This Day in U.S. Coast Guard History – December 9

1899-A Treasury Order entrusted the Bureau of Navigation "with the duty of examining and disposing of petitions for the remission of fines, penalties, and forfeitures under the laws relating to navigation, vessels, steamboat-inspection, and passengers."

1959- At the request of the Russian Embassy, the crew of a US Coast Guard UF-1 amphibious aircraft removed an ill Russian seaman from the merchant ship Jana in the Bering Sea.  The plane, with an interpreter and a doctor aboard, landed in a blinding snow storm at Dutch Harbor, where the patient was transferred to a hospital.

1981-The icebreaker CGC Westwind departed her homeport of Milwaukee for the Caribbean.  She was assigned to relieve a high-endurance cutter on a counter-drug patrol.

1996- Two Coast Guard HH-60 helicopters with support from an HC-130, all from AIRSTA Elizabeth City, rescued the seven crewmembers of the 67-year old schooner Alexandria when she went down in a fierce storm 50 miles southwest of Cape Hatteras.

(Source: USCG Historian’s Office)