United States Coast Guard: 1790 to the Present

Night Owl Reviews
"An exhaustive and fascinating history of an American institution."

Book Description
The United States Coast Guard traces its origins to 1790, but the official USCG name was designated in 1915. The Coast Guard is the product of the assimilation of several government agencies over a long period of time. When America was a British colony, the first lighthouse was built in Boston Harbor on Little Brewster Island in 1716. The lighthouse was an aid to navigation to guide ships along the rocky Atlantic coast. In August of 1789, the first Congress federalized the lighthouse that had been built by the colonists, and funded the construction and maintenance of buoys and lighthouses. These early lighthouses were sturdy stone structures with thick walls whose lights under the care of keepers guided mariners into dangerous ports. Oil wick lamp lights were amplified by large optical lenses, reflectors and prisms. Where lighthouses could not be placed, government lightships were stationed at strategic locations in coastal waters. The first lightship was located in Chesapeake Bay in 1820 under the supervision of the Lighthouse Service. Storms sometimes blew lightships off location and other ships sometimes sunk them. On May 16, 1934, ?the Olympic, sister ship of the ill fated Titanic, struck and sank the Nantucket Shoals Lightship (No. 117) in fog and drove the vessel to the bottom with the loss of seven (of eleven) crewmen.? Hundreds of these floating lighthouses guided mariners until the 1980?s when the vessels were superseded by sophisticated electronic buoys

About the Author
Thomas P. Ostrom served in the USCGR from 1961-69, and had basic and advanced training at the USCG Base, Alameda, California. He served subsequently in the Port Security Reserve Unit in Duluth, Minnesota, and participated in monthly and active duty assignments each summer, earning petty officer rank. Mr. Ostrom taught history, anthropology and geography at Rochester Community College in Rochester, Minnesota for for thirty two years, has written a regular column for the Rochester ?Post Bulletin? and has been a political pundit on KROC-AM radio. Ostrom was born in Superior, Wisconsin. He received his BA and MS degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Superior. He did graduate and post-graduate work at Ball State University, the University of North Dakota, Winona State University, and the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. He is a member of The Foundation for Coast Guard History, Navy League, the U.S. Naval Institute, and the National Maritime Historical Society.


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