Daily Chronology: November

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November

Daily Chronology of Coast Guard History

1 November

1843-Secretary of Treasury Spencer issued new "Rules and Regulations for the governing of the Revenue Cutter Service" that centralized control of personnel, promotion and discipline issues under the Revenue Marine Bureau, but left direct superintendence and direction of the individual cutters with the local Collectors of Customs.

1848-The Revenue cutter C. W. Lawrence weighed anchor off Washington, D.C. and set sail down the Potomac River. The cutter was commanded by Captain Alexander V. Fraser, the first chief of Revenue Marine Bureau, who left that position to take command of the new brig-rigged cutter. He was ordered to proceed on an epic voyage around Cape Horn via the Hawaiian Islands to San Francisco where the cutter arrived safely on 31 October the following year.

1941-President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Executive Order 8929 transferred the Coast Guard to the Navy Department.

1943-The invasion of Bougainville, Solomon Islands, commenced. Coast Guard units participated in the landings.

1949-The authority to reestablish the Women’s Reserve of the Coast Guard Reserve (SPARS), approved by the President on 4 August 1949, became effective.

1984- The largest marijuana bust to date in West Coast history took place when CGC Clover seized the 63-foot yacht Arrikis 150 miles southwest of San Diego. The yacht was loaded with 13 tons of marijuana.

2 November

1820-The Revenue cutter Louisiana captured five pirate vessels during a cruise from Florida to Cuba.

1881-A rowboat with two men and a young girl was going down the Manistee River towards the harbor. It capsized about a hundred feet abreast of Station No. 5, Eleventh District, Lake Michigan. One of the men swam to the dock and was helped out by the life-saving crew. The remaining man tried to swim with his daughter on his back. She began to struggle violently and dragged him under. The keeper pulled off his outer clothing, swam out, caught the father and daughter as they were sinking for the third time, and succeeded in bringing them to the dock where they were helped up by the rest of the crew.

3 November

1883-The keeper and crew of the Smith’s Island Station, Virginia (Fifth District), saw a small schooner flying a signal near Isaac Shoal, five miles away from the station. They went out to her and found on board the captain of a sloop that wrecked the night before several miles from land. He had succeeded in swimming to a bar near the beach, where he was picked up by the crew of the schooner. Finding him suffering from exposure they signaled for assistance. The lifesaving crew applied bottles of hot water and resuscitated him. They then landed him in the surfboat and cared for him for six days until he was sent to his home.

4 November

1984: CGC Northwind seized the P/C Alexi I off Jamaica for carrying 20 tons of marijuana, becoming the first icebreaker to make a narcotics seizure.

5 November

1897-Rescue from drowning Chicago. Illinois, Lake Michigan: at 9: 30 p.m. the north patrol saw a man run across the driveway and jump into the lake with suicidal intent. The surf knocked him down and was tossing him about when surfmen rushed in and hauled him out.

2001- Six U.S. Navy Cyclone-Class patrol coastal warships were assigned to Operation Noble Eagle on 5 November 2001. This was the first time since World War II that U.S. Navy ships were employed jointly with the U.S. Coast Guard to help protect our nation's coastline, ports and waterways.

6 November

1882-At half past 4 in the afternoon the lookout at Station No. 8, Tenth District (Forty Mile Point, Hammond’s Bay Lake Huron) discovered a small boat north of the station about six miles distant, drifting out into the lake apparently unmanageable. Two of the life-saving crew put off in a sailboat. The boat was reached at about dusk, some miles out from the land, with a man and a boy in it. Both were wet and nearly perished with the cold. Their boat was half full of water. They were at once transferred to the rescuing boat and their frail craft was taken in tow to the station.

1984-The Coast Guard accepted operational control from the Navy of the SES-200, a Surface Effect Ship, for five months of operational evaluations.

7 November

1950-The Coast Guard announced that it would open a limited number of Organized Reserve enlistments to male veterans of other services and to males without previous military service in an effort to bring Coast Guard port security training units up to authorized strength without delay. Heretofore, such enlistments had been offered only to former Coast Guardsmen.

1984-The tank ship Mara Hope suffered a fire in her engine room that quickly got out of control. She had lain idle at the Coastal Marine Shipyard on the Neches River for more than a year but the owners of the Liberian tank ship had crewed the vessel and were working to reactivate the ship when the fire broke out. Coast Guard personnel and a 32-footer from MSO Port Arthur soon arrived on-scene as did a 41-footer from Station Sabine. Local firefighters also assisted. It took almost three days to get the blaze under control. The ship was declared a total loss. There were no serious casualties.

8 November

1942- Operation Torch, the Allied landings in Vichy-French-held North Africa, commenced. Coast Guard-manned Navy vessels participated in the assault, including the attack transports USS Leonard Wood, Joseph T. Dickman, and Samuel Chase. Coast Guardsmen also manned the landing craft on the Navy's USS Arcturus, Charles Carroll, Joseph Hewes, William P. Biddle and Exceller.

1959- The tanker Amoco Virginia, with a cargo of aviation gasoline, exploded and caught fire at Houston, Texas. U.S. Coast Guard units in the Galveston-Houston area assisted local and Federal agencies in extinguishing the blaze. For 10 more days, Coast Guard air and surface units controlled a dangerous situation by spreading foam to reduce the fire hazard of leaking aviation gas, directing harbor traffic, pumping out the damaged vessel, and moving her to a safe dock.

1979-The crew of Coast Guard LORAN Station St. Paul Island, Alaska, rescued the crew of the Japanese factory fishing vessel Ryuyo Maru NR Two which had run aground near Tolstoi Point on St. Paul Island during a storm. The Coast Guardsmen used a makeshift breeches buoy to effect the rescue of all of the 81 crewmen aboard the fishing vessel.

9 November

1970-The installation of the Coast Guard’s Control Data Corporation 3300 Computer System at Headquarters was completed on 9 November 1970. A period of system acceptance testing was satisfactorily completed and the computer system was then accepted for use by the Coast Guard.

10 November

1775-The official birthday of the U.S. Marine Corps: on this date in 1775 the Second Continental Congress passed a resolution to create a "Corps of Marines." Although they were disbanded in 1783 and were not re-established permanently until 11 July 1798 the Marine Corps recognizes 10 November 1775 as its official birthday. The Marine Corps' motto is Semper Fidelis (Always Faithful). On 21 October 1921, Major Edwin McClellan, Officer-in-Charge, Historical Section, Headquarters Marine Corps, sent a memorandum to Major General Commandant John A. Lejeune, suggesting that the original birthday on 10 November 1775 be declared a Marine Corps holiday to be celebrated throughout the Corps.

1913-Lightship No. 82 was lost with all hands during a gale while on station near Buffalo, New York. Six crewmen were aboard when the lightship went down. LV-82 was commanded by Hugh M. Williams, Master.

1975- The Great Lakes ore-carrier Edmund Fitzgerald, caught in an unexpected storm on Lake Superior, sank with a loss of all 29 hands. Coast Guard units helped conduct a search for the ship and survivors although all efforts proved to be futile.

11 November

1881-The crew of Life-boat Station No. 14, Eleventh District (Racine, WI) rendered service during the severest storm of the season The life-saving crew noticed several vessels running north for safety under bare poles and two of them made safely into the harbor. Observing this, the master of the schooner Lavinda tried to make the same haven, but the vessel became unmanageable, struck the south pier, immediately became waterlogged, and in five minutes was a wreck. The life-saving crew sprang for the lifeboat and put out to her assistance. They got alongside and managed to run a line from the wrecked vessel to the station tug H. Wetzel, which had steamed out to her relief. The tug soon towed her into the harbor.

1918-The Allied powers signed a cease-fire agreement with Germany at Rethondes, France on November 11, 1918, bringing World War I to a close. Between the wars November 11 was commemorated as Armistice Day in the United States, Great Britain, and France. After World War II, the holiday was recognized as a day of tribute to veterans of both world wars. Beginning in 1954, the United States designated November 11 as Veterans Day to honor veterans of all U.S. wars. Over 8,000 Coast Guardsmen served during the World War I and 111 were killed in action with the enemy.

1955-CGC Yocona rescued the crew of the sinking fishing vessel Ocean Pride some 50 miles off Cape Lookout, Oregon. When 60 to 70 mph winds and heavy seas with 30 feet swells made it impossible to launch lifeboats, Yocona came close aboard the sinking fishing vessel to allow all of its crew members to jump on board the cutter to safety.

12 November

1882-On 11 November the steam-barge H.C. Schnoor struck on the bar off Alcona at 11 o’clock at night about three hundred yards from the shore. A strong southeast gale prevailed at the time, and there was a heavy sea. At 8 o’clock in the morning of the next day (November 12) a team came with the news from Alcona to Station No. 5, Tenth District, (Sturgeon Point), about four miles and a half from the scene of the disaster. After a half-hour for preparation, the keeper was on the road with two teams, one bearing the wreck ordnance and the other the surfboat. An hour later they arrived and launched the surfboat. The surf, however, was so heavy that they failed to get alongside the barge and they were obliged to return. The wreck-gun was then used. The gear, having been set up, the mate was brought ashore by the breeches-buoy. As the crew was obliged to work from a point of land so narrow that they could not spread sufficiently to keep the lines apart, they twisted. The heavy current caused the lee part of the whip-line to foul with the hawser. Before the lines could be cleared, however, the wind changed and beat down the sea. The surfboat was launched and took the captain (who had been on shore at Alcona) and the mate back to the barge. The immediate danger ended with the subsidence of the sea. The life-saving crew returned to the station.

13 November

1883-The sloop Madge Schults capsized as she was passing in through Rockaway Inlet, about half a mile distant from the Rockaway Point Station (Third District). The only crewman of the sloop clung to the bottom of his craft and made signals for help. They were seen by the lookout at the station and the life-saving crew went off in their boat. He was taken from the water and landed on Barren Island.

1944-The Coast Guard-manned frigate USS Rockford and the Navy minesweeper USS Ardent attacked and sank the Japanese Navy submarine I-12 mid-way between Hawaii and California. There were no survivors. In sinking I-12, Ardent and Rockford unwittingly avenged the atrocity I-12 had perpetrated on 30 October 1944 when, after sinking the Liberty Ship John A. Johnson, the submarine rammed and sank the lifeboats and rafts and then machine-gunned the 70 survivors.

14 November

1963- Coast Guard air and surface rescue craft responded immediately when the freighter Fernview and the tanker Dynafuel collided in Buzzards Bay. While helicopters removed the injured aboard the stricken ships, surface craft extinguished the fires. These Coast Guard units had completed the evacuation of all aboard the disabled vessels before the Dynafuel capsized and sank.

1990- PSU 302, staffed by reservists from Cleveland, Ohio, arrived in the Persian Gulf in support of operation Desert Shield. They were stationed in Bahrain.

1991- An HH-60J Jayhawk from Aviation Training Center Mobile participated in a search and rescue operation off the coast of Alabama, the first such case conducted by an HH-60J, which was just beginning to enter Coast Guard service.

15 November

1860-The light in the massive stone Minot's Ledge Lighthouse, which was built on the original site of the one lost in 1851, was exhibited. Work on the new lighthouse commenced in 1855 and finished in 1860. "It ranks, by the engineering difficulties surrounding its erection and by the skill and science shown in the details of its construction, among the chief of the great sea-rock lighthouses of the world."

1977-Coast Guard UTB-41332 from Station Cape Disappointment capsized in the Columbia River during a night training exercise. The UTB sank after the current swept it past the Columbia River Lightship. Three Coast Guardsmen were killed in the accident: BM3 Greg Morris, BM3 Ray Erb and SN Albin Erickson.

16 November

1950-The Serpen's monument in Arlington National Cemetery was dedicated on 16 November 1950. The monument was placed on the gravesite of those who lost their lives on the night of 29 January 1945 when USS Serpens was destroyed off Lunga Beach, Guadalcanal. This was the largest single disaster suffered by the Coast Guard in World War II.

1992: CGC Storis became the cutter with the longest service in the Bering Sea, eclipsing the U.S. Revenue Cutter Bear which had held that distinction since 1929. Bear was decommissioned in 1929 after serving in the Bering Sea for 44 years and two months.

17 November

1791-Secretary of Treasury Hamilton fixed the value of rations at a "generous" 12 cents per day for each man in Revenue Marine.

1973-The "Largest Icebreaker in the Western World," CGC Polar Star, was launched.

1983- LT Edith Munro, USCGR, a World War II SPAR veteran and the mother of Coast Guard hero Douglas Munro, passed away at the age of 88.

18 November

1953- Heavy rains in the Coquile, Coos, and Willamette River Valleys of western Oregon caused flooding of the lowland areas and isolation of some towns through the blocking of highways by slides and high water, necessitating the evacuation of families and livestock. A Coast Guard relief detail of boats, men, and aircraft participated in relief assistance measures, cooperating with the Red Cross and civil authorities.

1999- The 605-foot Russian freighter Sergo Zakariadze, loaded with a cargo of cement dust, ran aground at the entrance to San Juan harbor, Puerto Rico. Coast Guard Strike Team, MSO San Juan, Greater Antilles Section, among others, responded to the accident.

19 November

1943-CG Air Station at Floyd Bennett Field, Brooklyn, New York, was designated as a helicopter training base. The Coast Guard ran the training program during the war.

1984- The Coast Guard accepted the new HH-65A Dolphin helicopter for service.

20 November

1943-Landings commenced at Makin and Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands. The Coast Guard-manned assault transport USS Leonard Wood, veteran of the landings made in the Mediterranean, participated. She landed 1,788 officers and men of the 165th Combat Team of the U.S. Army's 27th Division, on Makin Island. Coast Guard-manned LST-20, LST-23, LST-69, LST-169, LST-205, and the USS Arthur Middleton, and the following Navy ships with partial Coast Guard crews: USSs Heywood, Bellatrix, and William P. Biddle, participated in the bloody assault of Tarawa.

21 November

1970-Two 378-foot cutters, CGC Sherman and Rush combined with USS Endurance to sink a North Vietnamese trawler attempting to smuggle arms into South Vietnam.

1995-CGC Decisive located and began tracking a 75-foot freighter packed with Haitian migrants 30 miles off the northwest coast of Haiti on 19 November. The cutter followed the freighter for two days as it maneuvered in and out of Cuban territorial seas, refusing to allow a boarding party aboard. Finally, at noon, 21 November, with CGC Northland having joined the chase, the captain of the freighter allowed a boarding team to come aboard where they discovered 516 migrants. Using small boats from both cutters, the migrants were brought aboard Northland and were repatriated.

22 November

1906-At the second International Radio Telegraphic Convention, which was held in Berlin, the attendees agreed to adopt the wireless signal "SOS" as the internationally recognized signal for distress at sea. Their thinking was that three dots, three dashes and three dots could not be misinterpreted.

1953-A great boon to ocean navigation for aircraft surface vessels was the completion of four new LORAN stations in the Far East. The stations were built at Mikayo Jima, Ryuku Islands; Bataan and Cantanduanes Islands, Philippines; and Anguar, Palau Island in the Carolinas chain.

1968- On 22 November 1968, a DC-8 with 107 persons on board disappeared from the radar during final approach to San Francisco International Airport. Visibility was 3/4-mile in fog and the ceiling was 300 feet. A Coast Guard helicopter located the aircraft in the water 6,100 yards from the runway with people on the wings boarding life rafts. Within seven minutes, two additional helicopters and a Coast Guard boat were on the scene. All 107 persons were saved.

1993-NATO began enforcing United Nations' Resolutions 713 and 757 that set in place an embargo against the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro). Four Coast Guard LEDETs were deployed to Southern Europe to support the operation and were placed aboard NATO warships.

23 November

1942-The Coast Guard Women's Reserve, known as SPARs, was organized.

1970-Simas I. Kudirka, a Lithuanian seaman, attempted to defect from his Soviet fishing vessel to CGC Vigilant. The incident occurred during a meeting near Martha's Vineyard between the Soviets and the U.S. on fishing rights. After consulting with the First District command, the cutter's commanding officer allowed Soviet crewmen to board the cutter and forcibly remove Kudirka.

25 November

1968-M/V Triple Crown foundered off the coast of Southern California with a loss of nine lives while retrieving the anchor and chain of a large offshore drilling rig. The Coast Guard investigated.

1999-Elian Gonzalez, a five-year old Cuban boy, was found on Thanksgiving morning clinging to an inner tube three miles off the coast of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He was among three survivors of a boating accident which killed 11 migrants fleeing Cuba. The Coast Guard searched from Islamorada to Boca Raton, using a HU-25 and a HH-65 from Air Station Miami, a HC-130 from Air Station Clearwater, CGC Maui, and a 41-foot UTB from Station Fort Lauderdale. The child later gained international notoriety when his father, a Cuban citizen, attempted to have him returned to Cuba, a desire that Elian's relatives in the U.S. fought through the U.S. court system all the way to the Supreme Court. The Court ruled in his father's favor and the child was returned to Cuba.

26 November

1964-The Israeli passenger liner Shalom and the Norwegian tanker Stolt Dagali collided off Point Pleasant, New Jersey in a dense fog. Nineteen tanker crewmen were killed in the collision which sliced the tanker into two pieces. CGC Point Arden was the first on scene. Five other cutters and "a fleet" of Coast Guard and Navy helicopters soon joined in the rescue and salvage operations, resulting in the rescue of 24 of the tanker's crew. One injured Shalom crewman was airlifted by a Coast Guard helicopter for medical treatment and survived. No one else from the liner was injured.

1968-While en route from Apia, Western Samoa to Pago Pago, Polynesian Airlines Flight 5WFAA sighted the wreckage of an overturned vessel and reported it to the Federal Aviation Agency Flight Service at Tafuna, American Samoa. CGC Cape Providence, moored at Pago Pago on search and rescue standby, was notified of the sighting. With an assist from the Polynesian airliner, the cutter located the disabled fishing vessel named Main Sun No.2 and found 17 survivors clinging to the overturned hull. Despite the rough seas breaking over the hull, the Cape Providence rescued 13 of the survivors, while 4 more were retrieved from the water by the fishing vessel Chie Hong No.20, which had arrived on scene to assist. Two members of the 19-man crew, however, had been trapped in the engine room on the capsized vessel and had perished.

1996-A Coast Guard HC-130 located a grossly overloaded Haitian freighter off the coast of Haiti. Crewmen from the cutters Dauntless, Chandelier, Monhegan, and Nantucket helped to transfer the largest group of Haitians ever found on a vessel to CGC Northland. One Haitian died of severe dehydration, the other 581 were repatriated.

1997- Two crewmen died when the Japanese freighter Kuroshima ran aground in a storm near Dutch Harbor. Eighteen other crewmen were rescued by Coast Guardsmen who used a tow rope to haul a life raft to safety. The Coast Guardsmen were from CGC Midgett that was fortuitously in Dutch Harbor for a mid-patrol break. The freighter was later refloated.

2002-President George W. Bush signed into law a bill that created the Department of Homeland Security, the largest reorganization of the federal government in fifty years. The Coast Guard was one of a number of agencies that transferred to the new Department; the transfer was scheduled to go into effect on 1 March 2003.

27 November

1883-The schooner Maggie W. Willard with a crew of five men struck on Sea Horse Rock about two miles west of the Crumple Island Station (First District) on the coast of Maine at 1 o’clock in the afternoon. She was discovered by the station crew, who offered assistance. Finding the vessel in a very dangerous position and leaking the crew’s effects were saved and they were taken to the station. All efforts to get the vessel off failed. That night the schooner drove over the reef and sunk in deep water, becoming a total loss.

28 November

1889- The crew of the Evanston, IL, Life-Saving Station earned the Gold Lifesaving Medal for the rescue of the crew of the steamer Calumet. Most of the crew consisted of students from Northwestern University.

29 November

1808-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin requested 12 new cutters at a cost of $120,000 to enforce "laws which prohibit exportation and restrain importations" to support the embargo ordered by President Thomas Jefferson. President Jefferson had ordered an embargo against most European imports and exports to protest the harassment of U.S. sailors by warring European powers. The embargo did not work. The United States went to war with England in 1812 but the Revenue Marine got the new cutters.

1877-The first annual report of the U.S. Lifesaving Service was submitted in published form to the Secretary of the Treasury.

1969-The German freighter Nordmeer ran aground on the Thunder Bay Shoal in Lake Huron. Most of her crew safely evacuated to a nearby ship but eight crewmen remained on board to attempt to save their vessel. The weather quickly deteriorated, however, and they radioed for assistance. A Coast Guard helicopter and the icebreaker Mackinaw responded and safely evacuated the eight men while the freighter broke up.

30 November

1837-Two early complainants on the efficiency of the American lighthouses, E. and G.W. Blunt, publishers of the famous Blunt’s "Coast Pilot," submitted a statement to the Secretary of the Treasury. They argued that the whole lighthouse system "needs revision, a strict superintendence and an entirely different plan of operation."

1920- The Navy minesweeper USS Swan ran aground on Duxbury Beach, MA. Coast Guardsmen from three nearby stations rescued the minesweeper's crew with a breeches buoy. CGC Androscoggin assisted in the rescue.

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Last Modified 10/5/2012