives while exposed within the scope of Life- Saving Service operations.” One can find little fault with Kimball’s routine. The emphasis on inspections, practice with rescue equipment, and constant state of readiness are still in force today. This and the dedication to help those in distress—no matter what the weather—are the greatest legacies of the service and the very foundation of the U. S. Coast Guard’s reputation in SAR.
The change to a new name did not mean a change in routine or work. On 11 August 1918, at the height of World War I, the lookout at the Nag’s Head, North Carolina, station spotted a British tanker, the Mirlo, that had been hit by a torpedo. The shout of the lookout began a rescue, led by John Allen Midgett, that has become a legend in the Coast Guard.
The rescuers tried to launch their boat into a heavy northeast sea that caused the craft to be tossed back upon the beach and the crew washed away from the oars time after time. Undaunted, the men continued the struggle to launch their boat. The lifesavers finally succeeded in getting beyond the surfline and, upon approaching the tanker, they saw the sea ablaze with gasoline and oil, with flames leaping 500 feet into the air. Midgett skillfully worked his boat through the flames, and the Coast Guardsmen made four trips through the burning sea to bring 42 sailors to safety. For their actions, the crew of the Nag’s Head Station earned the Gold Life Saving Medal, plus other awards from the British government.
As Midgett’s feat demonstrates, even during wartime, Coast Guardsmen pushed out into the surf to perform their traditional duty of search and rescue. On the other side of the continent, in the Humboldt Bay region of Northern California, another example occurred 23 years later that illustrates a trait that has always been a part of the service: improvisation and a dedication to help others no matter what obstacles lie in the way.
At 2035 on 20 December 1941, the section patrol base commander received information that a tanker, the Emidio, had been attacked by a Japanese submarine near the Eel River, some 11 miles southwest from the Humboldt Bay Coast Guard Station. A navy pilot spotted the torpedo’s wake and bombed the area where he thought the submarine should be lying, but the explosives failed to detonate. The pilot managed to raise the Emidio’s lifeboats on the radio and found out that the boats held 52 men, with two men killed and one dying. The Coast Guard cutter Shawnee at Humboldt Bay received orders to prepare to get under way.
Chief Boatswain’s Mate Gardner J. Churchill, in charge of the Humboldt Bay Station, notified the section patrol base commander that conditions at the harbor’s entrance bar were too hazardous for the cutter to attempt the crossing. Besides rain squalls, rough surf, and visibility no greater than 200 yards, all aids to navigation had been blacked out due to the fear of a Japanese invasion—less than two weeks had elapsed since the attack on Pearl Harbor. Although commercial pilots refused to operate in such conditions, Churchill offered to take the station’s 36-foot motor lifeboat out instead. The section base commander refused to approve, but the chief set out anyway, feeling men in distress needed assistance. At 0105 on 21 December, CG-364468, with five Coast Guardsmen aboard, crossed the entrance bar and set course to the southwest at eight knots.
Two hours later the bow lookout reported a large unidentified object looming on the port bow, which Churchill later described as “long, low, and rakish without masts, stack, or housing, and bow pointed in a northerly direction.” The chief used a signal light in an attempt to establish the identification of the craft, but received no reply. Churchill then, becoming a little uneasy, tried to maneuver away from the unidentified craft, only to find it now following the lifeboat. When it became evident that the mysterious vessel intended to ram the Coast Guard boat and had closed to within 50 yards, the Coast Guardsman Waited until the stem of his boat started to rise with the sea and then put the wheel over hard right and, aided by the large seas, shifted his course radically, knowing it was impossible for the larger craft to perform the same type of course change. The Coast Guard crew observed a silhouetted view of the passing craft and identified it as a submarine, even though positive identification was impossible due to darkness and sea conditions.
Undaunted, Churchill and his crew continued to the location of the stricken tanker. Surprisingly, the Emidio had not yet sunk, but all the lifeboats were gone by the time the Coast Guard 36-footer arrived on scene. Churchill set up a search pattern in the area to check for any possible survivors. At 0800 a navy patrol aircraft ordered the lifeboat back to Humboldt Bay. Later it was learned that the Emidio's boats had made it to the Blunts Reef Lightship.
Churchill and his crew proceeded slowly back to their station because of heavy seas. When only four miles from the Emidio, a periscope was spotted some 600 yards from the lifeboat. Churchill immediately changed course, but so did the scope and it followed for a short distance before disappearing. The chief again resumed his base course. Once again, the periscope was spotted and it followed the lifeboat at the same speed and relative position for at least five minutes and then disappeared. This was the last sight-ing, and the Coast Guard boat was finally able to arrive at Humboldt Bay at 1235, some 11 hours after first setting out to sea. Churchill later expressed surprise that the submarine had not fired on him.
Although technology had contributed to the demise of the U. S. Life-Saving Service, it also changed the nature of search and rescue for the better. New lifeboats and cutters, designed for speed and longer cruising, permitted a quicker response to a call of distress. But the most drastic transformation in the SAR mission resulted from the introduction of aircraft into the Coast Guard’s inventory, especially the development of the helicopter as a rescue tool. Interestingly enough, the service actually served as the midwife at the birth of the airplane. The Wright brothers would never have gotten their airplane aloft at Kitty Hawk on 17 December 1903 without the assistance of the life- savers at the nearby Kill Devil Hill Station, who served as their ground crew.
The earliest beginnings of aviation in the Coast Guard can be traced back to lieutenants Elmer F. Stone and Norman B. Hall and their commanding officer, Captain R. M. Chiswell, skipper of the cutter Onondaga. These pioneers conceived a plan as early as 1915 for coordinated air patrols to search for disabled schooners along the Atlantic coast. Using a borrowed plane, the lieutenants conducted an experiment that proved so successful that they received official approval to enter naval flight training. Lieutenant Stone became the first official Coast Guard pilot and later flew as a pilot on the Navy’s historic NC-4 flying boat that made the first Atlantic crossing by air in 1919.
During World War I, four other Coast Guard aviators manned the four Curtiss R-6 float planes attached to the Navy cruiser USS Huntington (ACR-5). The service’s first air station was established in 1920 at Morehead City in North Carolina. The second one was started in 1925 at Gloucester, Massachusetts. To better perform its SAR mission, in 1926 the Coast Guard acquired Loening OL-5 amphibians, the first aircraft specifically designed for the service.
By 1932, the “flying lifeboats,” PJ-ls, were in operation, being named for the stars most important to navigation. Although designed to take off and land at sea, these early amphibians could do so only when sea conditions were practically ideal.
While flying a PJ-1 in January 1933, Lieutenant Commander Carl C. von Paulsen from the Miami Air Station spotted a boy in a skiff drifting far out to sea. Since hours would pass before a surface rescue craft could reach the scene, he decided to make an open sea landing, despite the 10-foot seas. While landing, the Coast Guard aviator lost his left wing tip. He picked up the boy and managed to get his plane sky-borne again, but the left wing’s plywood covering began peeling off, forcing him to set the airplane down once again, this time suffering hull damage. Unable to taxi ashore because of the loss of the float, the PJ-1 crew rigged a sea anchor and waited. The amphibian eventually drifted into the surf, being badly damaged on the beach. Since neither the boy nor any of the crew suffered injuries, von Paulsen and his crew earned the Gold Life Saving Medal for their successful rescue.
The development of the helicopter became one of the most important aspects in improving SAR. As early as 20 April 1942, the Coast Guard demonstrated the new craft at its Brooklyn Air Station. Leading the effort to develop the new rotary wing aircraft was Lieutenant Commander Frank A. Erickson, executive officer of the station. He recommended to the Commandant of the U. S. Coast Guard that platforms be attached to ships so that helicopters could then be used as antisubmarine weapons. Eventually the steamer General Cobb was acquired by the Coast Guard and rigged with a flight deck to perform tests. On 29 June 1944, Erickson touched down on the Cobb’s flight deck to start shipboard use of the aircraft. All American and British helicopter pilots during the war were trained by the Coast Guard at its air station in Brooklyn.
The Coast Guard duly noted the military capabilities of this new aircraft, but it was its outstanding potential for use in SAR that stood out. One of the more unusual cases in the early days of the craft’s history took place when a Royal Canadian Air Force plane crashed in a remote region of Labrador. Rescue attempts by ski planes proved frustrating: one crashed on landing and another was trapped on the ground after first evacuating two injured men and returning for another attempt. The Canadians requested helicopter assistance from the U. S. Coast Guard. An HNS-1, the smallest craft available at Brooklyn Air Station, was disassembled and loaded aboard a C-54 transport, which was then flown to Goose Bay, Labrador. The HNS-1 then was reassembled and Lieutenant August Kleisch flew it 150 miles to a weather station, and thence 35 additional miles to the wreck site. Over the next two days, operating only in daylight hours, all of the downed airmen were brought out to safety.
The ability of helicopters to perform under extreme conditions was put to the test again on 14 March 1987. Approximately 220 miles off the New Jersey coast, the captain of the Soviet ship Komsomolets Kirgizzi radioed a distress call. The 482-foot freighter, carrying a cargo of bagged flour, was listing at a dangerous 26 degrees and being battered by 20-foot seas. The captain, fearing the ship was lost, requested immediate evacuation of his crew. The U. S. Coast Guard operations center in New York City dispatched a C-130 aircraft from Coast Guard Air Station Elizabeth City, North Carolina, to make the initial on-scene contact with the ship. The cutter Tamaroa, en route to New Hampshire, was diverted and Coast Guard Air Station Cape Cod, Massachusetts, was ordered to launch three H-3F helicopters, with the Elizabeth City station providing a fourth chopper.
The C-130 arrived on the scene at 1025 and immediately requested that another plane be dispatched with additional survival gear that could be dropped to the freighter. The first H-3 to arrive, piloted by Lieutenant Keith Comer, found the entire port side of the ship awash. Fighting a 55-knot wind, Comer hovered over the fantail of the crippled ship. It took 15 minutes to find a space clear enough on the listing ship to place the hoist basket. Then, because of the real possibility of the ship sinking at any minute, two Soviet crewmen at a time were hoisted aboard the helicopter instead of the normal one-at-a-time method. Once loaded, the helicopter departed for Atlantic City.
The next helicopter hoisted 16 more crewmen, as the ship appeared ready to go down at any moment. As it broke off, the third H-3 began to maneuver to the Kirgizzi’s stem. By this time the ship had a 40 degree list. The rescue was made doubly hard because of obstructions on deck and the wind knocking the basket around. The third helicopter took off the remaining six crewmen and the captain. The helicopter from Elizabeth City, having arrived too late to assist, returned to base. Each of the three H-3s involved in the rescue had spent about four hours in the air and had covered more than 500 miles.
In recognition of their work, President Ronald Reagan presented Air Medals to the pilots, copilots, and flight mechanics on each of the H-3s involved in the rescue in ceremonies at the White House, calling the rescue “one of the most dramatic . . . missions in the history of the Coast Guard.”
Technology also helped in producing better cutters for SAR on the high seas. As early as 1843, the U. S. Revenue Cutter Service began to switch from sail to steam and the service’s inventory kept pace with the ship design of the day. In the 1930s, the Coast Guard obtained a number of 327-foot cutters, known as the Secretary Class—after former Secretaries of the Treasury. The ships, designed by Frederick Hunnelwell, were long-legged, with raked bows, cruiser stems, and raised bulwarks fore and aft. The design also called for the cutter to carry aircraft. Their durability is illustrated by the fact that five of them were nearly 50 years old when decommissioned.
The next major development in SAR cutters designed for work on the high seas was in the 1960s. The 210-foot medium endurance cutters made their appearance in 1964 and, in 1967, the cutter Hamilton inaugurated the new high endurance class. The 378-foot cutters have a top speed of 29 knots and can carry helicopters. The high endurance cutters, like all Coast Guard craft, have a multimission capability. The Chase, for example, while conducting a 64-day patrol in 1981 against the smuggling of illegal Haitians into this country, steamed some 13,500 miles, assisted 42 people on four SAR cases, and arrested 21 in connection with three seizures. Thus, as technology has advanced, the Coast Guard has been able to greatly improve its SAR capabilities on the high seas.
The Coast Guard’s SAR efforts improved in other ways. During World War II, two Coast Guard cutters were stationed at given locations to provide much-needed weather information in the Atlantic. The number of ocean stations grew until, by 1955, there were four in the Atlantic and two in the Pacific. These floating weather platforms also provided a convenient location to ditch for any propeller-driven transoceanic flight that might run into problems after passing the point of no return. On 14 October 1947, the cutter Bibb, while on ocean station “Charlie”—midway between Ireland and Newfoundland—rescued all 69 passengers and crew aboard the ditched Bermuda Sky Queen. The cutter Pontchartrain, on ocean station “November”—between Hawaii and San Francisco—rescued 31 passengers and crew from a ditched Pan American flight on 16 October 1956. Jet aircraft, satellites, and other improvements in aircraft range and weather gathering methods spelled the end of ocean stations, however; the last was disestablished in 1977.
In 1958, the Coast Guard’s Automated Merchant Vessel Report System (AMVER)—a computerized track of merchant vessels—became operational. Ships, on a volunteer basis, report to AMVER with their sailing routes and other information, such as whether they have a doctor aboard. The messages are updated during the voyage. If there is an emergency far out to sea, AMVER can tell Coast Guardsmen where the nearest ship is located to the distress. AMVER, in short, allows SAR coordination to be carried out on the high seas quickly and efficiently.
To help Coast Guardsmen quickly learn the needed techniques of today, the service has two unique schools. The Search and Rescue School is operated at the Coast Guard’s training center at Yorktown, Virginia. Here students learn the skills needed to plan, organize, and conduct both large and small-scale searches. At Cape Disappointment, Washington, the Coast Guard conducts the National Motor Lifeboat School. Chosen for its location near the Columbia River Bar, where high surf is the norm, prospective coxswains from all over the United States come here to train.
The U. S. Coast Guard’s tradition of humanitarian service is as strong today as it was in 1790. The current technologically superior cutters, lifeboats, aircraft, and other means of promoting safety at sea make it possible for present day Coast Guardsmen to surpass the heroic efforts of their illustrious predecessors.
Future prospects for the service’s SAR mission appear bright if the past is any guide. Throughout a 200-year-old tradition of service above and beyond the call of duty, the Coast Guard and its predecessors have successfully adapted equipment, techniques, practices, and doctrine to meet the challenges of a rapidly developing advanced technological world. Undoubtedly, the men and women of the future service will do the same.