Ida Lewis News

Built to guide mariners through safe waters, the Valiant Rock Lighted Whistle Buoy 11 was dangerously adrift in the Long Island Sound.When ferry operators traveling between Orient Point and Fishers Island, New York, first reported the buoy off station on Jan. 17, the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Oak (WLB-211) was already underway but foul weather kept the cutter from removing it.This was the beginning of a two-week saga that would involve several Coast Guard units. Like the Loch Ness monster of the Long Island Sound, the 35-foot-tall green buoy was occasionally seen but hard to catch.

1775-This is the date that the Navy recognizes as it's "official" birthday. The United States Navy traces its origins to the Continental Navy, which the Continental Congress established on 13 October 1775 by authorizing the procurement, fitting out, manning, and dispatch of two armed vessels to cruise in search of munitions ships supplying the British Army in America. The legislation also established a Naval Committee to supervise the work. All together, the Continental Navy numbered some fifty ships over the course of the war, with approximately twenty warships active at its maximum strength. After the American War for Independence, Congress sold the surviving ships of the Continental Navy and released the seamen and officers.

1883 - Between 4 and 5 o’clock in the afternoon, a small sailboat, owned at West Hampton, New York, capsized In crossing the bay with one man on board. Three of the crew of the Petunk Station (Third District) sprang into a skiff, rowed out, rescued the man, and towed the boat ashore. 1988 - The first U.S. merchant marine World War II veterans received their Coast Guard issued discharge certificates.  Congress gave the merchant mariners veterans' status and tasked the Coast Guard with administering the discharges. 1995 - The cutter Ida Lewis was launched, the first of the new 175-foot Keeper class buoy tenders. (Source: USCG Historian’s Office)