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USCGC WILLIAM TATE
(WLM 560)
Philadelphia, PA
A History of Buoys and Tenders
by Amy K. Marshall
The need for dependable aids to navigation can be traced to
the beginnings of maritime commerce. Today, mariners in unfamiliar waters still
welcome the sight of lighthouses, buoys, beacons, and other navigational aids as
guideposts to safe harbor.
Traditionally, historians and other writers
studied individual lighthouse structures. Examples of this scholarship include
studies of the ancient Egyptian lighthouse Pharos, and the more modern structure
of Eddystone Light off the coast of Great Britain. Yet, the smaller aids,
perhaps more important since they represent a first line of defense against
wrecking, are largely ignored or given merely cursory attention.
While
lighthouses continue to be the most recognizable aids, the development of safe
systems of buoyage, and accompanying changes in the vessels responsible for
tending them, deserve a more solid place in maritime history.
While some
types of floating markers may have existed before the 13th century, the first
recorded buoy was mentioned in La Compasso de Navigare. Located in the
Guadalquivir River, this buoy aided mariners approaching Sevilla,
Spain.
The first buoys in Northern European waters, recorded 30 years
later, were in the Vlie River which empties into the Zuider Zee. They guided
ships to the commercial centers of Amsterdam and Kampen. The maintenance of
these buoys, mostly hollow wooden casks bound with iron bands and moored with
chain and a large stone, was the responsibility of individual port
authorities.
"Light fees," collected from mariners and merchants, paid
for maintenance. It would be another 200 years before governments would begin
maintaining aids.
In 1514, King Henry VIII of England granted a charter
to the Guild of Shipmen and Mariners to maintain aids in response to their
petition that inexperienced individuals were endangering English
shipping.
The guild was also concerned about the "dangers of allowing
foreigners to learn the secrets of the King's streams."
The result of
this charter was the creation of Trinity House. Another 70 years would elapse,
however, until Trinity House earned the right to establish buoys and beacons - a
right granted in 1594 by Queen Elizabeth I.
Early aids to navigation
in the United States
Maritime commerce was a vital part of the life-blood
of the newly established English colonies in North America. England and the
colonies quickly realized the importance of maintaining safe sea lanes. Most of
these early aids were lighthouses.
Boston Light, established in 1716 on
Little Brewster Island, was the first North American lighthouse. The
Colonial-American lights followed the European pattern of establishing
navigational aids around important commercial centers.
Buoys were rarely,
if ever, registered in lists of navigational aids for the colonies. The
exceptions are the cask buoys in the Delaware River, recorded in 1767, and the
spar buoys in Boston Harbor, recorded as early as 1780.
After
independence, the federal government quickly became involved in the development
of buoys. On Aug. 7, 1789, the First Congress passed An act for the
establishment and support of light-houses, beacons, buoys, and public piers.
This act provided for the establishment of lighthouses, beacons and other aids.
It placed their upkeep under the Department of the Treasury in general, and
specifically the Fifth Auditor of the Treasury, Stephen Pleasanton.
The
fledgling administration of lighthouses followed the lead of its counterparts in
Europe. Pleasanton raised funds for the maintenance of aids by levying light
fees on ships entering U.S. ports. This practice stopped in 1801 when Congress
began funding the aids.
Early buoyage descriptions are far from complete.
The Collectors of Customs contracted with local pilots and other concerns for
the establishment and maintenance of minor aids on an annual basis. Spar buoys,
made of long cedar or juniper poles, and cask buoys were the predominant buoys
in U.S. coastal waters until the 1840s.
The United States did not have a
standard system of buoyage until 1848. Colors, shapes and sizes varied from port
to port. This lack of regulation gave individual contractors free reign to
decide the types of buoys necessary for a given area or harbor.
The lack
of standardization caused problems for coastal pilots. When asked to comment on
buoyage to Congress in 1850, they complained bitterly. Their most common
complaint was that the buoys were so small, that to see them they had to run
them down.
Records of buoys from this era are so lacking that a clear
picture of U.S. buoys is difficult to piece together. Buoys were tended
privately by contractors who relied on smallboats with limited lifting
capability or, worse yet, sailing vessels with such limited maneuverability as
to render the accurate placement of buoys impossible.
Contractors also
supplied buoys. This suggests that they manufactured them according to the
capability of their vessels. Buoys thus remained small and were of little use to
local pilots, who relied on landmarks to establish their positions. But these
small buoys were particularly hazardous to inexperienced or unfamiliar
mariners.
By 1846, Secretary of the Treasury Robert L. Walker knew the
time for change had come. He admitted that buoys placed by local authorities
under loose regulations, coupled with the lack of standardized colors and
numbers, were practically useless.
Congress, sensitive to complaints about
the ATON system, began taking steps to correct the problems in 1848. It adopted
the Lateral System for implementation nationwide. It is from the Lateral System
that the familiar "right, red, return" has its origin.
While Pleasanton
was an able administrator, he was first and foremost a bureaucrat. His inability
to understand the needs of mariners and his unwillingness to spend the necessary
funds rendered the system of aids more dangerous than
helpful.
Pleasanton's preoccupation with financial matters led to the
investigation by Congress which, in turn, led to the creation of the Lighthouse
Board in 1852.
Significant improvements
Armed with its mandate
to correct and improve aids, the newly-established Lighthouse Board stumbled
into action. The board made every effort to learn from the advances of
lighthouse construction and buoyage in Europe, which was far ahead of the United
States. The governments of Great Britain and France placed considerable emphasis
on the maintenance of safe sea roads.
Under the stricter eye of the
Lighthouse Board, buoyage in the United States steadily improved. Spars and cask
buoys gave way to can- and nun-shaped riveted iron buoys.
These buoys were
set according to the Lateral System: red nuns to the starboard of channels as
observed by ships returning to port, and black can buoys to the port. The board
also standardized sizes to maximize visibility.
This system continues in
use even today, except that can buoys are now painted green. Tests in the 1970s
showed that green is more highly visible from a greater distance.
The board
began purchasing buoys through inspectors and superintendents in individual
districts. The demands of maintaining buoys required district inspectors and
engineers to have extra buoys on hand in depots and aboard tenders should
emergencies arise. Typical emergencies involved a buoy breaking loose or sinking
after a collision.
The inclusion of top scientists in its administration
was also important to the Lighthouse Board.
Professor Joseph Henry, better
known for his role as first secretary of the Smithsonian Institution,
experimented with the aberrations of sound and light over water, and studied
improvements in buoy designs such as the Courtenay's Buoy, a whistle buoy
developed in 1875 by John Courtenay. It was in the careful analysis and adoption
of new buoy designs that the Lighthouse Board created a more modern
system.
Whereas many government and private concerns in the 19th century
were hesitant to embrace new technology, Henry and his fellow board members
sought out new and ingenious ways of marking, and later lighting America's sea
roads.
The nun, can and spar buoys are the oldest style of minor aids in
America's coastal waters. Durable but unlit, these buoys are probably among the
most familiar to the non-mariner.
By 1852, in its attempt at buoy
standardization, the Lighthouse Board categorized these buoy types into three
sizes: first-class buoys served primarily at the entrances to harbors and
wherever large, highly visible buoys were needed. Second-class buoys, which were
smaller, marked rivers and secondary harbor approaches. Third-class buoys, the
smallest class, marked areas where larger, deeper-draft vessels could not go.
This system worked well, but changes in design gave way to new types of buoys
that would change the face of minor ATON forever.
Specialized buoys:
light and sound
In 1851, Charles Babbage, of London, published a paper
about putting lights on buoys. However, it would be another 20 years before
technological advances could make lighted buoys a reality in the United States.
Inventors patented designs that employed oil-vapor lamps, similar to those used
in lighthouses, but they had no concept of the dynamics to which a buoy was
regularly subjected.
Some designs were more fanciful than others. One
inventor patented an electric buoy with a motion sensor which, upon detecting a
ship passing close by, would sound an alarm, send up a rocket flare and light
its lamp. One can only imagine what New York harbor would have looked like on a
busy evening.
The first electrically-lit buoy tested by the board was a
simple spar with a lantern housing and light on top. Deployed in Gedney's
Channel, New York harbor, in 1888, a series of these buoys was lit by a cable
running to a generator on Sandy Hook, N.J. These were removed in
1903.
Richard and Julius Pintsch and John Foster independently developed
and tested compressed gas buoys as early as 1883. The Foster buoy resembles the
Courtenay's buoy in shape, but contained acetylene gas which lit a lantern on
top. Problems with this buoy included its tendency to roll down into a swell in
rough seas and extinguish
itself.
The Pintsch gas buoys were the most
successful of the compressed-gas lighted buoys, but it took years of testing and
improving before they were marketable. Originally designed and patented in
Germany, these buoys were sold to the Lighthouse Service in the early 20th
century through the Safety Car and Electric Company of New York. They had
removable 6- to 8-foot-long cylindrical containers which held six to 12 months'
of fuel. They were relatively easy to tend.
Audible signal buoys were
also developed. The earliest recorded in the United States is the Brown's Bell
Buoy developed by a Revenue Marine captain in the 1850s. This relatively simple
buoy had a base supporting a superstructure upon which hung a bell with four
clappers that struck as the buoy rolled in the sea. From this simple design a
myriad of whistle, bell and foghorn buoys developed.
The most successful
was the Courtenay's buoy. Courtenay never obtained a U.S. patent for this design
which, most likely, led to its ready acceptance by the Lighthouse Board after
extensive experiments under Henry. Courtenay developed this buoy while working
for the British East India Company. He brought the design with him when he
emigrated to the United States.
The Courtenay's Buoy is based on the
physics of air escaping under pressure from a tube through a whistle. Henry
described the buoy in the appendix of the 1878 Annual Report of the Lighthouse
Board. He believed it represented a major technological advance in navigational
aids. After testing, the Lighthouse Board adopted Courtenay's Buoy and used it
at all points where it would be of service to mariners.
Early buoy
tenders
The original report of the Lighthouse Board to Congress in 1851
lamented the existing buoyage system's ineffectiveness. The development of steam
vessels made the adoption of light and sound buoys more critical.
The
board felt that the approaches to major harbors and trade centers were not
marked and lit efficiently enough to ensure the safe passage of the faster steam
vessels. Larger and faster vessels demanded larger and more visible
buoys.
The Lighthouse Board also recognized that larger buoys required
larger, more maneuverable tenders. The small boats used by earlier contractors
could not cope with the changes in design and larger sizes.
More accurate
placement was also more critical in the age of steam. Sailing tenders were
useless for accurate placement because they were difficult to hold
steady.
Few records exist of how early sailing tenders set, hauled in and
cleaned buoys. The journals and letters of the Lighthouse Board point to the use
of a three-point mooring system. This system kept the tender steady while its
crew set a buoy. Other tender logs describe working buoys near sandy shoals.
Tenders in this situation would run their vessels aground on the shoals in order
to maintain a steady work platform. This practice suggests a stronger hull or
even double-hull construction for the early sailing tenders.
It is likely
that sailing tenders employed "spuds" like those found on inland river tenders
today. Spuds are large poles inserted through the deck to hold the vessel in
place.
The use of spuds for a coastal tender, however, would have been
time-consuming and costly in terms of accuracy. The Lighthouse Board sought to
remedy this by obtaining steam-propelled tenders.
The first of these
steam tenders, which has the distinction of being the first built by the
Lighthouse Board, was the USLHS Shubrick. Completed in 1857 at the Philadelphia
Navy Yard, the new tender served on the Pacific Coast and demonstrated beyond
doubt the advantages of steam over sail. The success of the Shubrick convinced
the board to purchase other steam vessels.
The board also took
responsibility for the placement of buoys. Previously, contractors marked
obstructions, wrecks, shoals and sides of channels according to their own plans
or preferences. The board changed this practice by holding supreme authority
over the placement of aids in order to right the wrongs of the contractors under
Pleasanton.
The Lighthouse Service
By 1910, Congress
discontinued the Lighthouse Board and created the Lighthouse Service. The new
agency was under the control of the secretary of commerce. The first
Commissioner of Lighthouses was George Putnam. Putnam was the first and, very
nearly, the last commissioner of the Lighthouse Service. His tenure extended
from the service's inception until his retirement in 1935.
Putnam did
more for the cause of navigational aids and their maintenance than
any other
individual. He continued the Lighthouse Board's policy of experimentation and
encouragement of new buoy designs. He also convinced Congress to allocate money
for Lighthouse Service vessels, and crusaded for his employees.
Under
Putnam the most important advances in long-range aids took place. The United
States led the way with the new technology - the radio beacon. The advent of
radio-beacon technology made buoys, lightships and lighthouses "visible" from
significantly greater distances. No longer did a mariner have to physically see
a buoy. The radio beacon made it possible for vessels equipped with a radio
direction finder to take a bearing up to 70 miles from a navigational aid and,
once identified, set a course relative to the aid.
Safety
issues
Lighted buoys using compressed gas as a fuel gained popularity
during Putnam's superintendence. Thirty years of trials and improvements,
however, did not render the buoys entirely safe. The service issued instructions
concerning safety in tending Pintsch, Willson, and American Gas Accumulator
buoys because of the explosive nature of compressed gas.
Most safety
problems occurred during pressure tests. For example, in December 1910, an
explosion of a Pintsch gas buoy killed a machinist attached to the tender
Amaranth. The machinist had completed a routine pressure test and had shut down
the compressor.
According to Lighthouse Service reports, the buoy's
cagework sheared away the mainmast of the Amaranth. The force of the explosion
separated the top cone of the buoy from the body at the weld and hurled it
through the roof of the depot's lamp shop. The blast forced the body of the buoy
and its counterweight through the dock. The next issue of the Lighthouse Service
Bulletin carried detailed instructions for pressure testing Pintsch gas
buoys.
The Willson buoy, designed and patented by Canadian inventor
Thomas Willson, was inexplicably adopted by the Lighthouse Service. It also was
a compressed- gas buoy, but worked on the carbide and water principle. Instead
of pressurized gas, the fuel was solid calcium carbide, soaked with kerosene oil
during the loading or "charging" process. This helped reduce the risk of
explosion of the calcium carbide.
The Willson buoy was charged by drying
the inside of the buoy completely and applying mineral oil to the sides of the
fuel chamber. The calcium carbide slid through a canvas chute into the chamber.
This was risky business. Even with the best precautions the risk of explosion
still existed, as happened aboard the tender Hibiscus in 1913.
One
explanation for this explosion was that a lump of carbide struck the side of the
chamber and created a spark. This accident occurred in a dead calm. Charging
this type of buoy on a blustery day or in a fast-moving current must have been
exciting, if not nearly impossible.
New tenders for more advanced
buoys
The end of World War I marked a turning point for the Lighthouse
Service buoy tenders. During the war, men, vessels and equipment were
transferred to the Navy. It quickly discovered the tenders' usefulness in laying
mines, as well as for patrol duty off the Atlantic coast.
When the war
ended, and the vessels were returned to the Lighthouse Service, the Navy
proposed sending their old mine-layers to the service to work as tenders. This
occurred at the same time Putnam was seeking money for new tender construction.
The Navy, and several congressmen, believed that the Lighthouse Service could
convert the old mine-layers into tenders. Congressional debates questioned the
true nature of tenders, with some representatives openly asserting that these,
of course, were merely pleasure boats for Lighthouse Service members. Putnam
quickly suggested that the honorable congressmen come out for a day aboard a
buoy tender and see just how pleasurable it was.
In the end Putnam,
Congress and the Navy reached a compromise: several ex-Navy mine-layers were
converted for lighthouse supply service, and Putnam got what he was after in a
more scaled-down form - a new building program to update his aging fleet - most
still steam-powered, and some with stern- or side-paddle wheels. The new tenders
were larger, diesel-powered, screw-propelled, and had a more advanced derrick
and boom system. These tenders made the handling of compressed-gas buoys safer
and more efficient.
Putnam retired in 1935. Congress moved the Lighthouse
Service out of the Department of Commerce and incorporated it into the Coast
Guard in 1939. This was part of a government-wide reorganization.
ATON
and the Coast Guard
The Coast Guard continued the traditions of
experimentation and adoption of new buoy technology. In the early 1940s, the
service conducted experiments with more specialized buoys intended to withstand
swift currents and still remain highly visible.
Plastic buoys were the
subject of experimentation in the 1940s, the 1950s, and again in the late 1970s
and early 1980s. Color tests in 1979 and '80 proved green-colored buoys were
more visible than the traditional black can buoys.
The Coast Guard
embraced the promise of atomic power with the induction of its "Ensign Peaceful
Atom." This buoy, and its cartoon personification, was touted by the media and
the Coast Guard as the new wave in powering navigational aids. It was tested in
Baltimore Harbor in 1961 and was quietly removed in 1966 after reports that the
nuclear generator failed to keep the buoy lit. Later reports on the atomic buoy
experiment admitted that it was a dismal failure.
Baltimore Harbor is
also the site of the Star-Spangled Banner Buoy, which marks the spot where
Francis Scott Key wrote the national anthem.
In 1966, the Coast Guard
began investigating the possibility of replacing lightships with Large
Navigational Buoys or LNBs.
Far from being a minor navigational aid,
these so-called "monster buoys" have hulls up to 40 feet in diameter with a
depth of up to 7 1¦2 feet. The LNB prototype, constructed in 1969, had a steel
hull subdivided by six bulkheads. These more cost-effective LNBs, along with
"Texas Towers," huge, permanent platforms, served as the death knell of
lightships in the United States.
Modern tenders
Tenders
currently used by the Coast Guard are divided into seven distinct classes based
upon the size and tending capacity. Seagoing tenders are 180 feet long and are
capable of lifting up to 20 tons. They are equipped for long voyages, and have
ice-breaking bows for winter tending.
The second group of tenders are the
coastal tenders. They are 133 and 175 feet long and are characterized by their
10-ton lifting capacity and their high degree of maneuverability. The 157-foot
class is equipped with twin controllable-pitch screws, twin rudders and bow
thrusters as well as a 10-ton boom.
Inland tenders are divided into two
classes - large (100 to 131 feet), and small (65 to 91 feet). The larger tenders
are used primarily in the sheltered waters of bays and harbors. Along with their
10-ton capacity booms, they sometimes come equipped with a pile driver. This
enables them to double as construction and repair vessels. Their hulls are also
characterized by broad flat bottoms, which usually draw about 3 feet when fully
loaded.
The small inland tenders are the pusher-tenders so familiar along
U.S. rivers. The pusher-tender combination is comprised of a "living vessel" and
a working barge complete with boom and pile driver. It is also characterized by
its spuds. The spuds, two to four large timbers not unlike telephone poles, drop
down through slots in the barge. This holds the barge in place, and is an
effective mooring system in sheltered waters.
River tenders are also
divided into two classes: large (104 to 115 feet) and small (65 to 75 feet).
These are flat-bottomed, shallow-draft vessels. They draw between 3 to 9 feet of
water and have a 10-ton boom capacity. Crews on these tenders range from nine to
25 people.
New directions
The CGC Juniper is the first of a new
class of seagoing tenders. The cutter is 225 feet long, 46 feet at the beam, and
has a draft of 13 feet. Launched in July 1995 and due for commissioning in the
spring of 1996, the Juniper, along with the Ida Lewis - the first of the
"Keeper" class, represents the new wave in buoy tending.
The Juniper's
twin diesel engine propulsion system supplies the speed and maneuverability
necessary to tend coastal buoys and offshore exposed location buoys. Perhaps the
most important advancement is the use of a new Dynamic Positioning System. DPS
uses the Differential Global Positioning System to fix a position. Using this
technology, the crew of the Juniper will be able to maintain the vessel's
position within a 10-meter circle in conditions including winds of up to 30
knots with waves up to 8 feet. When setting buoys with this new technology, the
Juniper's margin of error should be near zero
percent.
Conclusions
While the tools and methods of maintaining
minor aids in U.S. waters changed substantially during the past 206 years, the
mission remains the same. Mariners continue to rely on every country's
commitment to the preservation of safe and viable sealanes. The United States
made a decision in 1852, when it created the Lighthouse Board, to honor that
ideal. It is a promise that continues today.
Pleasure boaters and beach
visitors may only briefly notice a buoy rocking in the swells before turning
their eyes, and cameras, to America's more picturesque lighthouses.
Buoys
usually become newsworthy only when they break their moorings and lure ships to
destruction, or embark on far-flung ocean voyages. But buoys are vital
guideposts for mariners, and those who tend them do some of the toughest and
most hazardous work in the Coast Guard.
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