MARITIME safety in the United States took a giant step forward on the 28th of January, 1915, when two historic agencies, the Revenue Cutter Service and the Lifesaving Service, were merged into a single organization known as the United States Coast Guard. Both organizations had long and proud traditions of humanitarian service reaching far back to the early days of the Republic. The Revenue Cutter Service, direct ancestor of the Coast Guard, had been in existence for more than a century and had already achieved a distinguished record both as a fighting force and as a highly veisatile law enforcement and maritime safety agency. Similarly, the Lifesaving Service had won for itself an honoured place in the affections of the American public for its effective and heroic actions on behalf of distressed vessels and persons at sea.

Actually, both agencies had been collaborating with one another for many years before the merger. They had worked closely within the Treasury Department with a common purpose— the protection of life and property at sea. The Lifesaving Service had been established within the Revenue Marine Division in 1871. but seven years later had been made a separate bureau.

During the separation, however, cutter officers supervised the drilling and inspection of life-saving stations.

Merger of Two Agencies In approving the merger of the two agencies, President Wilson was putting into effect the principle of " organization and combination " developed several years before by President Taft.

Prior to that time, the work of maritime safety had been carried out by a number of agencies with considerable duplication of function. The consolidation of the two principal maritime safety organizations, therefore, was designed to eliminate this confused, irrational, and uneconomic pattern. By this action, the resources, facilities and skills of two outstanding safety organizations were fused into a new unit of incomparably greater utility and efficiency.

For the United States, the establishment of the new agency was truly the beginning of a modern era in maritime safety.

So far as the Revenue Cutter Service was concerned, the protection of life and property at sea was certainly not a new function. It had been actively engaged in such work since 1831 when Andrew McLane, Andrew Jackson's Secretary of the Treasury, ordered the first winter cruise to aid seafarers and ships in distress. In 1836 cutters were charged " to aid persons at sea, in distress, who may be taken aboard," and in 1843 to preserve property found aboard wrecks and to secure the cargoes for the owners. The records of the former Revenue Cutter Service are replete with daring rescues performed under the most hazardous circumstances.

Massachusetts Humane Society The Lifesaving Service, which represented the other member of the new organization, was the heir to a long and honourable tradition in shore-based lifesaving operations. Such work had been initiated as far back as 1785 with the founding of a volunteer group, the Massachusetts Humane Society. The work of the Society constitutes an exciting and colourful chapter in the annals of maritime safety in the United States.

The Society was among the first in the world to build places of refuge for the comfort and shelter of shipwrecked persons. However, operations were limited to the coast of Massachusetts, and in 1807 the Society provided its first life-boat station at Cohasset. In 1849 a Congressional appropriation provided the collector of customs at Boston with $5,000 to buy boathouses and equipment for the Society. The following year Congress appropriated SI0,000 to build Government life-boat stations along the New Jersey Coast and to make available " surfboats, rockets, carronades, and other apparatus for the better preservation of life and property from shipwrecks on the coast".

One of the first of these life-boat stations was built at Spermaceti Cove, on Sandy Hook. New Jersey, in 1849.

The structure has been preserved as a Coast Guard museum. About the size of a garage, the small weather-beaten building holds relics of a bygone age, including the station's yellowed logbooks, fragments of wrecked ships, early surf-boats, watertight dinghies called surf-cars that were operated like breeches buoys, and a variety of cannons and projectiles for shooting lines aboard wrecked ships.

Manned by Volunteers For more than five years these early stations were manned by volunteers called together whenever there was a shipwreck. In 1854 keepers were appointed for the stations at an annual salary of $200. However, it was not until 1871 that the Secretary of the Treasury was authorized to employ surfmen to man the stations.

Over the years the intensive experience in launching small boats in the roughest kind of surf produced a special breed of men—tough, self-reliant and proud of their calling. This experience also led to the development of specially designed life-saving equipment. For example, there are the life-boats. Each of these craft is designed and built by the service for a particular task. There is the 26-foot surf boat that weighs nearly a ton and is propelled by oars. The same boat comes in a power model, and both types are self-baling. Then there are two models of motor life-boats, a 36-footer and a 52-footer. These are self-baling, self-righting and virtually unsinkable. They also have enclosed, heated compartments.

Among more recent rescue craft are the versatile amphibious trucks, more commonly referred to as DUKW's.

They can travel 55 miles an hour on paved roads ; then without stopping, partially deflate their tyres for better traction on sand and do 12.4 miles per hour across beaches and into the water where they can make six miles per hour.

In reversing this process; they can reinflate their tyres, again without stopping, when they return to the paved roads.

Saved Hundreds of Lives No discussion of life-saving would be complete without mention of Joshua James, one of the most celebrated lifesavers of all time and a truly heroic figure of the sea. Associated with the Massachusetts Humane Society, and later with the Lifesaving Service, this remarkable man began his humanitarian career at the age of fifteen. By the time of his death in 1902 at the age of seventy-five he had saved hundreds of lives. For these heroic actions he was honoured by the highest medals of the Humane Society, the United States Government and many other organizations.

Other members of the James family also achieved distinguished lifesaving careers.

There is no question that aviation has greatly extended the scope of the Coast Guard's maritime safety activity.

Rescue operations formerly restricted to coastal waters because of the limited range of earlier equipment can now be carried out on the ocean. Coast Guard cutters on ocean station or on other missions frequently combine with aircraft and shore-based facilities to effect a rescue.

Use of Helicopters During recent years the helicopter has contributed notably to the Coast Guard's increased effectiveness as a rescue agency. Because of their ability to hover and to take off and land straight up and down, they are particularly suitable for rescue operations in areas which are inaccessible to more conventional air and surface craft.

The Coast Guard has taken an active part in the development of helicopters and was one of the first agencies to recognize their potentialities. In November, 1943, a helicopter training base was established at the Coast Guard Air Station at Floyd Bennett Field in New York. A year later 150 mechanics had been graduated from this special school.

In 1945 a Coast Guard helicopter penetrated the snow-covered wastes near Goose Bay, Labrador, and brought out the crew of a cracked-up Royal Canadian Air Force plane. The next year a Belgian airliner crashed near Gander, Newfoundland. The accident occurred in a wilderness that was accessible only to a helicopter. This rescue was a combined operation with the helicopter ferrying the 18 survivors to a nearby lake where a flying boat took them aboard and flew them on the last lap to civilization.

Added Responsibilities For the Coast Guard the term " lifesaving " has taken on a vastly greater connotation than was the case in the early days of the Revenue Cutters. In a sense, it represents one of the basic principles motivating Coast Guard activity —protection of life and property at sea. As the service has grown, it has acquired new facilities and new resources to bring to the accomplishment of this formidable task. Under the principle of " combination and organization " of authority promulgated more than half a century ago by President Taft, it has become the foremost United States agency for maritime safety and law enforcement. President after President has entrusted the service with added responsibilities until today it must utilize a vast and complicated network of ships, planes, and communications to discharge its complex and farflung responsibilities.

The " life-saving " concept as it is understood by the Coast Guard today involves the utilization of a number of services. These include the aids to navigation duties formerly charged to the Lighthouse Service and the marine safety activities which were the responsibility of the Bureau of Marine Inspection. The search and rescue function is a traditional one inherited from the Revenue Cutter Service and the Lifesaving Service. It is through a highly co-ordinated use of all the skills and facilities represented by these agencies that the Coast Guard carries out its present day maritime safety function.

Search and Rescue Procedures In 1944 the Coast Guard established a pattern for modern search and rescue procedures by setting up an interdepartmental inter-agency Air-Sea Rescue Agency with the Coast Guard Commandant at its head. This agency was primarily engaged in research and development of rescue procedures.

Since then, the work has been continued by the Coast Guard.

However, there was still no national policy affecting search and rescue.

Therefore, in 1956, at the direction of President Eisenhower, a National Search and Rescue Plan was formulated.

The plan in itself did not supply additional search and rescue facilities to any agency or establish a separate agency to handle such matters. It was intended primarily to define areas of responsibility for the various agencies and to provide procedures for coordinating inter-agency efforts. Under the plan the Coast Guard was designated Regional Search and Rescue Coordinator for the vast Maritime Region, thus affirming its primary responsibility for marine safety.

Rescue Co-ordination Centres Pursuant to the plan, the Coast Guard decentralized its Search and Rescue organization into the Pacific Maritime Region under the Commander, Western Area, at San Francisco, and the Atlantic Maritime Region under the Commander, Eastern Area, at New York City. Operational responsibilities were further delegated to the District Commanders within each region.

Each of these Search and Rescue co-ordinators operates a Rescue Coordination Centre. This is defined as an installation having available to its personnel communications and other facilities required to initiate, control, co-ordinate, and terminate search and rescue in a specific area.

Since good communications are essential to effective SAR operations, all Rescue Co-ordination Centres are connected by telephone or teletype with Navy, Air Force, Army, Civil Aeronautics Administration, State and local police facilities as well as other Coast Guard units. Also available to the Controller on duty in the Centre are status boards and wall plots to show the location and availability of primary SAR facilities in the area for which the Centre has responsibility. Such Centres may be regarded as highly specialized nerve centres instantly responsive to information of distress. They are manned continuously by trained personnel for the purpose of gathering and evaluating distress information and for alerting and co-ordinating search and rescue facilities.

Strain on Resources The task of maintaining an effective marine safety programme is a formidable one that demands great versatility on the part of Coast Guard officers and men. It is rendered even more complex by the fact that the Coast Guard is also an armed force and must maintain itself in a state of military preparedness at all times. This imposes a severe strain on its relatively limited resources and manpower.

In a world which grows daily more complex the Coast Guard anticipates that it will be called upon to solve many new problems in the years ahead. But that is an old story for a service which has repeatedly demonstrated its resourcefulness in the past. For despite rapid scientific and technological progress, the motivation behind the Coast Guard's peacetime efforts will continue to be what it has always been—a humane concern for " those in peril on the sea "..