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Building blocks of CG civilians today The First Congress of the United States was less than four months old when, on Aug. 7, 1789, it appropriated funds for the necessary support, maintenance and repairs of all lighthouses, beacons, buoys and public piers ... within any bay, inlet, harbor or port of the United States, for rendering the navigation thereof easy and safe. A few dozen lighthouses and other illuminated beacons, many of them dating from colonial times, then became the federal governments first public works projects. The men and women who kept the lights burning were the first professional ancestors of the modern Coast Guards civilian employees. The Coast Guards genealogy is long and complicated. The trunk of its family tree is the Revenue Cutter Service, a quasi-military organization founded in 1790. Its original mission was to enforce the customs regulations created by the Treasury Department. The history of the cutter service is the story of how a handful of little ships and their crews evolved into a military institution, always ready to fight alongside the Navy in time of war. As the nation grew, the federal government created several other institutions in response to the needs of the maritime community. The Life Saving Service, Steamboat Inspection Service and the Lighthouse Service were conceived, administered and operated as civilian agencies. Late in the 18th century several charitable institutions, most notably the Massachusetts Humane Society, founded in 1786, began setting up the first lifesaving stations on beaches near approaches to major seaports. As merchant ships grew larger and accidents more numerous, however, it became obvious that the country needed a systematic approach to the problem of rescuing shipwreck victims. The federal government entered the shore-based lifesaving business in 1848, when an Act of Congress proposed by Representative W.A. Newall provided $10,000 for surf boats, rockets, carronades and other necessary apparatus for the better preservation of life and property from shipwrecks on the coasts of New Jersey. The job of spending the money was given to CAPT Douglas Ottinger of the Revenue Cutter Service. The new lifesaving program was supposed to operate like a national volunteer fire department. At each of the designated sites, Ottinger supervised the construction of a shed to house a surfboat, a mortar for shooting lines to wrecked ships, stocks of rope and flares, and a watertight METAl life car that could be loaded with survivors and hauled along a line from a wreck to the beach. He then picked trustworthy-looking people from the community, handed them a key to the building and a set of printed instructions for using the equipment. The cutter service thereupon officially forgot about the matter. The system, predictably, deteriorated. The level of interest in the government facilities seemed to vary from town to town; one turned its surfboat into a tub for scalding hogs. A series of devastating storms in 1854 cost several hundred lives, many of which clearly could have been saved had the lifesaving stations been functioning properly. Congress then took a hesitant step toward professionalizing the system by approving the appointment of a full-time station keeper with an annual salary of $200. The arrangement was only a slight improvement. If keepers saw a ship run aground, they had to search the local neighborhood for a volunteer crew before rendering assistance. Life Saving Service weakens During the Civil War, the service weakened. Another series of winter storms in 1870 smashed several ships along the East Coast, with terrible loss of life. Newspapers began demanding that the federal government do something to check the terrible fatalities off our dangerous coasts. One year later, the fortunes of the lifesaving system were reversed abruptly when Sumner Increase Kimball was appointed chief of the Revenue Marine. Kimball was a former attorney from Maine who had worked his way up through the Treasury Department during the Civil War. He talked Congress into appropriating $200,000 to hire civilian surfmen. They would operate lifesaving stations full-time, at least during the active season from November to April. Each station would have a crew of six to eight men. By 1875, new stations dotted the beaches of the East Coast and throughout the Great Lakes. In 1878, the expanded lifesaving program was placed under a separate civilian agency within the Treasury Department and designated as the Life Saving Service, with Kimball as its general superintendent. Over the next few years the Life Saving Services equipment, personnel and morale improved dramatically. Low but dependable salaries attracted fishermen, oystermen and other skilled seamen. Inspections by Revenue Cutter Service officers ensured that the equipment was always in working order. One of the most famous lifesaving stations was located at Pea Island, N.C. On Nov. 30, 1879, a British schooner, apparently escaping the notice of a surfman who was supposed to be on beach patrol, ran aground near the station. Four lives were lost. The assistant inspector of the Life Saving Service, Charles F. Shoemaker, conducted an investigation that resulted in the dismissal of the station keeper and several of his surfmen. Shoemaker recommended that a local black seaman, Richard Etheridge, be appointed keeper of the station. Shoemaker assured Kimball that Etheridge had the reputation of being as good a surfman as there is on the coast, black or white. Kimball then ordered Etheridge to hire a crew of black surfmen. The Life Saving Services identity as a civilian institution became a bit blurry when, in 1889, Kimball approved a set of specifications for uniforms. The measure presumably was intended to bolster the services professional spirit, but the keepers and surfmen were less than enthusiastic when they discovered that they would have to pay for their own uniforms. During the 1890s, the Life Saving Service began to show signs of wear. Like other branches of the civil service, it had neither mandatory retirement regulations nor a pension system. Many surfmen and station keepers were men in their 60s and 70s who could not afford to retire. Steam engines and improved navigational aids were reducing the number of shipwrecks, and the services surfboats and lifecars were becoming obsolete. On Jan. 28, 1915, President Woodrow Wilson signed a congressional law consolidating the cutter service and the Life Saving Service. The legislation specified that the 80-year-old Kimball, who had led the service for its entire life and almost half of his own, would retire and his position would be eliminated. The newly consolidated service would be headed by Captain Commandant Ellsworth Price Bertholf, formerly of the Revenue Cutter Service. The government accepted his suggestion that Coast Guard is the logical name for the old Revenue Cutter Service as well as the new combination. The Coast Guard became part of the military forces of the United States, under the Treasury Department in time of peace and part of the Navy in time of war or when directed by the president. Employees of the old Life Saving Service found themselves members of a military organization. Those who were jolted by this development could take comfort from the stipulation that they were now covered by the Revenue Cutter Services pension plan, that provided for retirement at three-quarters pay after 30 years of service. Steamboat Inspection Service Another root of the Coast Guards family tree germinated with the development of the steam engine. The first steamboats were mechanically inefficient contraptions that endangered the life and limbs of anyone in their vicinity. Nineteenth-century engineers and mariners studied the physics of steam and iron plate by watching boilers explode, usually with spectacular results that made the front pages and obituary columns of newspapers. In the spring of 1838, three steamboats, the Moselle, Oronoko and Pulaski, blew up and killed about 400 people. On July 7, 1838, Congress passed a law for the better security of the lives of passengers aboard steamboats. Such vessels henceforth would be required to undergo periodic hull and boiler inspections, and to carry some new lifesaving and firefighting equipment. The inspections were to be carried out by skillful and competent persons appointed from time-to-time by federal district court judges. The 1838 law was a hesitant and clumsy step toward an effective federal system of steamboat-safety regulation. In 1852, in response to a new rash of disasters, including seven boiler explosions and 700 deaths in eight months, Congress acted again with the Steamboat Act of 1852, that became the basis of the Steamboat Inspection Service. A precise set of standards for boiler construction was drawn up, along with a licensing system for engineers and pilots of steamboats that carried passengers. The system was to be administered by civilian inspectors hired by the Department of the Treasury. The first inspectors discharged their duties well, dramatically reducing the frequency of fatal steamboat accidents until the Civil War diverted public and governmental attention from the subject. In 1871, another congressional act gave the service the responsibility for issuing licenses to masters, pilots, engineers and chief mates. Over the next few decades the steamboat inspectors became increasingly busy men, enforcing an increasingly lengthy list of federal laws that made steamships safer and officers more competent. In 1903, the inspection service was transferred from the Treasury Department to the Department of Commerce and Labor. A year later the service was rocked by the sinking of the excursion boat General Slocum in the New York harbor area, with the loss of 957 lives. A commission appointed by President Theodore Roosevelt placed most of the blame for the tragedy on the inadequate corps of inspectors at New York, several of whom lost their jobs as a result. By the 1920s, the inspection service was a major presence in the maritime community. One of its licensing certificates hung in the cabin of every captain, deck officer and engineer in the merchant marine. Each steam-powered vessel had to undergo periodic inspections by dedicated professionals who crawled through boilers and bilge compartments, looking for rust and loose rivets, wiggling valves and checking the accuracy of gauges. It was dirty work and the inspectors frequently were unpopular men. They consoled themselves with the thought of the thousands of lives they were saving. In its first five decades the Lighthouse Establishment operated on a remarkably informal basis. The lighthouses and other navigational aids were built and maintained by private civilian contractors who cast only faint shadows on the history books. The start of a typical Lighthouse Establishment employees career took the form of a note scribbled by President Thomas Jefferson: The appointment of William Helms to be keeper of the Lighthouse at Smiths Point is approved. Salary $250. By 1852, several hundred lighthouses, buoys, and other aids to navigation were in operation. In that year, Congress decided to formalize the services administration with the creation of a Lighthouse Board consisting of two army officers, two navy officers and two civilian scientists. Each of the countrys 12 lighthouse districts was to be presided over by an official with the title of district inspector. Forgotten lighthouse keepers The life of the lighthouse keeper became a minor legend - a life that was occasionally heroic, often picturesque and almost always monotonous. Some lighthouses stood in the centers of seafaring communities; others were built on some of the most desolate sites in the country. The notoriously ill-paid keepers frequently suspected that the government had forgotten about them. A man had just as well die and be done with the world at once, an assistant keeper on Marylands Chesapeake Bay wrote in 1909, as to spend his days here. The typical keeper lived with his wife and children in a house attached, or adjacent, to the lighthouse itself. Working the lighthouse was a family affair. A major event in the lighthouse keepers life was the annual visit of the district inspector. When that man came, recalled one keepers son, well, he was like probably the second coming of the Lord or something .... Hed come there and, well, wed all hide or whatever .... But hed walk in, hed go right upstairs, through all the rooms, go into the bedrooms. The inspector might issue a demerit for any transgression from a fingerprint on a lens to a greasy pan left on a stove. The Lighthouse Board often gave appointments to military veterans. Marcus A. Hanna, who won the Medal of Honor as a sergeant in the 50th Massachusetts Infantry during the Civil War, afterward was appointed keeper of the lighthouse at Cape Elizabeth, N.J. In January 1885, a schooner named the Australia went aground near the cape. Hanna rescued two of the shipwrecked sailors and was awarded the Gold Lifesaving Medal, thereby becoming the only person ever to win the United States two highest awards for heroism. In a number of cases, elderly keepers became incapacitated on the job and turned their duties over to their wives and daughters. Idawalley Zorada Lewis, who took over the Lime Rock Lighthouse in Rhode Island when her father suffered a stroke, became a national heroine. In 39 years as a lighthouse keeper, she rescued at least 18 mariners, was awarded several medals and received a visit from President Grant. As the network of aids to navigation expanded, so did a fleet of utilitarian little ships and boats that serviced it. Lighthouse tenders, commanded and manned by civilians, did every job from delivering barrels of lamp oil to servicing buoys and clearing snags from rivers. Few lighthouse tenders could be called beautiful, but they and their civilian crews kept the countrys harbors, lakes and rivers safe for an ever-expanding merchant marine and recreational-boating community. The many moods of a lightship Further out to sea, another band of stalwart civilians manned the nations lightships. The first lightship dropped anchor in the mouth of Chesapeake Bay in 1820 and immediately was recognized as an effective aid to navigation. The number of lightships in commission eventually peaked at 56 in 1909. Life aboard a lightship varied from the insufferably boring in good weather to the terrifyingly dangerous during storms. One 19th-century captain described his vessel as similar to a barrel, that was constantly in motion, and when it is in any ways rough, she rolls and labors to such a degree as to heave the glass out of the lanterns, the beds out of the berths, tearing out the chain-plate, etc. and rendering her unsafe and uncomfortable. The standard contract for a lightship crewman called for eight months of sea duty each year, in four-month hitches, separated by shore leave. By 1910, the navigational-aids network had outgrown the old Lighthouse Boards ability to manage it. In that year, Congress passed a law making the Lighthouse Service, administered by the Department of Commerce. The first commissioner of the Lighthouse Service, George R. Putnam, presided over it for 25 years. On July 1, 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a congressional resolution consolidating the Lighthouse Service and the Coast Guard. Merging of the two services saved the government about $1 million per year, while increasing the personnel of the Coast Guard by nearly 50 percent. At the time, the Lighthouse Services members numbered 5,355 - ranging from lighthouse keepers and tender captains to part-time janitors and carpenters. Most were offered the option of enlisting in the Coast Guard or continuing as civilian employees. Former district superintendents and other senior administrators became Coast Guard officers; captains and officers of the tenders were offered appointments as warrant officers. On November 1, 1941, Roosevelt issued an executive order transferring the Coast Guard from the Department of the Treasury to the Department of the Navy. The Coast Guard was about to go to war, and to embark on the biggest expansion in its history. The fact that they were officially working for the Navy Department during the time of war makes the story of civilian Coast Guard employees difficult to trace. Shortly after the Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, invasion, the Navy ordered civilian crewmembers removed from Coast Guard lightships and tenders. About 200 of those men opted to enlist in the Coast Guard. Most of the lightships were taken off their stations as the Navy initiated a program to dim out the navigational-aids system. Tenders were pressed into service as patrol vessels, ice breakers, and convoy escorts. As of March 1, 1942, the Bureau of Marine Inspection and Navigation was transferred from the Department of Commerce to the Coast Guard. The Steamboat Inspection Service thereby also joined the Coast Guard; the arrangement was made permanent after the war. Wartime expansion brought about a corresponding growth in the civilian section of the Coast Guard. The secretary of the Navys annual report for 1942 briefly mentioned 1,024 civilian employees at Coast Guard Headquarters. Many of these were young women, part of a massive influx of typists and clerks who staffed the office buildings that were springing up almost daily in Washington during wartime. The services largest wartime employer of civilians was the Coast Guard Yard at Curtis Bay, Md. The yard had been established at the beginning of the century as a training facility and a repair depot for revenue cutters. With the absorption of the Lighthouse and Life Saving Services it had taken on the responsibility for constructing lifeboats, buoys, and other navigational aids. The Coast Guards cutters and large tenders, however, had always been built under contract by civilian shipyards. At the start of World War II, Navy administrators decided that the Coast Guard could function more efficiently by building some of its own cutters. The Navy added fabricating sheds, railroad tracks, a drydock, and 50 acres at the Coast Guard Yard and construction started on the CGCs Ironwood, Kaw and Manitou. The yards civilian workforce then peaked at 3,100 men and women. Peace brought cutbacks and staff shufflings in the civilian workforce. The yard lost more than one-half of its members - and was legally obligated to hire back several hundred former employees who had been drafted during the war. Responsibilities of civilians then changed from operational to support functions. By the end of the Second World War the Coast Guard had assumed much of the shape it has today: an institution based on a military organization with a vital civilian-support structure. Civilians not only filled jobs in support capacities but became a source of technical and administrative expertise as the services peacetime mission expanded into a broad range of public services. The Coast Guards organizational structure remained essentially unchanged until 1967, when the service was transferred by Act of Congress from the Treasury Department to the newly-created Department of Transportation. Todays Coast Guard civilian staff positions include secretaries, contracting, computer specialists, accounting technicians, maintenance mechanics, electricians, paralegal specialists, management/program analysts, accountants and electronic technicians. Most of them work behind the scenes in jobs that are the latest generation in a long line of professionals who, for 200 years, as the famous naval historian Samuel Eliot Morison put it, have been called upon to do a little of everything - the Coast Guard is used to that. |
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