An Almost-forgotten Past

A female Coast Guard person is "rescued" by the Breeches Buoy at Chicamacomico.

Before the U.S. Coast Guard, we had the U.S. Life Saving Service. These guys lived on the Outer Banks in the 1870s in life saving stations scattered along the shore. Their task was to brave the elements and attempt to rescue the survivors of the 2,200 vessels that ran aground on these shoal waters off the east coast.

Jo and I were assigned to visit one of the lifesaving stations that now are registered as a Historic Place. We visited Chicamacomico (pronounced CHICA-MA-COM-ICO), which, to the Algonquian-speaking peoples means “land of shifting sands”. Those Indians knew whereof they spoke. The sands do nothing but shift.

The Coast Guard from the Hatteras Station had come north to the station to put on a demonstration of how the life-saving team would launch a Breeches Buoy from the land to an object representing a foundering ship.  Their spokesman told us the service back in the 1870s would be tested on a regular basis to be sure they were capable of performing the exercise in five minutes.  

The brawny Coast Guard men and women took around 25 minutes to perform the task of digging a hole in the sand in which they anchored the equipment. They then lined up their brass cannon on a replica of a ship’s mast and fired the cannon. They missed the mast because the wind dropped at the moment of firing and the shot went wide.

We watched as they tied off the rope to the mast, cranked in on a pulley system to make a tight connection to the shore and then sent the breeches buoy out to the “ship” and rescued the youngest and lightest of the Coast Guard women.

There were 29 stations strung out along the Outer Banks of North Carolina. And their record of rescue is pretty impressive. We were told more than 177,000 people’s lives were saved by the crews. The most notable rescue occurred in 1918, toward the end of World War I when the men of the Chicamacomico station rescued 42 of 51 sailors aboard the S.S. Mirlo after she was sunk by a German submarine.

Very few lifesaving stations remain in the U.S. today. So, should you come to the Outer Banks, this is a “must visit” site.

Jo walks toward the life saving station as a Coast Guardsman steps down the ramp.