Even so, Congress was unhappy with what it considered an unwieldy board structure that was unduly influenced by the military and subject to internal bickering. Looking for a new command structure and organization responsive to a single civilian authority, Congress disbanded the Lighthouse Board in 1910, replacing it with a Bureau of Lighthouses – this time under the Department of Commerce – and creating the U.S. Lighthouse Service, headed by a commissioner of lighthouses, as its operating agency.

The Lighthouse Service was merged into the Coast Guard in 1939 as the service’s responsibilities expanded to include ATON. Lighthouse Service officers, crews, and civilian employees were offered the choice of integrating into the Coast Guard, with military rank based on their existing salaries, or staying on as civilians under Coast Guard command. As a result, that component of the Coast Guard was about evenly split, with many lightships initially operating with either all-military or all-civilian crews, although those eventually became a mixture until well after World War II.

When the Coast Guard was moved to the Transportation Department in 1967, some former Lighthouse Service civilian employees were still on duty.

 

Safeguarding Internal Waterways

The Coast Guard’s “Forgotten Fleet” comprises 35 cutters in three classes – construction tenders (WLIC), inland buoy tenders (WLI), and river buoy tenders (WLR) – providing ATON for the nation’s navigable rivers and the 12,000-mile-long Intracoastal Waterway. The Coast Guard Office of Visual Navigation estimates the construction tenders, inland buoy tenders, and river buoy tenders are responsible for 68.3 percent of the service’s 49,102 aids to navigation.

In 2012, inland waterways provided transport for 565 million tons of goods, including 60 percent of U.S. grain exports, 22 percent of domestic petroleum products and 20 percent of coal used in electricity generation – a total of some $70 billion in cargo. And increasing domestic oil and natural gas production saw internal waterway shipping jump to 201 million tons, up 47.3 percent from the previous year.

With major oil spills – the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico and the 1989 Exxon Valdez in Alaska – raising public concerns, ensuring the safe transport of petroleum products on the nation’s rivers gained added import, but the other 60 percent of cargo moving on inland waterways is vital to the nation’s economy and security.

Although the Coast Guard tenders have played a major role in protecting those assets and safeguarding the environment and populations on and near those rivers, they originally earned the “Forgotten Fleet” nickname for rarely making headlines.

However, the term also now may refer to the age of the fleet – the newest is the CGC Greenbrier, built nearly a quarter-century ago and one of only two cutters not already past its designed service life, a milestone it will reach by decade’s end, while the 70-year-old CGC Smilax (the Coast Guard’s oldest cutter) entered service during World War II. With no standard configuration across the three dozen tenders, any upgrades or changes the Coast Guard implements require individual application, which only increases the already rising cost of obsolescence in engineering, operational, and habitability equipment.

The availability of the 35 tenders to meet their operational requirements also has fallen dangerously low, to less than 65 percent for the inland buoy and construction tenders and only 46 percent for the river buoy tenders. High levels of asbestos and lead raise a risk to the crews and antiquated designs make it nearly impossible to reconfigure the vessels for female servicemembers, a sharp departure from the Coast Guard’s status as the military service with the largest percentage of female officers, including ship commanders.

In an article in the Fall 2014 issue of Proceedings of the Marine Safety & Security Council, the Coast Guard Journal of Safety at Sea & Security at Sea, Lt. Sean Dolbow, sponsor representative for seagoing and coastal buoy tenders in the Coast Guard Office of Cutter Forces, and Lt. Dan Halsig, manager of the polar ice breaking fleet, summed up the status and future of the inland ATON fleet:

“The decreasing availability and increasing costs to maintain this 70-year-old fleet undermine the Coast Guard’s ability to provide this service to the mariner at the very time that the demand for reliable, effective ATON service along internal waterways is increasing. Significant investment in the inland fleet must occur to halt the progression of this inverse relationship between service and demand. Without it, this forgotten fleet may cease to be a fleet at all.”

 

U.S. Coast Guard Navigation Center (NAVCEN)

For millennia, sailors navigated the seas by the stars and constellations. For the past two decades, a new constellation in space – 24 Global Positioning System satellites – have become the preeminent navigation system for sea, air, and land. It is a system in which the Coast Guard plays the lead domestic role.

The Coast Guard Navigation Center of Excellence was established to serve as the U.S. focal point for implementation of e-Navigation – “the harmonized collection, integration, exchange, presentation and analysis of maritime information onboard and ashore by electronic means to enhance berth-to-berth navigation and related services, for safety and security at sea and protection of the marine environment.”

NAVCEN’s services include:

• Operating the nationwide differential GPS system
• Operating the long range identification and tracking business help desk
• Operating the nationwide Automatic Identification System
• Publishing notices to mariners and the light list
• Disseminating navigation information through 24/7 operations center and the NAVCEN website
• Managing the integrated Aids to Navigation Information System
• Managing electronic charting portfolios for U.S. Coast Guard units
• Serving as the primary U.S. government interface with GPS users (except aviation and military)
• Receiving and coordinating investigation of GPS outage reports

NAVCEN also works with other government agencies to collect and disseminate maritime safety information, using a variety of systems to ensure all ships of every size and nationality are able to receive those broadcasts throughout the oceans and waterways for which the United States is responsible. The information transmitted includes National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration updates on oceanic and atmospheric conditions, Worldwide Navigational and Meteorological safety broadcasts, weather and ice charts, and SAR reports.

 

The Evolution of SAR

The Coast Guard’s responsibilities for organizing and coordinating search and rescue facilities and operations on all navigable U.S. and international waters under U.S. jurisdiction are in the midst of a major evolution in technology and geography. For example, the Search and Rescue Optimization Planning System uses robust sensor and detection capabilities to create response patterns to improve the speed, efficiency, and effectiveness of searches for victims of maritime mishaps.

Another system, the VHF-based Rescue 21 distress safety net for mariners, is being expanded and recapitalized to maintain maritime domain awareness, distress monitoring, and communications at least 20 miles off the coast. Newly acquired unmanned aerial systems being incorporated into offshore law enforcement operations also are seen as having a significant potential impact on the Coast Guard’s future SAR concepts of operation.

Such advances are helping Coast Guard safety capabilities keep up with the ever-increasing number – and size – of pleasure craft, cargo and cruise ships, offshore drilling operations, and new sub-surface commercial and recreational activities. Those capabilities also will be required in what may be a large and rapid growth in commercial and recreational transits in the Arctic, which also is expected to become a large – and highly competitive – venue for natural resources.

The development of faster, more capable and efficient SAR response assets also will provide the flexibility the Coast Guard needs to re-evaluate its station infrastructure and maritime safety programs for the 21st century.

“The Coast Guard has never been more relevant or more important to domestic security and regional stability,” according to Zukunft. “Our exceptional international reputation is a direct result of the work our Coast Guard men and women do every day.”

This article first appeared in the U.S. Coast Guard 225th Anniversary: A Special Edition of Coast Guard Outlook.