From http://www.uscg.mil/hq/g-cp/history/Chronology_Nov.html DAILY CHRONOLOGY OF COAST GUARD HISTORY: NOVEMBER DAILY CHRONOLOGY of COAST GUARD HISTORY NOVEMBER 1 November 1843-Secretary of Treasury Spencer issued new "Rules and Regulations for the governing of the Revenue Cutter Service" centralizing control of cutters under Revenue Marine Bureau, but leaving superintendence and direction with Collectors of Customs. 1941-USCG ordered to operate as part of the Navy. 1943-Landings made on Bougainville. Solomon Islands. 1949-Authority to reestablish the Women’s Reserve of the Coast Guard Reserves (SPARS), approved by the President on 4 August 1949 became effective. 1984- The largest marijuana bust to date in West Coast history took place November 1 as the cutter Clover nabbed the 63-foot yacht Arrikis 150 miles southwest of San Diego. The yacht was loaded with 13 tons of marijuana. 2 November 1881-A rowboat with two men and a young girl was going down the Manistee River towards the harbor 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: The USCGC Northwind seizes 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. 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. 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. 8 November 1942- Landings made in Vichy-French held North African. 1959- The tanker Amoco Virginia, with a cargo of aviation gasoline, exploded and caught fire at Houston, Texas. US Coast Guard units in the Galveston-Houston area assisted local and Federal agencies in extinguishing the blaze. For 10 more days, USCG 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. 9 November 1970-Installation of the Coast Guard’s Control Data Corporation 3300 Computer System at Headquarters was completed on 9 November. A period of system acceptance testing was satisfactorily completed and the computer system was then accepted for use by the Coast Guard. 10 November 1975- The Great Lakes ore-carrier Edmund Fitzgerald, caught in an unexpected storm on Lake Superior, sinks with a loss of all twenty-nine hands. 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-World War I ends. 1955-USCGC Yocona, when 60 to 70 mph winds and heavy seas with 30 feet swells made it impossible to launch lifeboats some fifty miles off Cape Lookout Oregon, pulled alongside the sinking fishing vessel Ocean Pride, thus allowing its crew members to jump aboard 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-At 1 o’clock in the afternoon, 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 man clung to the bottom of his craft and made signals for help. They were quickly 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. 14 November 1963- USCG air-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. 1991- An HH-60J Jayhawk from Aviation Training Center Mobile participates 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 1848-Captain Alexander V. Fraser, appointed the first chief of Revenue Marine Bureau in 1843, was detached to proceed around Cape Horn to San Francisco with new brig Lawrence. 1860-The light in the massive stone Minots Ledge Lighthouse, which was built on the original site of the one lost in 1851, was exhibited. Work on the new lighthouse was 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." 16 November 1950-A dedication of the monument erected in Arlington National Cemetery 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 US Coast Guard in World War II. 1992: The 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. The Bear was decommissioned in 1929 after serving in the Bering Sea for 44 years and two months. 17 November 1791-Secretary of Treasury Hamilton fixes value of rations at 12 cents per day for each man in Revenue Marine. 1973-The "Largest Icebreaker in the Western World," USCGC Polar Star, is launched. 1983- LT Edith Munro, USCGR, Douglas Munro's mother and SPAR veteran, 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 US Coast Guard relief detail of boats, men, and aircraft participated in relief assistance measures, cooperating with the Red Cross and civil authorities. 2001- The 605-foot Russian freighter Sergo Zakariadze, loaded with a cargo of cement dust, runs aground at the entrance to San Juan harbor, Puerto Rico. Coast Guard Strike Team, MSO San Juan, Greater Antilles Section, among others, respond. 19 November 1943-CG Air Station at Floyd Bennett Field, Brooklyn, New York, designated as helicopter training base. 1984- The Coast Guard accepts the new HH-65A Dolphin helicopter for service. 20 November 1943-Landings made at Makin and Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands. 21 November 1970-Two 378-foot cutters, USCGC Sherman and Rush combined with USS Endurance to sink a North Vietnamese trawler attempting to smuggle arms into South Vietnam. 23 November 1970- Simas I. Kudirka, a Soviet fisherman, attempted to defect from his Soviet fishing vessel to the USCGC Vigilant, during a meeting between the Soviets and the U.S. on fishing rights. The cutter's commanding officer allowed other Soviets to board the cutter and forcibly remove Mr. Kudirka. 25 November 1995-USCGC Dauntless rescued 578 migrants from a grossly overloaded 75-foot coastal freighter, the largest number of migrants rescued from a single vessel in Coast Guard history. 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. At the time of the casualty Triple Crown had eight anchors and 26,000 feet of chain on board, the weight of which caused a low freeboard aft. Three-to five waves washed over the stern and entered a stackhouse door that could not be closed due to the location of one anchor on deck. The engine flooded, the vessel listed to starboard and sank. The Coast Guard investigated. 26 November 1966-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. USCGC 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. 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 Treasury Gallatin requests 12 new cutters to cost $120,000 to enforce "laws which prohibit exportation and restrain importations." 1877-The first annual report of the U.S. Lifesaving Service was submitted in published form to the Secretary of the Treasury. 30 November 1837-Two early complainants on the efficiency of the American lighthouses, E. and G.W. Blunt, publishers of 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." [Daily Chronology] [Historians' Office] [USCG Home Page] Added: January 1998 Updated: August 2001