Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
January 17, 1947 The U.S. Navy ship USS Burton Island, which was named after an island off the coast of Delaware, began her maiden voyage from San Diego to the Antarctic region’s Ross Sea. Navy Commander Gerald L. Ketchum was in command of the ship. The 269-foot (82-meter)-long icebreaker was designed by the naval architectural... Continue Reading →
Joseph B. Aviles, Sr., who became the first Hispanic American chief petty officer (CPO) in the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG), was born near the town of Naranjito in central Puerto Rico in 1896. (Puerto Rico was a Spanish colony at the time, and became a territory of the United States a couple of years later.)... Continue Reading →
September 9, 1876 In the Great Lakes region of Ohio, a lifesaving station to rescue shipwrecked mariners and passengers was officially opened in the village of Marblehead at the tip of the Marblehead Peninsula. (This peninsula divides Lake Erie proper from Sandusky Bay.) The genesis of this station and others throughout the nation could be traced... Continue Reading →
June 17, 1999 (Photo caption: Coast Guard Chief Warrant Officer 4 Michael Popelars, commanding officer of Cutter Frank Drew, pilots the buoy tender on the James River in Newport News, Virginia, Feb. 22, 2018. Courtesy of the Defense Information Visual Distribution Service - https://www.dvidshub.net/image/4176717/coast-guard-cutter-frank-drew-crew-services-buoys-elizabeth-james-rivers-va) U.S Coast Guard Cutter (USCGC) Frank Drew was officially transferred from... Continue Reading →
Melvin Kealoha Bell of the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) played a major lifesaving role when it came to maritime traffic during one of the darkest chapters in American history. Bell was born in 1920 in the town of Hilo on the island of Hawaii (popularly known as the “Big Island”), part of what was then... Continue Reading →
May 23, 1960 In central California, the San Mateo-based newspaper The Times reported on a U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) helicopter rescue the previous night at a beach in the region. “‘Copter Saves Injured Pair From Beach,” read the article’s headline. The trouble began while a young couple was picnicking and sunbathing along the edge of... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 