Lifeboat stations were located at or near port cities, allowing heavy lifeboats to be launched directly into the water from marine railways or inclined ramps. Because recreational boating was rare before 1900, those stations primarily assisted commerce ships in trouble, predominantly along the Great Lakes, although some isolated areas also were served by lifesaving stations. The Great Lakes “active season” ran from April to December, with one exception – the first inland waterway rescue center, set up in 1881 on the Ohio River at Louisville, Kentucky.
The final station category – houses of refuge – comprised a paid keeper and one smallboat, but had no active manning or rescue attempts. Set up along the mild-to-warm weather coasts of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, the thinking was shipwrecked sailors only needed shelter as they were not threatened by exposure during the winter as was the case farther north.
Point Adams Lifeboat Station No. 311. The station was built in1889 and discontinued in 1967. Coast Guard Lifeboat Station Point Adams was located at Hammond, Clatsop County, Oregon. Note that the motor lifeboat is named Dreadnaught. U.S. Coast Guard Historian’s Office
By the time the Coast Guard was created in January 1915, more than 270 Life-Saving Service stations were in place along the nation’s Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf coasts and the Great Lakes. According to the Coast Guard Historian’s Office, during its 44 years of independent operations, the Life-Saving Service went to the aid of 28,121 vessels and assisted 178,741 passengers and crew. In that time, “only 1,455 individuals lost their lives while exposed within the scope of Life-Saving Service operations.”
The unofficial motto of the Coast Guard of the era – “You have to go out, but you don’t have to come back!” – arose in 1899, stemming from a Life-Saving Service regulation that states, in part: “In attempting a rescue, [the Life-Saving Station keeper] will not desist from his efforts until by actual trial, the impossibility of effecting a rescue is demonstrated. The statement of the keeper that he did not try to use the boat because the sea or surf was too heavy will not be accepted, unless attempts to launch it were actually made and failed.”
“Coast Guard SAR and Marine Safety operations protect those on the sea by minimizing the loss of life, injury and loss of property. The Coast Guard maintains highly efficient incident response and recovery capabilities to effectively minimize the impact of disasters to people, the environment and the economy. …”
In the 99 years since creation of the Coast Guard, the number of pleasure and commercial vessels along the U.S. coasts – including Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the Caribbean; large lakes created by federal dams (such as Lake Mead, behind Hoover Dam near Las Vegas); navigable inland waterways (i.e., the 440-mile McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System, linking the Tulsa Port of Catoosa to the Gulf of Mexico); and the Great Lakes – has grown exponentially. In addition, the U.S. Coast Guard performs at-sea rescues all along its expanded area of operations (AOR), which now runs from the Arctic Ocean to the southern-most Atlantic and Pacific coasts of South America.
The “U.S. Coast Guard Addendum to the United States National SAR Supplement” to the International Aeronautical and Maritime Search and Rescue Manual sets out four general objectives providing direction for the search and rescue (SAR) program:
- Minimize loss of life, injury, and property loss and damage in the maritime environment;
- Minimize crew risk during SAR missions;
- Optimize use of resources in conducting SAR; and
- Maintain a world leadership position in maritime SAR.
“The ultimate goal of the Coast Guard’s SAR program is to prevent loss of life in every situation where our actions and performance could possibly be brought to bear. Our success in meeting this goal is the result not only of how well the SAR system responds to maritime SAR incidents, but also the efforts of other maritime safety programs, including recreational boating safety and commercial vessel safety,” is the U.S. Coast Guard description of the primary SAR program goal.
A Coast Guardsman helps a man who fell through the ice on Lake Huron near the Bay City State Recreation Area, Michigan, Jan. 27, 2011, as part of a four-day ice-rescue training class. Nighttime training is important, because the majority of ice-rescue cases happen in the dark; responders who have to locate and rescue a person who falls through the ice at night are faced with additional obstacles. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Lauren Jorgensen
“Success reflects how these combined efforts provide mariners with seaworthy craft, proper equipment, necessary knowledge, training and information to operate safely in the maritime environment and to take the correct actions when faced with a distress situation. From a humanitarian perspective, we would like to prevent all loss of life at sea. We recognize, however, the inherent danger involved in the maritime environment makes this unattainable. The current performance benchmark for our maritime safety mission strives to measure the effectiveness of our collective prevention and response efforts. Simply stated, it measures the number of ‘lives saved’ versus the number of ‘lives in distress.’”
Since FY 2008, the service has recorded saving an average of 77 percent of lives considered to have been in imminent danger in the maritime environment within the Coast Guard’s AOR.
In September 2014, the Coast Guard issued a new “Western Hemisphere Strategy,” which ranked safety at sea as a primary mission, through both preventive measures and rapid response.