American Coastal Rescue Craft

Provides detailed history and technical design information on each and every type of small rescue craft ever used by the United States Life-Saving Service and United States Coast Guard.

Rescue at Sea is both a reference and a general interest book that deals with all elements of organised coastal lifesaving and rescue at sea from the earliest times to the present day. Since mankind first took to the sea in boats the waters have claimed a heavy toll. For many centuries there were no organised efforts to offer assistance to shipwrecked mariners, and hapless victims died in appalling conditions within sight and sound of horrified bystanders ashore. The earliest known attempts at rescue and recovery were undertaken in China where the use of river lifeboats was first recorded in 1708. It would be more than 50 years before such organised humanitarian efforts emerged in Europe but in 1767 the 'Institution for the Recovery of Drowned Persons' was established in The Netherlands while in 1774 the English took up the cause with the establishment of the 'Royal Humane Society'. From these early beginnings came such organisations as the Shipwreck Institution (UK), the Société Humaine de Boulogne (France), the Asilo dos Naufragos (Portugal) and The Massachusetts Humane Society (USA). The middle history (1850s to 1950s) of lifesaving at sea is well documented and read but here, for the first time, the whole story, form the 1700s to 2003, is presented in one volume that encompasses the history of coastal lifesaving, the evolution of coastal rescue craft, and the development of a world-wide network of rescue services. Of particular significance is the comprehensive profiling of the most prominent of today's sea rescue organisations around the world from the Åland Islands to Uruguay. Canadian Coast Guard coxswain Clayton Evans has spent a decade researching, sourcing and bringing together material from all over the world to create a reference book like none other that successfully handles both the wonders of modern lifeboat technology and the emotive stories of heroism and tragedy from all eras.

Like other groups with dangerous occupations, mariners have developed a close-knit culture bound by loss and memory. Death regularly disrupts the fabric of this culture and necessitates actions designed to mend its social structure. From the ritual of burying a body at sea to the creation of memorials to honor the missing, these events tell us a great deal about how sailors see their world. Based on a study of more than 2,100 gravestones and monuments in North America and the United Kingdom erected between the seventeenth and late twentieth centuries, David Stewart expands the use of nautical archaeology into terrestrial environments. He focuses on those who make their living at sea--one of the world's oldest and most dangerous occupations--to examine their distinct folkloric traditions, beliefs, and customs regarding death, loss, and remembrance.

Passamaquoddy Bay lies between Maine and New Brunswick at the mouth of the St. Croix River. Most of it (including Campobello Island) is within Canada, but the Maine town of Lubec lies at the bay's entrance. Rich in beaver pelts, fish, and timber, the area was a famous smuggling center after the American Revolution. Joshua Smith examines the reasons for smuggling in this area and how three conflicts in early republic history--the 1809 Flour War, the War of 1812, and the 1820 Plaster War--reveal smuggling's relationship to crime, borderlands, and the transition from mercantilism to capitalism. Smith astutely interprets smuggling as created and provoked by government efforts to maintain and regulate borders. In 1793 British and American negotiators framed a vague new boundary meant to demarcate the lingering British empire in North America (Canada) from the new American Republic. Officials insisted that an abstract line now divided local peoples on either side of Passamaquoddy Bay. Merely by persisting in trade across the newly demarcated national boundary, people violated the new laws. As smugglers, they defied both the British and American efforts to restrict and regulate commerce. Consequently, local resistance and national authorities engaged in a continuous battle for four decades. Smith treats the Passamaquoddy Bay smuggling as more than a local episode of antiquarian interest. Indeed, he crafts a local case study to illuminate a widespread phenomenon in early modern Europe and the Americas. A volume in the series New Perspectives on Maritime History and Nautical Archaeology, edited by James C. Bradford and Gene Allen Smith

One of the Coast Guard’s great heroes and the secret he kept hidden "This is a book of adventure that tells how one man shaped the Alaskan frontier at a crucial time in American history."--Vincent William Patton, Master Chief Petty Officer of the Coast Guard, retired "Diligent research and precise writing reveal the realities of race relations in nineteenth-century America, as well as the dangers, loneliness, and complex relationships of life at sea in that era."--Bernard C. Nalty, author of Strength for the Fight: A History of Black Americans in the Military In the late 1880s, many lives in northern and western maritime Alaska rested in the capable hands of Michael A. Healy (1839-1904), through his service to the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service. Healy arrested lawbreakers, put down mutinies aboard merchant ships, fought the smuggling of illegal liquor and firearms, rescued shipwrecked sailors from a harsh and unforgiving environment, brought medical aid to isolated villages, prevented the wholesale slaughter of marine wildlife, and explored unknown waters and lands. Captain Healy's dramatic feats in the far north were so widely reported that a New York newspaper once declared him the "most famous man in America." But Healy hid a secret that contributed to his legacy as a lonely, tragic figure. In 1896, Healy was brought to trial on charges ranging from conduct unbecoming an officer to endangerment of his vessel for reason of intoxication. As punishment, he was put ashore on half pay with no command and dropped to the bottom of the Captain's list. Eventually, he again rose to his former high position in the service by the time of his death in 1904. Sixty-seven years later, in 1971, the U.S. Coast Guard learned that Healy was born a slave in Georgia who ran away to sea at age fifteen and spent the rest of his life passing for white. This is the rare biography that encompasses both sea adventure and the height of human achievement against all odds.

The US Coast Guard Training Center at Cape May tells the story of the Center from Navy Section Base 9 to the only recruit training center in the US. Commissioned as Navy Section Base 9 in 1917, the US Coast Guard Training Center at Cape May stands on the site of a former amusement park that bordered the Atlantic Ocean a few miles east of Cape May in southern New Jersey. Dirigibles, submarines, and minesweepers were based here during World War I. Because of its proximity to the ocean and Delaware Bay, the base was used by Coast Guard patrol boats and cutters to chase rumrunners during Prohibition in the 1920s. An airfield was established adjacent to the base in 1926, and in 1940, both combined to become Naval Air Station Cape May. The station protected the coast line from German U-boats during World War II. The Coast Guard took over the facility in 1946, and in 1948, the base became the only recruit training center in the country, today graduating more than 4,000 recruits per year.

One of the untold stories of World War II is the guarding of Greenland and its coastal waters, where the first U.S. capture of an enemy ship took place. For six months in 1942 and against standing orders of the time, Thaddeus Nowakowski (now Novak) kept a personal diary of his service on patrol in the North Atlantic. Supplemented by photos from his last surviving shipmates, Novak’s diary fills a void in the story of American sailors at war in the North Atlantic. It is the only known diary of an enlisted Coast Guard sailor to emerge from WWII.

Today USS Pampanito is a tourist destination. During WWII the submarine earned six battle stars, sank six Japanese ships, damaged four others, and rescued seventy-three British and Australian POWs from the South China Sea. Astonishingly, this rescue happened three days after she sank one of the transport ships on which the Allied prisoners were being ferried to Japan. The chain of events that led to this rescue is truly remarkable. Captured in 1942, forced to spend fifteen months constructing the Burma-Thai Railroad, and then loaded onto floating concentration camps--hellships, as they were called--the prisoners were in the wrong place at the wrong time when Pampanito and her wolf pack attacked a Japanese convoy. Returning to the coordinates a few days later, the crew was astonished to discover survivors in the water from among the more than 2,200 prisoners who had been aboard the Japanese ships. Even more remarkable is that the officers and crew of Pampanito, after picking up these men (the Lucky 73), thought to have them record their thoughts and experiences while the events were still fresh in their minds, before returning to port. While working as curator for Pampanito, Aldona Sendzikas discovered these documents and began an odyssey of tracking down one of the most incredible rescue stories of the Pacific War.