For over two hundred years ships have sailed along the coasts of Delaware to the Chesapeake Bay to the low-lying sandy shores of Georgia. Within this area, lies a stretch of coastline that was greatly feared by even the most seasoned sailors for the hundreds of wrecks on its shores: the Outer Banks of North Carolina, called the "Graveyard of the Atlantic." In the late 1700’s, the United States’ government realized the hazards of sailing along the southeast Atlantic and formed four small maritime organizations that were devoted to law enforcement, rescue, and safety for those who ventured out onto the sea. In time, these four services were combined into what is now the U.S. Coast Guard.
Prior to the American Revolution, the colonists balked at what they felt were undue taxes imposed upon goods entering North America. One of the ways to escape this oppressive tariff was by smuggling. Once open war between England and the colonies began, smugglers were considered patriots by robbing King George of his badly needed revenue. When the war was over however, the new nation found itself in a quandary Congress badly needed revenue and one of the ways to raise this money was by placing tariffs on imported goods. Many smugglers saw little difference between the tax imposed by King George and the Congress of the United States, so they continued their illegal trade. On April 23, 1790, Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury presented a bill to Congress calling for the establishment of a United States Revenue Marine Service. The minuscule service, consisting of only ten small cutters, would help prevent the loss of badly needed revenue. Hamilton also wished the masters to be granted naval commissions, but as there was no U.S. Navy at the time, the men became "officers of the customs." Upon Congressional approval of the plan on August 4, 1790, the first ten cutters were constructed and then stationed at strategic locations along the Atlantic sea coast. The cutters were built to be fast to overtake ships at sea; sturdy enough to sail off the coast and endure foul weather; and shallow so they could pursue ships up rivers. In the Southeast, the Virginia at Norfolk,, Virginia, and the Active, at Baltimore, Maryland, were to patrol "Chesapeake Bay and the coasts adjacent to it." the Diligence sailed from Wilmington, North Carolina, and patrolled the "sounds & coasts of that state." The South Carolina, at Charleston, worked the Atlantic coastline of her namesake state, while the Eagle, at Savannah, Georgia, patrolled Georgia’s coastal region. None of the cutters were over forty-eight feet in length.
The cutters diligently followed their orders to board and check manifests and seized those ships engaged in smuggling. One historian of the early years of this nation noted that the "Service probably accounted for some of the post 1792 increase in the recorded trade of the nation, for the [S]ervice did help to prevent smuggling and did help to collect the revenue."
It was not long before other duties were assigned to the cutters. In 1794, for example, Baltimore officials feared yellow fever might be brought into the city via vessels returning from the West Indies and requested help in establishing a quarantine. The Active steadfastly enforced the quarantine law. Shortly after, the Service also took on its first military duty when, during the Quasi-War with France (1797-1801) revenue cutters assisted the newly created U.S. Navy fight the French. In the war, American ships captured twenty ships flying the French flag. Of these, sixteen ships were taken by the revenue cutters unaided and they assisted in the capture of two more. The use of the small cutters during the Quasi-war marked the beginning of the tradition of military service for the U. S. Coast Guard.
In addition to law enforcement and military duties, the Service also played a humanitarian role. In 1836, the cutters were ordered to undertake "winter cruising" in the stormy Atlantic, when sailing ships were most likely to be in need of assistance. The tradition of humanitarian help was a strong one throughout the years. On August 1, 1892, for example, Seaman George Nobles, on board the cutter Morrill, saw a boy fall into the water near the Customs House at Charleston, South Carolina. Nobles dove repeatedly to locate the boy, who had become entangled in debris on the bottom. His successful saving of the boy’s life earned him the Gold Life-Saving Medal, the highest award for lifesaving.
The American Civil War saw the Service again engaged in military operations. The Harriet Lane had the distinction of firing the first naval shot of the war in April 1861 and four months later, in August 1861, she participated in the first joint Federal amphibious operation. The object of the engagement was to capture the strategic Confederate forts at Hatteras Inlet, North Carolina, a vital opening for Rebel privateers and blockade runners. The most unusual cutter of the Service during the War-Between-the-States was the Naugatuck. The ship was an ironclad semi-submersible, which could be ballasted to sink almost three feet. Thus ballasted, she would engage the enemy with only a Parrott gun mounted on her armored turret above the water. The Naugatuck also led a naval assault up the James River to shell the Rebel capital, Richmond, Virginia, into submission. She was engaged in a four hour long duel between a Confederate battery on Drewry’s Bluff. The cutter’s Parrott gun exploded, but she "continued in her position during the entire action, fighting her broadside guns."
By the 1870s, as technology continued to favor steam over sail, it became evident to some far-seeing officials within the Service and the Treasury Department, that young officers needed to be exposed to formal training in both ships and technology. Prior to this time, officers usually had merchant marine or Navy experience. Typically, they came into the Revenue Cutter Service and worked their way up to Captain by serving on numerous cutters. At first glance, this may seem the ideal method of obtaining well-qualified men for sea duty. The method, however, did have one shortcoming. Officers were appointed to their posts by political appointees. Captains George W Moore, James H. Merryman, and John A. Henriques urged Sumner I. Kimball, then civilian head of the Revenue Marine Division in the Treasury Department, to establish a School of Instruction for officers. Thus, future officers were removed from the political arena. Kimball was enthusiastic and on July 31, 1876, an act was passed to fill vacancies with cadets in the rank of Third Lieutenant. In 1877, the cutter Dobbin was selected as a floating school for Service cadets. Cruising the Atlantic in the summers and wintering at New Bedford, Massachusetts, cadets spent two years of instruction on board the ship.
After some delays, the School of Instruction, with the cutter Chase now the training ship, was moved to Arundel Cove in Curtis Bay, Maryland, located just south of Baltimore. Arundel Cove was the Service’s shipyard facility, established in 1899 by LT. John C. Moore. In 1906, the first permanent dormitory ashore was built for cadets at Arundel Cove. The School of Instruction continued to grow, as did the industrial work at the Cove. Eventually, Arundel Cove became the Coast Guard Yard. The school remained, until in 1910, the entire school was moved to Fort Trumbull, CT. In time, the School of Instruction would become the U.S. Coast Guard Academy at New London, Connecticut. By the second decade of the twentieth century, the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service had gained a reputation among the United States’ maritime community as the enforcer of federal laws. It was also known as an organization that responded quickly to the nation’s military needs, provided trained professional officers, and profoundly dedicated to humanitarian efforts. Yet even these honors would not deter the tremendous changes that would take place in the Service’s near future.
The U.S. Lighthouse Service was the next maritime organization that would eventually make up the modern day U.S. Coast Guard. The Lighthouse Service in the Southeastern Region came about because of the importance of maritime trade. Mariners, approaching their destinations, needed aids to navigation in order to safely make port. The first lighthouse was established in 1716 in Boston Harbor.
The Southeastern coastline of the United States required a different type of light structure than in New England. The region’s low, sandy beaches caused the Service to build taller lighthouses so that mariners could see them sufficiently far at sea. Although the records are somewhat hazy, the first lighthouse in the region is believed to have been established at Tybee Island, Georgia, in 1748. One other type of light was required in the region, again, due to the special topography of the area. The Chesapeake Bay has slow moving currents, a soft bottom, and is protected from the full force of the sea. A heavy lighthouse would sink in this region, thus the screw-pile lighthouse was developed and built along the Chesapeake's shores. The structure has a lightweight wooden building on iron stilts, the legs of which are tipped with screw-like flanges. The legs are turned instead of pounded into the bottom sand or mud. In the late 1800s as many as 100 screw-pile lights were in service, mostly in the Carolina Sounds and the Chesapeake Bay, but a few others were scattered along the Gulf of Mexico. The Lighthouse Service also designed an exposed, screw-pile lighthouse specifically for the Florida Keys.
The life of a lighthouse keeper, contrary to myth and legend, was far from romantic. The technology of the day used the simplest equipment to both provide illumination and to keep costs low. Oil from whales, lard, rapeseed and, finally, petroleum products were used in succession throughout the nineteenth century for illuminates. The flame for the light itself was provided by a lamp with a wick. The duty of the keeper was to insure that the lens was soot-free and the wick well trimmed, as a poorly trimmed wick provided a very poor light. The constant attention to wicks led lighthouse keepers to earn the nickname "wickie." In actuality, the elemental technology of the nineteenth century caused wickies to spend long, lonesome nights monitoring a lamp. Perhaps this is one of the most significant reasons that former keepers when asked to describe their lives, always comment on their isolation and loneliness.
The picture of the lighthouse keeper that leaps into most imaginations is that of an old grizzled "salt" who ‘‘swallowed the anchor,’’ and has come ashore to live. There is some truth to this mental image; many keepers were indeed former mariners. There were, however, a great deal of women who carried on the roles of the Service. Some wives served as assistant keepers and, according to F Ross Holland, one of this country’s leading authorities on lighthouses, many women in the nineteenth century were the principal keepers. One of the more unusual stories of women at lights concerns Elba Island on the Savannah River.
Florence Martus was the sister of George Martus, who worked the range lights at the mouth of the Savannah River. In 1887, the legend goes, a young Navy lieutenant from Massachusetts fell in love with eighteen-year-old Florence. As the years passed and he did not return, she began to wave a handkerchief, given to her by the officer, at all the ships passing the island with the hope that some sailor would tell her lover that Florence still cared. At night she waved a lantern. Years later, Florence revealed that the story was just a romantic legend. She started to wave at the passing ships, always accompanied by a pet dog, as a way to greet lonely sailors either returning to port or setting out again to sea. Still, the "waving girl of the Savannah River" was anxiously looked for by appreciative seamen as they passed the island. For forty-four years Florence continued her greetings. Today, on the Savannah waterfront, a statue of Florence Martus, in her pose of greeting ships, is dedicated to her memory.
While lighthouse duty was lonely, life on lightships was both lonely and dangerous. Lightships were located at areas where 19th Century technology could not build a light structure. Crews on the vessels faced two dangers: storms that could blow the ship off station, and perhaps even capsize it, and risked possible collision by another ship making its way through foul weather. Diamond Shoals Lightship, thirteen miles east southeast of Cape Hatteras Light, for example, during the period from June 1824 to August 1827, had her moorings snapped three times in storms. During the last storm of August 1827, she was driven ashore six miles from Ocracoke Inlet.
On August 6, 1918, during World War I, the Diamond Shoals Lightship was sunk, but not as a result of nature. A German submarine was spotted attacking a merchant ship. The radio operator on board the lightship bravely radioed a warning to all shipping in the area. The U-boat picked up the transmission and the U-boat’s commander turned his attention to the defenseless target. Fortunately, the light vessel’s crew was given time to abandon ship before she was sunk.
By the 1930s, the U. S. Lighthouse Service claimed up to fifty-eight lighthouses, a number of lightships, and an additional fleet of ships, called tenders, operating on rivers and along the Atlantic coast.
The modern day U.S. Coast Guard has a well deserved reputation for lifesaving. The organization that is probably most responsible for this reputation was the U.S. Life-Saving Service.
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