Life Lines
U.S. Life-Saving Service Heritage Association
January 2020
USCG Station Portsmouth Harbor, New Castle, NH Photo Credit: Judy Lindo Photography
Happy New Year and welcome to Life Lines the monthly newsletter for our members of the U.S. Life-Saving Service Heritage Association. For those of you reading and have yet to join, please consider doing so. Your membership will get you access to the station inventory link and our new venture to create a “Surfmans’ Data Base.” If you would like to join please go to http://uslife-savingservice.org/join-donate-support/
Other ways you can support our organization is to volunteer your time to one of the committees.
Marketing/Outreach Committee is looking for more volunteers to help with membership, annual conference attendance, networking with active Coast Guard, helping to develop brochures and rack cards, and interact on social media for the organization. If you are interested in helping with this committee please contact us at http://uslife-savingservice.org/contact/
Publications Now Available as Print-on-Demand
The two books that the USLSSHA produced are now available by print-on-demand at lulu.com. Search for either “They Had to Go Out” or “Rescue: The Stories of the U.S. Life-Saving Service” edited by John Galluzzo. If you have not added these two books to your library here is your chance to do so
Chronology of Coast Guard History
If you were looking for a link to a chronology of Coast Guard History here is that link. I will leave it permanently on Life Lines for you to access each month. I found this really useful and interesting. https://www.history.uscg.mil/research/chronology/
Winter Activities Have Come to Hull
Photo Credit: Hull Lifesaving Museum Website
The Hull Lifesaving Museum will be open on its normal winter schedule during the holidays. Click here and scroll down the page for days and hours: http://www.lifesavingmuseum.org/contactus.html
Upcoming events:
Wednesday 1/1
Annual New Year’s Day Row
The Hull Lifesaving Museum’s rowing clubs in Boston and Hull are planning to do our traditional New Year’s Day Row. Good luck to them as we wish them warm & dry feet!
Tuesday 1/14 & Thursday 1/16
Connie Crosby’s art workshop
Learn how to transfer color images from paper to a wood panel and then enhance and embellish the work of art to your own liking. To learn more email us at: [email protected]
Monday 1/20
Another Free Movie Day on Martin Luther King Jr’s Birthday
Amistad ~ Show Time: 12:00 noon
This film is based on the true story of the events in 1839 aboard the slave ship La Amistad, during which Mende tribesmen abducted for the slave trade managed to gain control of their captors’ ship off the coast of Cuba, and the international legal battle that followed their capture by the Washington, a U.S. revenue cutter.
Stay tuned for many more events in February and beyond.
Historians Fight to Preserve New Jersey’s Endangered Lifesaving Stations
Photo Credit: U.S. Life-Saving Service Heritage Association
Amid the tightly packed shore houses of Ocean City, a yellow-sided two-story building with wide porches and a tower stands on the corner of 4th Street and Atlantic Avenue, about a block-and-a-half from the ocean.
It’s Lifesaving Station 30, a meticulously restored structure whose workers rescued people from many nearby shipwrecks in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It stands now as perhaps New Jersey’s only intact reminder of an age when the perilous conditions of life at sea required equal bravery from those who went to the rescue of ships that got into trouble.
The restoration has recreated the 1885 structure where seven men watched and waited for ships in distress and then launched their rescues, often in the teeth of Atlantic gales and freezing temperatures.
The story of Station 30, and the 41 others that once kept watch over New Jersey’s busy shipping lanes, is a little-known chapter of the state’s maritime history that is being staunchly defended and vividly told by a small band of enthusiasts, with the help of local, state and federal funding.
Only one of an earlier generation of lifesaving stations — an 1849 boathouse at Spermaceti Cove — still exists, thanks to preservation by the National Park Service. The stations at 23 of the shore points have been lost altogether, leaving 19 others as museums, community centers and even maintenance facilities, run by state and local authorities or nonprofits. Only three are open to the public as museums.
Sites that no longer host lifesaving stations include Deal, Bay Head and Cedar Creek, while some structures survive at Harvey Cedars, Avalon and Cold Spring, among others, according to the U.S. Lifesaving Heritage Association. https://uslife-savingservice.org/
Some were demolished by the Coast Guard, which took over the federal Life Saving Service in 1915, and apparently had little interest in the outmoded trappings of its predecessor organization. Others fell victim to developers who were hungry for coastal property, or to private owners who converted them into shore homes, and, in one case, took it down and rebuilt it elsewhere.
Their advocates argue that a compelling part of state history will be lost unless more is done to preserve the stations that saved thousands of lives. If you would like to read more about this story and the efforts by members of our organization go to the following link to read more: https://whyy.org/articles/historians-fight-to-preserve-new-jerseys-endangered-lifesaving-stations/
Wood Island, Maine 2020 Calendar is Available
Photo Credit: Don Gargano
If you haven’t purchased your 2020 calendar yet, consider the one put out highlighting the Wood Island Life-Saving Station restoration. Proceeds go towards the restoration of this wonderful historic building! http://www.lulu.com/shop/don-gargano/wilss-2020/calendar/product-24324238.html?fbclid=IwAR3Oksz6XvoXi0r6JrpMbvX7IaK4I2xabG9hN0_Nu8091xW2zwxmmxmB4eQ
If you would like to listen to a podcast with member Sam Reid about the restoration of the Wood Island Station, go to this link. https://news.uslhs.org/2019/11/04/light-hearted-ep-32-sam-reid-wood-island-life-saving-station-kittery-maine/
Kittery, Maine is the Next Destination for the 2020 Annual Conference
Photo courtesy of the Wood Island Life Saving Station Association
The 2020 Annual Conference and Meeting will be in and around Kittery, Maine and will include stations between Nahant, Massachusetts along the coast of New Hampshire and to the southern edge of Maine. The dates are September 24-26, 2020. Mark your calendars and save some time to make the trip.
Watch this site and Wreck and Rescue for more information.
If you have a story to submit for the next Life Lines please contact us through our website. http://uslife-savingservice.org/contact/
Also consider joining the Life Lines staff. If you would like to be the editor or would like to assemble a few of the issues a year, the help would be welcome. We are now three and more are welcome to join us. If you wanted to have a role or contribute to the organization this is your opportunity to do so.