Maritime Monday for March 13th, 2017: Love Me Tender

Keeper Class Coastal Class Buoy Tenders on USCG.mil and on shipspotting

Marcus Aurelius Hanna (1842 – 1921; born Bristol, Maine) was an American lighthouse keeper famous for his heroism. He is the only person in history to have received both the Medal of Honor and the Gold Lifesaving Medal.

After the American Civil War, Hanna was appointed keeper of his hometown Pemaquid Point Light in 1869. In 1873 he was transferred to Two Lights in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, where he served as head lightkeeper. It was there on January 28, 1885 that he braved a blizzard, risking his life to save two sailors from the schooner Australia which was being battered against the rocks below the station. Having thrown a line, he successfully got both sailors off the ship and brought them to the nearby fog signal house where the sailors warmed, saving them from exposure and frostbite.  USCG Official Report

Hanna died on December 12, 1921 and is buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery in South Portland, Maine. more

Audubon’s ‘Birds of America,’ Updated for Our Polluted World

 The Floating Hospital originally spent 150 years operating on tugboats pulled around New York City, but now operates out of a clinic on Long Island City, Queens. They are still the largest provider of primary medical, dental and mental healthcare to homeless families and domestic violence survivors living in the New York City shelter system. from Facebook via NYC Tugzz

Read more here: https://goo.gl/YGMAz5 and see more stories like this at HopefulHeadlines.org

The Floating Hospital is a non-profit organization that provides healthcare services to medically under-served communities in New York City, both from its headquarters in Long Island City, Queens and from satellite offices in Brooklyn and The Bronx. Though today it is a land-based organization, the organization operated a succession of vessels which frequently cruised New York Harbor and nearby waterways, giving indigent children and their caregivers a respite from overcrowded tenements.

The Floating Hospital traces its origins to October 1866 as an series of charitable excursions first conducted by steamboat tycoon John Starin for the benefit of newsboys, war veterans, and the needy. Besides a strong recreational component, these outings also were seen as being medically important, because children were exposed to clean air and salt water, which were seen as curative by many people in that era, and also because while on-board they would be examined and treated by medical professionals.

The Floating Hospital continued the basic formula of attracting families with recreational opportunities on board their vessel and providing professional medical services to them while they were aboard through the late 20th century. By the 1970s, the hospital described itself as “basically a disease prevention and referral agency” that focused on education, though it also provided outpatient services on its vessel, both during outings in summer months and while moored at its regular berth in the South Street Seaport during the winter.

more on wikipedia

60 Free Film Noir Movies You Can Binge Watch Online

There exist an impressive number of crime thrillers from the 1940s and even early 1950s that employ the use of introductory voice over narration to impress (some would argue coax) viewers of the day with the difficult tasks of safeguarding the United States against whatever particular threat the given film is about to explore. In some examples the Los Angeles police department is exposited as a shining beacon of justice. Port of New York follows that same tradition, only this time it is the coastguards, customs and narcotics divisions on the Atlantic side of the country that gets to bask in the glow of an inspirational opening speech.

Ports, much like airports and border crosses, are the among the most important gates through which returning citizens, visitors and imported goods much pass in order to step onto a territory’s soil. The level of security associated with such to and fro activity is unfathomable, ranging from the verification of travellers identification pieces to the inspection of whatever goods said arrivals want to bring with them into the new country or state. Just ask New York customs agent Jim Flannery (Richard Rober), tasked with investigating the sudden disappearance of drugs originally intended for medicinal use.  keep reading

Port of New York (1949) – Two narcotics agents go after a gang of murderous drug dealers who use ships docking at the New York harbor to smuggle in their contraband. First film in which Yul Brynner appeared. Shot on location shot in semi-documentary style. more

How to recover when something goes very, very wrong at sea

Deep Sea News – Last weekend, the wire cable from which the CTD is suspended on the RRS James Cook snapped, sending the entire thing to the bottom of the sea. This is just an incredible story that demonstrates the resourcefulness of the people who work on oceanographic research ships.  keep reading

The RRS James Cook is a British Royal Research Ship operated by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). She was built in 2006 to replace the ageing RRS Charles Darwin with funds from Britain’s NERC and the DTI’s Large Scientific Facilities Fund. She was named after Captain James Cook, the British explorer, navigator and cartographer. wikipedia

more about the RRS James Cook on The National Oceanography Centre website

International Women’s Day Spotlight: Ida Lewis

Ida Lewis (February 25, 1842 – October 24, 1911) was born Idawalley Zorada Lewis-Wilson in Newport, Rhode Island, and would become a renowned figure of heroism in her work as a lighthouse keeper at Lime Rock Light off of Newport.

Her father was appointed keeper of Lime Rock Light in 1854, and moved his family there in 1857. But four months after this, her father was disabled due to a stroke, so Ida and her mother kept the lighthouse.

As Lime Rock was surrounded by water, Ida became an excellent swimmer and could deftly maneuver a rowboat by a young age.

Lewis made her first rescue in 1854, coming to the assistance of four men whose boat had capsized, at the tender age of 12, but her most famous was on March 29, 1869.

keep reading on Steamship Historical Society

An article in the New York Tribune of April 15, 1869 dubbed Ida the Grace Darling of America, an appellation that remained with her throughout her life. Grace Darling was a famous English heroine who helped her father rescue nine people from a shipwreck in the North Sea.  Grace Darling on wikipedia

The Lighthouse Service had a long-standing rule against naming a lighthouse after anything other than its geographical location, but in 1925 Commissioner of Lighthouses George R. Putnam officially changed the name of Lime Rock Lighthouse to Ida Lewis Rock Lighthouse.

The USCGC Ida Lewis (WLM-551), the lead ship of the 175′ Keeper-class buoy tender, is currently stationed in Newport, Rhode Island.

The 45 minute documentary, “America’s Forgotten Heroine: Ida Lewis, Keeper of the Light” (2014) is available on Amazon

Man Crosses the Atlantic On a Stand-Up Paddleboard

South African surfer Chris Bertish spent 93 days paddling 4,050 miles between Morocco and Antigua

NPR reports that the 42-year-old South African surfer undertook the feat to help raise money to build schools in his native country and to support charities that help pay for cleft lip and palate operations. As of yesterday, his odyssey has raised $490,000.

“Everything that could possibly have gone wrong, went wrong,” Bertish told The New York Times. Surgeons tell him he needs a new rotator cuff.

Read more on Smithsonian

Abbie Burgess Grant (1839–1892) was an American lighthouse keeper known for her bravery in tending the Matinicus Rock Light in Maine during a raging winter storm in 1856.

She did so for nearly a month while her father, the head keeper, was away from the island. Her heroic actions attracted much attention and she was soon a popular heroine. She was only 15 years old.

She went on to marry the son of her father’s replacement and she and her husband served as assistant keepers on Matinicus Rock for fourteen years, raising four sons. They later moved to Whitehead Light off St. George, Maine, where they served as lighthouse keepers for fifteen more years before retiring in 1890. She died in Portland in 1892.  wikipedia

In 1998, the United States Coast Guard commissioned Cutter Abbie Burgess (WLM-553), a 175′ Keeper-class buoy tender; currently stationed in Rockland, Maine.

Abbie Burgess Grant on the USCG website

Katherine “Kate” Walker (1850s in Germany– February 5, 1931) tended the Robbins Reef Light in the Lower New York Bay in New York Harbor for more than thirty years after the death of her husband, Captain John Walker, who had been appointed keeper of the light in 1883.

Katherine was appointed the official keeper of the light by President Benjamin Harrison in 1890, four years after her husband’s death. During her commitment on the tower she rescued 50 sailors from shipwrecks, and raised two children. She rarely left the station, except to row her children back and forth to school on Staten Island. Although her home (at the light) was comfortable, she spent the majority of her time on the terrace outside, regardless of the weather.

The United States Coast Guard Coastal Buoy Tender KATHERINE WALKER (WLM 552) Bayonne, NJ is named for her.  wikipedia

more on the USCG website

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