United States Coast Guard

In the record (61)

1. 1915

   The new Coast Guard's first annual report puts Ocean City station in the Sixth coast district — the coast between Delaware and Chesapeake Bays — under a superintendent at Lewes, Del., and locates it simply "at village".

   The FY1915 report's station tables list the Sixth coast district as "Coast between Delaware and Chesapeake Bays. In charge of a superintendent stationed at Lewes, Del." Running south, its Maryland and Virginia stations are Lewes, Cape Henlopen, Rehoboth Beach, Indian River Inlet, Bethany Beach, Fenwick Island, Isle of Wight ("3 miles south of Fenwick Light"), **Ocean City ("At village")**, North Beach ("10 miles south of Ocean City"), Green Run Inlet, Popes Island, Assateague Beach, Wallops Beach, Metomkin Inlet, Wachapreague, Parramore Beach, Hog Island, Cobb Island and Smith Island. The locality note is worth keeping: alone among its neighbours, Ocean City's station is described not by a distance from a light but by the fact that a town had grown around it. The same volume also lists a separate Ocean City station in the New Jersey district near Great Egg Inlet — the standing trap of this campaign — and disambiguates them elsewhere by district number, as "Ocean City (6)" for Maryland. Ocean City (6) appears twice in the year's Blue Anchor Society table, the private Women's National Association charity that supplied clothing to people the crews pulled out of the water, because the government made no provision for clothing them.

   Ocean City Life-Saving Station Museum

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

2. 1915

   A big freighter was rammed by a schooner and went down off the beach in ten minutes in January; by March the Ocean City and Fenwick Island Coast Guard crews were dragging the bottom for her hull in their power lifeboats.

   The Democratic Messenger of 30 January 1915 led its front page: "STEAMSHIP SUNK NEAR OCEAN CITY — Rammed by Big Schooner and Goes to Bottom of Ocean in Ten Minutes," with the sub-heads "Crew Pulled From the Water" and "Steamer Worth $1,500,000." Two months later the Washington Evening Star of 28 March named the ship and the men who went looking for her: "The coast guard from the stations at Ocean City, Md., and Fenwick Island, Del., co-operated with the cutter and using their power lifeboats swept the bottom of the sea and soon found the hulk. The wreck has since been marked with a light buoy." It is the earliest instance in this registry of Ocean City's crew being called the coast guard rather than the life-saving crew, and the first documented operation of the town's station under its new name — not a surfboat rescue but a hydrographic sweep for a hazard to navigation, one of the duties the merger had just handed it.

   Ocean City Life-Saving Station Museum

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

3. 1915

   At Christmas 1915 the Coast Guard stationed a second telephone lineman at Ocean City — the wire that linked the beach stations from Cape Charles to Chincoteague now needed two men to keep it up.

   The Democratic Messenger of 25 December 1915: "Mr. Charles Burg, who repairs the telephone lines for the Coast Guard Service, has been given an assistant to be stationed at Ocean City, Md. Mr. Burg's district will now be from Cape Charles, Va., to Chincoteague." It is a small item and an unusually revealing one. The line of poles along the barrier beach was how the stations talked to each other and how word of a wreck reached the world; it had been a Life-Saving Service asset (the annual appropriation names "telephone lines and care of same" among the standing costs) and it passed to the Coast Guard with everything else in January. Eleven months into the new service, the maintenance of that wire is the only visible change at Ocean City the local press recorded — not a new boat, not a new title, but one more man on the poles.

   Ocean City Life-Saving Station Museum

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

4. 1915 · 1915-01-28

   On 28 January 1915 Congress abolished the U.S. Life-Saving Service and folded Ocean City's station into the new U.S. Coast Guard — the keeper became a warrant officer, the No. 1 surfman a petty officer, and the rest of the crew enlisted men.

   The Coast Guard act of 28 January 1915 established "in lieu of the existing Revenue-Cutter Service and the Life-Saving Service ... the Coast Guard, which shall constitute a part of the military forces of the United States and which shall operate under the Treasury Department in time of peace and operate as a part of the Navy ... in time of war." The first Annual Report of the United States Coast Guard, for the fiscal year ended 30 June 1915, states plainly what that meant at a beach station: "The transfer of the personnel of the former Life-Saving Service to the Coast Guard was accomplished by issuing appointments as commissioned officers, warrant officers, and petty officers to the district superintendents, keepers, and No. 1 surfmen, respectively, and regularly enlisting the surfmen." The report adds that "the military system of the former Revenue-Cutter Service has been utilized as a basis for the organization of the Coast Guard", which "has necessitated many changes in matters affecting the status and discipline of that portion of the Coast Guard which was formerly the Life-Saving Service." Promotion to No. 1 surfman was thereafter by selection from the surfmen and promotion to keeper by selection from the No. 1 surfmen, with a six-month probation and a written mental examination for the keeper's warrant. Two things the old service never had came with the change: longevity pay (the FY1915 deficiency appropriation covers longevity pay for 274 keepers and 262 No. 1 surfmen) and retirement (125 men were retired in the first five months, among them 41 keepers). Sumner I. Kimball, general superintendent of the Life-Saving Service since 1878 and a name in this registry since Ocean City's station opened, appears in the same volume as general superintendent of the Coast Guard under Capt. Commandant Ellsworth P. Bertholf. The Ocean City station itself — in the campaign's record since 1878 — changed hands without a word of local notice: nothing in the Worcester County press marks the day.

   Ocean City Life-Saving Station MuseumUnited States Life-Saving ServiceSumner Increase KimballCapt. Commandant Ellsworth P. Bertholf

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

5. 1915 · 1915-07-01

   Four Ocean City-area pound fishermen drowned in the surf on 1 July 1915 when their boat's engine stopped on the way out to the grounds and the sea rolled her over.

   The Washington Evening Star of 2 July: "DROWNED OFF OCEAN CITY. Four Fishermen Lose Their Lives in Surf at Maryland Resort. OCEAN CITY, Md., July 2. — Four fishermen were drowned and three others [had] narrow escapes when their boat capsized in the surf here yesterday. The dead: George Williams, Ocean City; Charles McLane, Ocean [City]; Walter Hitchens, Snow Hill, Md.; [G]uert Timmons, Berlin, Md. The seven men were fishing from a [pound] boat, which became unmanageable when the engine suddenly stopped." The Washington Times of the same day datelined it 1 July and put the accident "a short distance below here". The Democratic Messenger of 3 July led with "MEN DROWNED AT OCEAN CITY — The Boat Engine Stopped in Surf Leaving Crew at the Mercy of a High Sea." It is the worst single loss of life in the campaign's Ocean City record between the 1889 hurricane and the 1933 storm, and it happened to the pound-fishing trade the town lived on — the same fleet that had landed 1,250 barrels in a day two years earlier.

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

6. 1917

   The Ocean City Coast Guard station advertises for men in the county paper: ordinary seamen $28.80 a month, one-year enlistment, apply to Keeper Purnell.

   In the spring of 1917 the Democratic Messenger carried a boxed advertisement headed "U. S. COAST-GUARD SERVICE": "Ordinary Seamen, month $28.80. Seamen, month, $36.00. Enlistment for one year. Apply to KEEPER PURNELL, Ocean City Coast-Guard Station, Ocean City, Md. In person or by 'phone." It runs on the page facing the paper's "GERMANS NEAR HERE!" story of 12 May 1917. This is the first documented pay scale for the Ocean City station in the campaign's record, the first appearance of a keeper named Purnell, and — with the Coast Guard about to pass under Navy control for the duration — the clearest evidence that the station was recruiting locally on a war footing. The Ocean City station had been a Life-Saving Service station under Capt. John B. Jones as late as 1913; the service was folded into the new Coast Guard in January 1915.

   United States Life-Saving ServiceCapt. William I. Purnell

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

7. 1917 · 1917-03-04

   Ten Coast Guard men of the cutter Yamacraw drown off Ocean City trying to reach the stranded tanker Louisiana.

   On the night of Sunday 4 March 1917 the tanker Louisiana went aground on the shoals about three miles north-northeast of Ocean City, Md. Boats from the U.S. revenue cutter Yamacraw were lowered into a raging sea to take off her crew and were swamped. The Washington Times of 5 March put the death list at "fifteen, when additional reports to the Coast Guard Service told of the swamping of a second small boat"; its editorial of 7 March settled on ten — "Ten bluejackets of the crew of the United States revenue cutter Yamacraw went to their deaths off Ocean City, Md., Sunday night, heroes, every one. They jumped to man lifeboats when ordered to make a desperate effort in a raging sea to rescue the crew of the tanker Louisiana." The Evening Star's week-in-review of 10 March gave the same figure. On 11 March the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, who had charge of the Coast Guard, commented publicly on the tragedy, his remarks turning on the fact that "the crew of the Louisiana refused for a long period to be taken from their ship." A memorial to the dead was announced later in March, to be placed by the officers and men of the service. This is the largest single loss of life the campaign has recorded on Ocean City's water, and it happened a month before the United States entered the war — the men who died were the peacetime service that within weeks would be transferred to Navy control.

   off Ocean City, Md. — one Washington paper prints "Va."

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

8. 1918

   Seaplanes patrol the coast from Cape May to Cape Charles, and a dirigible hunts U-boats off Ocean City.

   1 June 1918, the Messenger: "Quite a large number of air ships have been passing over this section night and day for a week or more. Quite a number of Snow Hill people had an opportunity to see a hydroplane at short distance at Ocean City last Sunday, one dropped down into the bay near the Ocean City bridge and remained there for about one hour. It was one of several sea planes employed in patroling the coast between Cape May and Cape Charles. The two men on board had complete control of their machine." On 12 October, after the October gales and in the middle of the epidemic: "Several hydroplanes and a large dirigible were off Ocean City last Wednesday. It is supposed they were on the lookout for U-boats." These are the first aircraft recorded over Ocean City since the exhibition flights of 1915, and the first military ones -- and a seaplane on the water beside the bay bridge is the plainest image the year offers of what the war did to this beach.

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

9. 1918 · 1918-06-11

   Worcester County watches what it takes for a submarine battle off Ocean City -- and the Coast Guard is ordered to sea.

   The Democratic Messenger of 15 June 1918: "There was an engagement in the afternoon of Tuesday between a German submarine and a tramp steamer, name unknown. Persons who live along the bay shore saw a steamer close in shore and heard shooting. Mr. O. M. Chandler was one who heard shooting and saw the steamer. Mr. George Richardson is another. No one knows whether the tramp was equipped with a gun, or whether all the shots were fired from the submarine, but the tramp got away and went by Ocean City at a flying pace. It is not known what became of the submarine. Coast Guards were sent from Ocean City to Green Run to augment the forces at that station if the occasion required. When the men returned to Ocean City later on, no information could be obtained from them." That night "about 8:00 o'clock heavy cannonading could be heard very plainly in Snow Hill." A telegraphed dispatch datelined Ocean City, Md., June 12 added that "following frequent firing a short distance off the coast and later the ordering of the North Beach Coast Guards to sea, reports spread here yesterday afternoon that an American warship and U-boat had been in battle." Two days later the Cambridge Daily Banner printed Philadelphia's official deflation: "Firing Only Gun Practice. Gun firing heard about twenty miles at sea off Ocean City, Md., is believed to have been American gunboats at target practice. At first it was thought a large cargo-carrying vessel had been attacked by an enemy submarine. About the time the gun firing was going on the Ocean City coast guard was ordered to sea. This gave rise to the rumor that a vessel had been sunk." Whichever it was, the Coast Guard did put to sea, and the town spent a night listening to gunfire. This is the campaign's first documented U-boat scare at Ocean City -- twenty-four years before the one everybody remembers.

   gunfire off Ocean City on 11 June 1918 sent the Coast Guard to sea; the Navy said target practice, the county paper reported a submarine fight

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

10. 1919

    Jacob Coffin, eighteen, drowns diving from a springboard into the bay; the Coast Guard crew recovers the body.

    The Messenger of 19 July 1919: "Jacob Coffin, 18 years old, son of Thomas H. Coffin, a farmer near Ocean City, was drowned while bathing in the bay Sunday. He, with two other young men, was diving from a springboard, and when Coffin dived it is thought he got stuck in the soft bottom. The body was recovered by Capt. W. I. Purnell and crew of the Ocean City Coast Guard Station. Young Coffin was a popular young man with a great many friends, who are sorrow stricken at his untimely death." The initials are the find: the 1917 pass could establish only "Keeper Purnell" at the Ocean City station, and asked for his given name. He is Capt. W. I. Purnell.

    Capt. William I. Purnell

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

11. 1920 · 1920-02-05

    "The worst storm in the history of this place" — on 5 February 1920 the ocean crossed the sandbar into Sinepuxent Bay for the first time in living memory, and Mayor Scott put the loss at $300,000.

    The dispatch, datelined Ocean City, Md., 5 February, went out on the wire and ran in Cambridge, Annapolis, Alexandria, Washington and Wilmington: "The worst storm in the history of this place is now raging. For the first time in knowledge of anybody here, the ocean has rolled over the sand strip on which the town is built into Sinepuxent Bay. There is no building that has escaped damage from the beating of waves. E. M. Scott, Mayor of the town, estimates the property loss at $300,000. Loss of life was only prevented by the life guards stationed here under Capt. William I. Purnell. The guards have been on the alert night and day since Sunday, when the storm began, and since yesterday afternoon have been constantly taking persons from houses destroyed by wind and the beating of the waves." All day the town was without fresh water: a buoy broke from its ocean moorings, drifted in and struck the water main. It was repaired that night. This was a three-day Atlantic gale that also wrecked Rehoboth Beach and broke the Indian River inlet, and it is the largest single disaster in Ocean City's record between the founding and the 1933 hurricane.

    Edward M. ScottCapt. William I. Purnell

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

12. 1920 · 1920-02-05

    The partial list of what the February 1920 storm took: eight cottages and buildings destroyed outright, fifteen more badly damaged, three hotels believed washed off their foundations.

    Read visually from the page image, because the OCR loses half the names. Destroyed or wrecked: the cottages of Mrs. E. H. Schmidt of Washington, George McLain of Ocean City, W. R. McCabe of Selbyville, Thomas Harmison of Berlin and Oliver D. Collins of Snow Hill; the Kimball Cottage; the Adams Hotel; Pagoda Cottage; Ross Cottage. Damaged badly: "Mount Pleasant Cottage, Mount Pleasant Hotel, Imperial Hotel, Virginia Cottage, Biedau Cottage, Wilson Cottage, Keene Cottage, Nordica Hotel, Hersman Cottage, Upshur Cottage, Spetzelr Pharmacy, Oceanic Hotel bath house, Idlewild Cottage, Colonial Hotel and Plimhimmon Hotel." And: "The Hamilton, Hastings and Atlantic Hotels are believed to be washed from their foundations. This cannot be known until the water recedes." "The boardwalk is under water, but so far as can be seen, has not been washed away." Under the sub-head "Life Guards Rescue Family": "Mr. McLain and his family, including a baby 1 month old, were in their cottage when it began to break before the waves. They were rescued by the life guards and taken to a place of relative safety."

    Atlantic HotelPlimhimmon Hotel / Plim PlazaOcean City Boardwalk

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

13. 1920 · 1920-03-11

    In March 1920 the Treasury gave the Reverend G. A. Papperman a silver Life-Saving Medal of Honor for pulling two men out of the sea at Ocean City on 19 August 1919.

    "Rev. G. A. Papperman, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Lockport, N. Y., a former Wilmington boy, has been presented with a Government Life Saving medal, in recognition of his heroic rescue of two men from drowning at Ocean City, Md., August 19, 1919. As an all-round athlete at Delaware College and center rush in the college football team in 1908 and 1909 the future preacher distinguished himself. Although not born in this city, he spent his boyhood in the Eastlake district, taking up the trade of blacksmith and working his way through college." The Treasury's letter is printed in full: "There is transmitted herewith a silver life saving medal of honor, awarded to you by this department under acts of Congress approved June 20, 1874, and May 4, 1882, in recognition of your gallant conduct in saving two men from drowning at Ocean City, Maryland, August 19, 1919. It affords the Department great pleasure to have this opportunity of commending the services rendered by you on the occasion mentioned. Respectfully, J. H. Moyle, Assistant Secretary." The medal's border reads "In testimony of Heroic Deeds in Saving Life from the Perils of the Sea"; the centre, "To G. A. Papperman, for bravely rescuing two men from drowning, August 19, 1919." The rescue itself belongs to 1919 and the 1919 pass did not have it.

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

14. 1920 · 1920-06-23

    A 74-year-old Massachusetts clergyman was pulled unconscious from the Ocean City surf on 23 June 1920 and revived with a pulmotor from Coast Guard Station No. 146.

    "During the meeting of the Peninsula Summer School of the Diocese of Delaware and Easton, which recently met at Ocean City, Md., June 21st to 25th, the Rev. Thomas Getz Hill, rector of St. Peter's Church, Smyrna, made a heroic rescue of a fellow minister who was drowning. During the bathing hour, the Rev. Robert K. Smith, of Westfield, Mass., became exhausted from the very strong surf, lost consciousness and sank beneath the water. With difficulty he was rescued and carried to shore by the Rev. T. G. Hill, of Smyrna, and the Rev. P. L. Donaughay of Middletown. Resuscitation methods were tried on the beach, but owing to Mr. Smith's weakened condition, which [was] heightened by his age, he being 74 years old, little response was induced. [Dr.] Townsend arrived, and with [a pulmotor] procured from the U. S. Life Saving Station, No. 146, and operated by Coast Guards from the patrol of that station, succeeded in restoring Mr. Smith to consciousness; and at the time of writing he was resting easily though very weak and nervous." This is the first time the campaign has a station number for Ocean City — No. 146 — and the first appearance of a pulmotor there. The doctor who arrived is the town's health officer, Dr. Francis J. Townsend.

    Francis J. Townsend

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

15. 1920 · 1920-07-18

    On 18 July 1920 Boatswain's Mate T. T. Moore left his lookout post at Ocean City, swam 200 feet to the outer bar and brought in a 14-year-old Wilmington girl.

    "Helen Weiss, aged 14 years, of Wilmington, was rescued from drowning at Ocean City, Md., the afternoon of July 18, by the coast guard, according to their official report to headquarters here today. Boatswain's Mate T. T. Moore, on lookout, saw the girl struggling on the outer bar 200 feet off shore and some distance from other bathers. He immediately left his post and swam out to her, bringing her in safely." It is the only 1920 Ocean City item in the corpus that reads out of an official Coast Guard report, and it names a surfman — the second Ocean City coastguardsman this pass has recovered, after Capt. William I. Purnell. Set it beside the July item from Salisbury: "Mr. and Mrs. Charles Hastings, Mr. and Mrs. Cecil Hastings, of this city, and an unknown man and woman narrowly escaped drowning at Ocean City when they ventured beyond their depths while bathing. Their cries for help were heard by hundreds of people on the shore. Mrs. Charles Hastings, becoming hysterical, clutched at her husband who was attempting to save her as she was sinking from view, and her weight carried him beneath [the water]. … The life guards searched beneath the water and after finding the bodies carried them ashore where they were resuscitated." Eleven years after Charles S. Richardson demanded that the town pay somebody to watch the bathing, and ten years before the Beach Patrol, 1920 has life guards on the beach and a Coast Guard lookout above it, and the corpus records four rescues and no drownings.

    Ocean City Beach PatrolCapt. William I. Purnell

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

16. 1922

    A whale washes up at Ocean City in February 1922 and hundreds drive down through a storm to look at it — in cars, buses and commercial trucks pressed into passenger service.

    The Democratic Messenger of 11 February 1922, under AT OCEAN CITY TO SEE WHALE — "Hundreds of People Went There In Storm Last Sunday to See The Monster": "Hundreds of people braved the storm Sunday to visit Ocean City to view the whale which seems to be an attraction. Automobiles of every description, busses and trucks which are used for commercial purposes during the week began early in the morning to arrive loaded with passengers, most of them only remaining a few minutes. Capt. William I. Purnell, the keeper of the Coast Guard stationed there, requested the Coast Guard Service to send a boat to remove the carcass. As yet no boat has been available for this purpose and it is understood all the boats attached to the Lewes station are engaged in cleaning up and locating disabled shipping after the recent storm." The item does two things at once: it names the keeper of the Ocean City Coast Guard station in full for the first time in this campaign's record, and it shows a February Sunday crowd at a resort that a decade earlier could only be reached by train.

    The clearest single measure of what the bridge did: in the dead of winter, in a storm, hundreds of people drove to Ocean City to look at a dead whale for five minutes.

    Capt. William I. Purnell

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

17. 1923

    The Ocean City Coast Guard turns out in its high-power boat to a barge tug caught in fog — and the town's water main bursts the same week.

    Worcester Democrat, 3 February 1923, from Ocean City: "A barge tug was caught in the heavy fog of Friday night and signaled for the Coast Guard, who turned out in their high power boat and rendered assistance." The same column notes the town went without water "because of the bursting of the water main above Third street; but repairs have been made under the skillful supervision of Mr. Robert Hartman, who volunteered his services." A year earlier, when a whale washed up in February 1922, Capt. Purnell had had to ask the Coast Guard Service to send a boat because none was available at Ocean City.

    Capt. William I. Purnell

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

18. 1923

    An influenza winter at Ocean City: two Coast Guard captains down, whole households ill, and an infant dead of pneumonia.

    The Worcester Democrat's Ocean City column tracked the town's health through the winter of 1923. 20 January: "Mr. L. Franklin Purnell has been ill with the grip, of which there is quite an epidemic in this community." 17 February: "Captain William I. Hudson of the Isle of Wight station, and Captain Henry Richardson of North Beach, have both been home and confined to their beds for the past two weeks. Captain Hudson is suffering from an acute case of rheumatism, and Captain Richardson with the flu." The same column: "The entire community was saddened last week by the sudden death from pneumonia of Hazel Baker, the infant daughter of Leonard Baker. She was ill only a few days, and every effort to break the fever was in vain… There are several severe cases of pneumonia here at this time, and it seems to be developed chiefly among the children. Dr. Townsend, however, is rapidly getting it under control." 17 March: "The flu[e] is still with us, and there are a great many ill. The whole family of L. D. Lynch, with the exception of the hardy and enduring head of the household himself, are ill with it… In most cases it is light; but in the case of the children it has been very serious."

    The 1922 pass found no health story at all in 410 pages. 1923 has one in almost every winter column, and it is the same story: influenza, pneumonia, and one druggist holding the line.

    Francis J. Townsend

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

19. 1923 · 1923-04-28

    Capt. William I. Purnell, keeper of the Ocean City Coast Guard station, opens a 22-room hotel across the road from it — the Maryland Inn.

    The 'Ocean City News' column of 28 April 1923: "Mr. Charles S. Powell, contractor, has finished and turned over to its owners the new hotel of Capt. William I. Purnell, opposite the Coast Guard Station. It contains 22 rooms with bath and surf accommodations, and will be known as the Maryland Inn." By late July the Inn was the town's ceremonial room: Purnell gave a terrapin dinner there for Mayor McCabe and friends from Salisbury, and the Children's Guild of St. Paul's-by-the-Sea held its bazaar there.

    The man paid by the federal government to pull people out of the surf spent 1923 selling them rooms with a view of it.

    Built or substantially rebuilt in 1923 by a Purnell — the same paper gives the initials as both W. I. and W. T., and calls the work both new construction and a remodeling.

    Capt. William I. PurnellWilliam W. McCabe

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

20. 1924

    E. W. Townsend of the Ocean City Coast Guard station is promoted and sent to New York to learn the engines of the new rum-chasing speed boats.

    Milford Chronicle, 30 May 1924, from Lewes: 'Speed up the preparation for placing crews on the speed boats, check the rum-runners in the Delaware Bay and River. Garwood Thomas and Clarence E. Rickards [of] the Lewes Coast Guard Station and E. W. Townsend of Ocean City Coast Guard Station have been promoted to motor-machinist mates, first class, and sent to New York for instruction in the operation and installation of engines such as are going to be used by the Coast Guards in their new speed-boats in an endeavour to break up the rum-running in the Sixth Coast Guard District. Captain James P. Phillips, superintendent of the Sixth Coast Guard District, has enlisted thirty additional surfmen to be distributed for duty at the various stations in the district.' In March the same paper had recorded that 'Walter W. Tingle of the Ocean City Coast Guard Station has sold his cottage at Dewey Beach.' The station that had been a lifesaving crew since 1878 is being retooled as a naval police force.

    Capt. William I. Purnell

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

21. 1924

    The Elks hold their fourth annual state convention at Ocean City on 4–6 September, with headquarters at the Colonial Hotel and a Coast Guard drill on the programme.

    Chosen at Wilmington in February — 'Elks of Delaware, Maryland and the District of Columbia today chose Ocean City, Md., for the annual meeting' — and worked up all spring by the Washington Lodge's standing Ocean City Club under chairman W. A. Finkel, which met every Monday night. President P. J. Callan visited Ocean City on 8 June to settle the arrangements. The Evening Star's programme: 'There will be swimming contests, beauty contests, athletic events, fishing contests, dancing contests, crab feasts, band contests, exhibition drills, dancing and the big boardwalk parade — all free … The Ocean City Coast Guard will give an exhibition drill Friday.' Registration on Thursday 4 September, boats ready at 6 a.m. Friday for deep-sea fishing, the Coast Guard drill at eleven, a crab feast at three, business and the election of officers Saturday morning, the parade at three, a banquet in the evening. The Washington delegation's headquarters were the Colonial Hotel; it travelled by the B. & O. to Baltimore, by boat to Love Point and by rail from there, reaching Ocean City about 8 p.m., and left again at 4.50 on the Sunday.

    Two years running, the town that used to fill with Sunday-school excursions filled instead with a fraternal order that brought its own band, its own drill team and its own quoit club.

    Ocean City BoardwalkMaryland, Delaware and District of Columbia Association, B.P.O. ElksBaltimore, Chesapeake & Atlantic Railway

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

22. 1924 · 1924-11-02

    A coal-oil stove explodes in Samuel M. Quillen's cottage on a Sunday afternoon in November and takes four buildings with it, including a Coast Guard captain's house.

    Worcester Democrat, 8 November 1924, under 'Pocomoke Fire Company Goes To Aid Of Ocean City': 'Ocean City was visited by a rather disastrous fire Sunday afternoon when it is supposed a coal oil stove exploded in the cottage owned and occupied by Samuel M. Quillen. This building was devoured by flames and two cottages said to belong to Guy R. Ayres, and also the home of Captain Henry E. Richardson of the North Coast Guard, were wrecked. The Pocomoke Fire Department responded to the call…' Capt. Henry Richardson of the North Beach station had been laid up with influenza in February 1923; in November 1924 his house burned. The town's second serious fire of the year, and the second time in six months a mainland company drove to the beach.

    Ocean City Volunteer Fire Department

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

23. 1925 · 1925-05-22

    Captain John W. Hudson, keeper of the Ocean City Coast Guard station, was transferred to the district office at Lewes in May 1925.

    Milford Chronicle, 22 May 1925, in its "Lewes News" column: "Captain John W. Hudson of Ocean City, Md., has been transferred from keeper of the Coast Guard Station there, to the office of the Coast Guard Station at Lewes, in the Federal Building and has moved his family here into the Frank A. Coverdale property on Beebe avenue." Six weeks earlier, on 1 April 1925, Chief Boatswain's Mate Thomas T. Moore had left the same station for Fenwick Island.

    Ocean City's station lost both its keeper and its most decorated surfman inside eight weeks of spring 1925, and then had to watch the town burn from the beach in December.

    Capt. John W. HudsonThomas T. Moore

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

24. 1925 · 1925-07-14

    The Ocean City Coast Guard crew drilled for the visiting editors on 14 July 1925 "by special orders of the U. S. Government."

    The printed programme in the Worcester Democrat of 27 June 1925 lists for Tuesday: "10.00 A. M.—Special drill of the Ocean City Life Saving Coast Guard Service, by order of the U. S. Government, in honor of the editors." The Smyrna Times of 15 July confirms it happened: "there was a drill of the Ocean City Life Saving (Coast Guard) Service by special orders of the U. S. Government," and the Midland Journal that "a special drill of the U. S. Coast Guard was the feature of entertainment provided. This concluded the official program."

    The station that existed to pull people out of the surf was, for one morning, a tourist attraction with federal authorisation.

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

25. 1925 · 1925-07-15

    Chief Boatswain's Mate Thomas T. Moore of the Ocean City station was given the gold life-saving medal at the Treasury on 15 July 1925 — his seventeenth rescue.

    Worcester Democrat, 15 August 1925, under "LIFE GUARD PRESENTED WITH A GOLD MEDAL — Thomas T. Moore, Brother Of Pocomoke Man, Honored By Government": "On July 15, 1925, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury L. C. Andrews presented a gold life-saving medal to Chief Boatswain's Mate, Thomas T. Moore, together with a citation, for saving the life of Phillip Gollop in a heavy sea off Ocean City, Md., on August 26, 1924, under exceptionally difficult and hazardous conditions. Chief Boatswain's Mate Moore has served continuously in the Coast Guard since August 1, 1910, having risen from the grade of surfman to his present rating. During the last nine years, in addition to the rescue of Mr. Gollop, Moore has made no less than 16 other rescues under hazardous conditions." Present at the ceremony in the Assistant Secretary's office in Washington: Rear Admiral Billard, Engineer-in-Chief Q. B. Newman, Captain R. O. Crisp, Commander J. F. Hottel, Lieutenant Commanders W. K. Thompson, S. S. Yeandle and F. J. Gorman, "Supt. Sixth district James F. Phillips of Lewes," and O. M. Maxam, chief of the division of operations. "Chief Boatswain's Mate Moore was stationed at Ocean City, Md., until April 1, 1925, when he was advanced in rating and transferred to Fenwick Island Station, Selbyville, as officer in charge of station."

    Seventeen rescues out of one Maryland beach, and the registry had him down as initials only.

    Thomas T. Moore

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

26. 1925 · 1925-12-12

    A Coast Guard rum chaser operating out of Ocean City patrolled the Maryland–Delaware line against the Christmas liquor fleet, with nine more reported on the way.

    Evening Star, 12 December 1925, special dispatch from Baltimore: "Rum runners with cargoes of Christmas liquors, having transferred operations from the North to land their cargoes on the Chesapeake, a squad of prohibition agents, heavily armed and equipped with a fleet of fast autos, has thrown a blockade along the Maryland coast line. In addition, a Coast Guard rum chaser, operating out of Ocean City, is patrolling the Maryland and Delaware line. It is reported that nine others have been sent to join her. The agents are operating under direct orders of Prohibition Administrator Budnitz, who, under the recent realignment of prohibition forces, is responsible for the control of liquor-smuggling prevention along the Eastern Shore. The number of agents on the shore is the greatest ever stationed there."

    Fifteen weeks after the Eastern Shore met at the Atlantic Hotel to demand Prohibition be repealed, the government stationed a rum chaser at Ocean City.

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

27. 1926 · 1926-09-18

    Elisha V. Bunting of the Ocean City Coast Guard station pulls five people out of the surf in one summer and the Carnegie Hero Fund sends a man to look at him.

    Worcester Democrat, 18 September 1926, 'ELISHA V. BUNTING MERITS REWARD — Efforts To Secure For Him A Carnegie Medal. Has Rescued Five This Summer': 'So efficient has been the work at life saving of young Elisha V. Bunting, member of the U. S. Coast Guard Station at Ocean City, Md., that efforts are in progress to secure for him a Carnegie medal from the Hero Commission at Pittsburgh, Pa. The fact that a representative from the Commission was at Ocean City last week lends color to the story that Mr. Bunting will receive the recognition he so richly deserves. This young man has rescued no [few]er than five persons from the Beach this summer, one of whom was Mrs. Healis, wife of the man drowned Sunday of last week. Bunting probably would have saved Mr. Healis had the young guardsman arrived in time. On Friday morning of last week, I. S. Mumford, a Justice of the Peace at Ocean City, was rescued, when he went out for an early morning dip. On August 6th Mr. Bunting rescued three persons, all at the risk of his own life. He has been in the service for four years and is a native of Ocean City. He stands fifth in the service, and is highly spoken of.' Four years before the Ocean City Beach Patrol was founded, the surf rescues on this beach are being made by a Coast Guardsman, and a hero-fund investigator has come to town about it.

    Elisha Victor Bunting

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

28. 1926 · 1926-10-09

    The Coast Guard finds ten government drift bottles from New York on the beach by the inlet, and the paper reports the ocean has made a new cut two miles south of town.

    Peninsula Enterprise, 9 October 1926, 'SWIFT CURRENT FOUND MILE NORTH OF INLET AT OCEAN CITY, MD. — United States Government Tests With Sealed Bottles Reveal Trip From New York': 'The Atlantic Ocean has made a new 'cut' inshore, two miles south of Ocean City, Md. Discovery of ten 'message' sealed bottles on the beach near the Natural Inlet three miles south of Ocean City last week, by the United States Coast Guard, of the resort, made the assertion authentic. On June [18]th, several score glass bottles, sealed, and containing a postal card with instructions for returning same to United States Officials on Tides, Currents and Waterways, at New York, were thrown in the East River, New York.' The item is internally inconsistent — the headline puts the current a mile north of the inlet, the text puts the new cut two miles south of town and the 'Natural Inlet' three miles south — but it establishes three things: the inlet is still open in October 1926, the Coast Guard station is patrolling that beach, and a federal tides-and-currents survey was reaching this coast.

    Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

29. 1927

    Elisha Victor Bunting, an Ocean City guard, gets his medal pinned on by the Commandant's wife.

    The August 1927 Coast Guard banquet at the Atlantic Hotel culminated "in the conferring of the Congressional Medal for Bravery on Elisha Victor Bunting, a member of the Ocean City guard. Bunting, as he is universally called, saved three reckless swimmers who had gone out beyond their depths and brought them to safety. Admiral Billard read the citation for bravery and gave a spirited account of the episode, and then Mrs. Billard pinned the medal on the guard's breast."

    The Evening Star's society writer called it a Congressional medal; it was almost certainly a Treasury life-saving medal, which is what the Coast Guard awarded. What matters is the shape of it — the town's own bathing guard, honoured by the service's commandant in the hotel his town had just rebuilt, in front of officers from Maine to Key West.

    Elisha Victor BuntingRear Admiral Frederick C. Billard

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

30. 1927

    Capt. William I. Purnell is still in charge at Ocean City in 1927, and is vice-president of the district's keepers.

    Two independent 1927 sources put Purnell in command. The Evening Star of 28 August 1927, reporting the Coast Guard convention banquet at the Atlantic Hotel: "Capt. William I. Pennell, in charge of the Ocean City station, was master of ceremonies at the banquet, and Mrs. Pennell acted as hostess to the 40 or more ladies who had accompanied the officers from stations from Maine to Key West, Fla." And the Peninsula Enterprise of 3 December 1927, listing the officers of a Coast Guard keepers' association: "Capt. Lloyd Doughty, Cobbs Island, President; Capt. W. J. Purnell, Ocean City, Vice President; Capt. Irving Steele, Lewes Coast Guard Station, Secretary; Capt. G. H. Bromley, Metompkin Coast Guard Station, Treasurer."

    The campaign has had this man since 1917 and has never been sure of his surname, because papers print Purnell and Pennell alike. Two 1927 sources a hundred miles apart, one of them a list of association officers rather than a society column, settle it as Purnell — and put him in the room when the Commandant came to town. He would help found the Ocean City Beach Patrol three years later.

    Ocean City Beach PatrolCapt. William I. Purnell

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

31. 1927

    The Commandant of the Coast Guard brings a national convention to Ocean City, and closes it with a banquet in the rebuilt Atlantic Hotel.

    On the evening of Wednesday 24 August 1927 the second annual convention of the Atlantic Coast Guard closed with a banquet in the dining room of the Atlantic Hotel at Ocean City, Md., attended by 100 members of the Coast Guard and their families, with officers from stations "from Maine to Key West, Fla." Rear Admiral F. C. Billard, Commandant of the Coast Guard, and Mrs. Billard travelled from Washington as guests of honour. "The dining room of the Atlantic Hotel was gay with gladioli, dahlias and shasta daisies, and the official flag of the Bear, the famous cutter, floated over the speaker's table with the Stars and Stripes." Capt. William I. Purnell, in charge of the Ocean City station, was master of ceremonies; Mrs. Purnell was hostess to the forty or more ladies who had come with the officers. Speakers included Representative Robert G. Houston of Delaware, O. M. Maxam (chief of the division of operations at Coast Guard headquarters), State Senator Louis Drexler of Delaware, Comdr. Louis Oliver Osborn of the Sixth Coast Guard District, S. R. Sands of Portsmouth, N.H., Edward Rasmussen of Asbury Park, N.J., and T. E. Tunnell of Delaware. State Senator Harrison of Maryland represented Governor Ritchie; District Commander John W. Richardson of Baltimore and Mayor William McCabe of Ocean City made the addresses of welcome.

    Twenty months after the town's fire department was called practically useless and its hydrants froze, Ocean City was hosting the Commandant of the United States Coast Guard, and the room it happened in had been ashes. Two rebuildings in one sentence.

    Atlantic HotelRear Admiral Frederick C. BillardCapt. William I. PurnellWilliam W. McCabeOrlando Harrison

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

32. 1927

    Ocean City's gold-medal surfman spends the summer of 1927 in the Mississippi flood district.

    A June 1927 Peninsula Enterprise obituary for his sister lists among the survivors "two brothers, Mr. Thomas T. Moore of Ocean City, Md., who is now in the Mississippi Flood District and Mr. Bernard F. Moore, of Pocomoke, Md." A January 1927 obituary for his father lists the same two sons, "T. T. Moore, of Ocean City, Md., and B. F. Moore, of Pocomoke City, Md."

    The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 drove three-quarters of a million people from their homes, and the Coast Guard sent its boat handlers. The man who pulled fourteen-year-old Helen Weiss off the Ocean City outer bar in 1920 and took a gold life-saving medal for a rescue off the same beach in 1924 spent the spring of 1927 on the Mississippi. Note also that the county paper still calls him an Ocean City man two years after his transfer to Fenwick Island.

    Thomas T. Moore

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

33. 1928 · 1928-04-11

    Ocean City has a branch of the League of Coast Guard Women, chaired by Mrs. William I. Purnell — the wife of the station's keeper.

    Peninsula Enterprise, 21 April 1928: "The Chincoteague Branch of the Lewes, Delaware Unit of the League of Coast Guard Women entertained the League Unit and Ocean City Branch at a luncheon given by the Order [of the] Eastern Star in the Masonic Temple, Chincoteague, on Wednesday afternoon, April 11th, from 2 until 4 p.m. A delightful program was enjoyed by all. It was as follows: Address, Mayor John Winder; Recitation, Mrs. David Watson; Report, Mrs. James A. Price, Chairman of the Lewes Unit; Report, Mrs. William I. Purnell, Chairman of the Ocean City Branch; Report, Mrs. Ernest Pointer, Chairman of Chincoteague Branch; Recitation and reading, Mrs. Josephine Scorah; Recitation, Mrs. David Watson; Address, Commander James A. Price; Address and prayer, Rev. O. W. Sawyer."

    The Coast Guard station has been in this registry since 1878 as a roster of men. This is the first time the campaign can name the other half of it: an organised women's league running from Lewes to Chincoteague, with its Ocean City chairman married to Capt. William I. Purnell, who two years later would help found the Beach Patrol.

    Ocean City Life-Saving Station MuseumLeague of Coast Guard Women

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

34. 1929

    Coast Guardsmen take a cargo of Canadian liquor off the beach below Ocean City on 30 December, and twenty-three men end the year in the town jail — fourteen of them Ocean City men.

    Two duck hunters, shortly before daybreak, saw small boats lightering a cargo from a 50-ton motor trawler to the beach several miles south of Ocean City. They notified the North Beach Coast Guard station, which relayed the message to the station at Ocean City; the men sent drew their pistols and told the crowd working the boats and the beach that they were under arrest, though several broke away and escaped. The trawler weighed anchor and got away before a boat could be found to chase it. More than 500 cases were piled on a deserted spot on the beach, and about 1,300 more were found with four men in a farmhouse on the Purnell farm four miles away up Sinepuxent Bay, where Robert Allen, chief of police of Ocean City, went with Patrolman Wilton R. May and a squad of Coast Guardsmen; the liquor was stored on the second floor of the frame dwelling, which a stranger had rented some weeks before. Twenty-one of the twenty-three men held gave their names: James Bradford, Dorsey Cropper, E. Parsons, N. Lynch, O. Powell, E. Quillen, Walter Redding, H. Gibson, D. Harmon, J. E. Quillen, C. Harmon, R. Faraum, J. C. Quillen and H. Wooten, all of Ocean City; H. Powell, C. Johnson and L. Cathell of Taylorsville; E. J. Miller of Trenton, N.J.; and George Bolton, Sam Hall and Edward Murphy of Philadelphia. A new truck, two automobiles, a light speedboat and a small yacht were seized with the liquor. State police at Salisbury had been watching for the cargo since before Christmas, on information from Baltimore that a boat was due with holiday liquor and had been delayed by weather, and Patrolman May had been detailed to watch a man seen making frequent trips up and down the beach.

    Fourteen of the twenty-one named men are Ocean City men. This is not a story about outsiders using an empty beach; it is a story about what a resort town did in the dead of winter, with a distribution point for Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington set up in a rented farmhouse four miles up the bay. It is the largest crime story the campaign has for the town in this decade, and it lands in the last forty-eight hours of the year.

    Robert AllenWilton R. May

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

35. 1930 · 1930-01-02

    Ten Army trucks with soldiers, Coast Guardsmen and prohibition agents haul the seized liquor to Baltimore — and a driver is offered $500 near Berlin to abandon his load.

    Washington Daily News, 2 January 1930, special from Baltimore: "Armed, as if for battle, soldiers, Coast Guardsmen and prohibition agents today brought to Baltimore the $100,000 of imported liquor seized last week from rum runners near Ocean City, Md.… one of the trucks formerly used by rum runners was forced to the side of a road, halted near Berlin, Md., and the driver offered a $500 bribe if he would abandon it. Jerry Rapollo, of Co. C, Army ammunition train of Ft. Hoyle, was the driver. He was well in advance of other vehicles in the caravan."

    The cargo was worth enough that somebody tried to buy it back off the highway with the Army driving it.

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

36. 1930 · 1930-01-03

    Coast Guardsmen under Capt. William Purnell take 1,850 cases of Canadian liquor on the beach four miles south of town — and by March forty men, thirty-six of them Ocean City residents, are indicted.

    The seizure was made on Monday 30 December 1929 and the story broke on 3 January 1930. Milford Chronicle, 3 January: "COAST GUARD SEIZES $250,000 WORTH OF RUM AND 36 MEN — Twenty-three alleged rum runners were captured and 1,850 cases of choice liquors… confiscated on the beach four miles south of Ocean City, Md., by United States coast guards, on Monday. The capture of the rum runners marks the first instance of this kind in the sixth coast guard district." A tip from Halifax had put a lookout out; guardsmen stopped a Camden-bound truck carrying 400 cases and took its four men, then went down Sinepuxent Bay by motor boat and crept "through the sand dunes… dodging behind beach grass and in sand holes" onto the other nineteen. "Captain William L. Purnell, keeper of the Ocean City coast guard station, in charge of 36 coast guardsmen from Fenwick Island, Ocean City, North Beach and Isle of Wight stations… All surrendered without any show of resistance." A federal blanket complaint against thirty-six followed, U.S. Commissioner Louder T. Hearn at Salisbury fixing bail at $50,000 for each of four alleged leaders; "the other thirty-two persons are all residents of Ocean City and immediate vicinity." Six motor trucks and four boats were impounded. Local men named in the warrants include Charles Hastings, Joe Bunting, Joshua Bunting, Ralph Richardson, Sim Harmon, Alfred Quillen, Will Mumford and Ned Lynch. The nineteen locals were held in the Ocean City jail, released overnight and ordered to report to the Coast Guard station at eight each morning.

    The largest single body of documented fact about Ocean City in 1930 is a criminal case, and it names more residents of the town than any other source of the year. Thirty-two of the men caught unloading a rum ship on their own beach lived there.

    Capt. William I. Purnell

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

37. 1930 · 1930-03-28

    Capt. Purnell escorts thirty-five of his own prisoners to Easton, where a jury takes fifteen minutes to convict the four ringleaders and thirty-four Ocean City men plead guilty.

    Washington Times, 24 March 1930, special, datelined Ocean City: a customs agent "arranged to transport 35 men from this vicinity indicted in connection with recent rum smuggling operations on this coast, to Easton, Talbot County, Md.… Each faces four counts growing out of the $150,000 rum cargo seizure on December 30 last. Capt. William I. Purnell, keeper of the Ocean City coast guard station under whose supervision the rum seizure was made, escorted the defendants to Easton." It was only the second time the federal court had ever sat at Easton; U.S. Attorney Amos W. W. Woodcock brought the case and Judge Morris A. Soper presided. On 26 March the first jury disagreed and was dismissed. On 27 March a second jury convicted the four in fifteen minutes; they were sentenced to fifteen months to two years in Atlanta penitentiary. The Evening Star of 29 March: "The 38 men convicted in the $150,000 Ocean City liquor-smuggling case were to be brought to Baltimore City Jail from Easton… The 34 who pleaded guilty to helping load and transport the liquor from the beach at Ocean City were given sentences varying from 2 to 4 months." On 4 April Judge Soper paroled Charles Quillen, "a jockey now riding at Bowie and one of 40 men arrested in a raid at Ocean City in December, when 1,800 cases of liquor were confiscated," for two years.

    The keeper of the Coast Guard station personally drove his neighbours to their trial. In a town of 946 people, thirty-four guilty pleas is something like one household in seven.

    Capt. William I. Purnell

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

38. 1930 · 1930-05-14

    The Coast Guard Auxiliaries of Ocean City and Lewes lunch together at the Channel Bass Inn, fifty-four present.

    Peninsula Enterprise, 17 May 1930, Chincoteague column: "The Coast Guard Auxiliaries of Ocean City and Lewes, Del. had a luncheon at Channel Bass Inn, Wednesday. There were fifty-four present." This is the second appearance in the registry of the women's organisation attached to the Ocean City station, after the League of Coast Guard Women's Ocean City branch — chaired by Mrs. William I. Purnell — entertained at Chincoteague in April 1928.

    Two years on, the same three-station circuit — Ocean City, Lewes, Chincoteague — and the same women keeping it going, under a slightly different name.

    League of Coast Guard Women

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

39. 1930 · 1930-08-09

    A 52-foot, four-ton whale washes ashore near the North Beach Coast Guard station, and the town cannot work out how to get rid of it.

    Evening Star, 9 August 1930, page 3, under the headline "HERE IS NICE 4-TON WHALE ANY ONE CAN HAVE FREE", with a photograph: "Officials of Ocean City, Md., are scratching their heads over the disposition of this 52-foot whale, washed ashore near the North Beach Coast Guard station. The monster has attracted many visitors, one of whom attempted to drive his car to it at high tide and wrecked the machine when he ran into the mammal. Disposal of four tons of flesh is a problem that has not yet been worked out. Once before when a whale was washed ashore there the authorities resorted to dynamite and almost buried residences with the torn flesh." The Star's fishing column of 8 August put it more briefly: "a report from Ocean City, Md., states that a big whale went crazy with the heat and landed high and dry on the beach."

    The second beached whale in this registry — the first, in February 1922, drew hundreds through a storm. The Star's aside about dynamite and 'almost buried residences' is a memory of an earlier disposal that the campaign has not otherwise recorded.

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

40. 1934 · 1934-08-30

    A three-state Red Cross conference met at the Atlantic Hotel, and the Coast Guard put on a capsize drill for it

    From the Worcester Democrat and the Ledger-Enterprise of 24 August 1934: 'A regional Red Cross Conference, including Maryland, Virginia, and Delaware, will be held at Ocean City, Maryland on Thursday and Friday, August 30 and 31, with headquarters at the Atlantic Hotel... Recreational features of the Conference will include a "capsize drill," by the U. S. C[oast Guard].' The capsize drill was the old Life-Saving Service's set piece — the surfboat deliberately rolled and righted — performed here as entertainment at a hotel conference, forty-odd years after the station's men did it for the Life-Saving Service's own inspectors and nineteen years after the Service ceased to exist under that name. — 1934 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: Provenance repaired. The fact carried a Chronicling America collection-query URL plus an LCCN, date, printed page and reel-level ALTO file number, with a note reading 'THE MERGE MUST RESOLVE A REAL PAGE URL BEFORE PUBLISHING.' It now has one: https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn89060127/1934-08-24/ed-1/?sp=12 — HTTP-verified 200. sp=12 confirmed equal to printed page 12.

    Atlantic HotelOcean City Life-Saving Station Museum

    Source · checked 2026-08-11

41. 1935 · 1935-07-17

    Federal money was found to rebuild the Coast Guard stations at Ocean City, Isle of Wight and North Beach

    “A total of $33,285 will be used along the Atlantic coast in Worcester county and adjoining states. The Coast Guard shore stations at Ocean City, Isle of Wight and North Beach and shore facilities there will be reconstructed.” The Curtis Bay depot took $497,000 of the state's allotment for boats. The three named stations are the direct descendants of the United States Life-Saving Service houses that predate the town itself, and 1935 is the year the New Deal paid to rebuild them — in the same summer it paid to dredge a fishing harbor and, three months later, bought the town's sewer bonds.

    Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.

    United States Life-Saving Service

    Source · checked 2026-08-11

42. 1935 · 1935-09-06

    The tail of the Labor Day hurricane piled a tide into the inlet, and cancelled a day of the American Legion's state convention

    On 6 September 1935 an AP dateline from Ocean City reported that “a cheering statement that ‘the danger is all over’ came from the Coast Guard here near noon today as the wind began to shift and storm clouds to dissipate” — from Capt. T. T. Moore of the Coast Guard. “The barometer had dropped during the night, and with the rising velocity of a shifting wind piling up an ocean tide in the inlet, conditions appeared threatening for a time. About 11 A.M., however, the wind turned to northwest and the tide started going down.” The tide ran “slightly above normal”, rolling in “between the jetties of the resort's recently completed inlet”, and motorists were warned that caution was advisable the whole way to Ocean City. The town was full: the 17th annual Maryland state convention of the American Legion had opened on 4 September with Mayor William T. Elliott welcoming the legionnaires and Governor Nice and Mayor Jackson of Baltimore among the speakers. “Yesterday's program,” the paper reported on 7 September, “cancelled by the gale which lashed Ocean City and other sections of the shore, was packed into a single business session.”

    Ocean City Inlet & Jetty

    Source · checked 2026-08-11

43. 1935 · 1935-11-18

    The worst storm since 1933 put the ocean through the inlet, drowned the jetties out of sight and turned the marsh into a sea

    “OCEAN CITY IS UNSCATHED BY HIGH WINDS / RESORT WITHSTANDS BATTERING OF SURF / Ocean Sweeps Through Inlet”, 18 November 1935: “Churned by a sixty-mile northeast wind, high seas lashed Ocean City today as the ocean moved in thru the recently built inlet and inundated the low-lying area near the front of the resort. Although Coast Guardsmen and Mayor W. T. Elliott agreed it was the worst storm since the record-breaking ‘blow’ of August 1933, the resort suffered only limited property damage.” The measurements are the story: “Jetties protecting the inlet were far under water and invisible, as was the abandoned railroad bridge. Marshland west of the resort was converted into a sea. Some families whose homes are located near the bay shore moved to the second floor as water surrounded the buildings.” The Salisbury–Ocean City highway went under more than a foot of water at three points in the afternoon without stopping traffic. A sixty-foot Coast Guard boat launched to a disabled freighter “was unable to move out of the channel, since the high sea had obscured the jetties of the inlet”, and the guardsmen kept her afloat inside the inlet until the water fell. Two days later a wire photograph of the freighter Hartwelson, taken from the deck of the ship that answered her distress call, carried the caption: “Coast Guardsmen from Ocean City were unable to reach the ship. Waves covering the jetties at the inlet.” Eight months after the Chief of Engineers had assured the town its jetties were sound, the sea went over them and the town's own mayor called it the worst since the storm that made the inlet.

    Ocean City Inlet & Jetty

    Source · checked 2026-08-11

44. 1936 · 1936-04-09

    The Coast Guard bought the Pennsylvania Railroad's Ocean City waterfront in 1936 and began building its harbour station on it

    In April 1936 the U.S. Coast Guard completed negotiations to acquire property at Ocean City for a harbour, boathouse and station house. 'The property is now owned by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company and faces Ocean City harbor from the east side of the bay.' The harbour was to be six feet deep to take the two large boats then in service at Ocean City. By late May the War Department was preparing to receive bids on 30 June for $18,000 of preliminary work on the new base - a steel bulkhead, a dredged tidal basin, two marine railways, a shuttle and a new boathouse - on the harbour front between the State Highway bridge and the old railroad track span. On 2 July the contract for 580 feet of steel bulkhead went to the Tidewater Construction Company of Norfolk, Va. at an estimated $15,000, and by mid-September a government dredge was driving it. A station house to replace the one then standing on the Ocean City boardwalk was to follow when funds allowed.

    Three years after the last train, the railroad's Ocean City waterfront passed to the Coast Guard: the land the town was built to reach became the base for the service that had been on this beach before the town existed.

    Pennsylvania Railroad Company

    Source · checked 2026-08-11

45. 1936 · 1936-09-19

    Sixteen people reported drowned on the beach below Ocean City walked out alive

    Sixteen people - twelve men and four women - were marooned by the hurricane along the isolated Worcester County coastal beach peninsula below Ocean City on Friday 18 September 1936, and all were reported missing or drowned. All sixteen were given refuge by the Coast Guard at the Green Run and North Beach stations and returned to the mainland on the Saturday and Sunday. Thomas Robins walked to the North Beach station and was brought in half alive and in serious condition, and revived; the station also cared for eleven other people caught on the beach, among them Levin Dirickson of Berlin, four from Washington, two from Passaic, N.J., three from Atlantic City and one from Brooklyn. Green Run station, nineteen miles down the beach, took in four more, including L. T. Somers and Mark Callahan, two Pocomoke City businessmen who had motored down the beach on a fishing trip on the Thursday and reached the station just as the hurricane broke; they left their car half buried in the sand and came home by boat to Public Landing on the Saturday.

    Source · checked 2026-08-11

46. 1936 · 1936-09-22

    The trawler Long Island went down in the hurricane and put its dead on the Worcester County beach

    The fishing trawler Long Island was lost off Lewes, Delaware in the hurricane of 18 September 1936. Three of her crew of forty-two swam ashore; lifeboats carrying thirty-five more were picked up by the barge Hallowell and landed by Lewes coastguardsmen. On the Tuesday following, two bodies came ashore on the Worcester County coastal beach near the North Beach Coast Guard Station, ten miles south of Ocean City. Ewing Keister of New Jersey, drum-fishing in the surf two and a quarter miles south of the station, found the first: L. J. Conklin of Kilmarnock, Va., the second engineer, identified by the initials 'L. J. C.' tattooed on his right arm and described by the Messenger as 'the only white man on the vessel not accounted for'. The second body was of a Black crewman still wearing a life jacket from the Long Island. The bodies of the trawler's captain, Romey George, and of two Black crewmen had washed ashore on the Sunday.

    The county paper's own sentence gives the crew away: 'the only white man on the vessel not accounted for'. A largely Black crew drowned off this coast in September 1936, and the record keeps two names, both of them white.

    Source · checked 2026-08-11

47. 1940 · 1940-04-01

    Two years before the beach patrol, the federal census counted the men of Ocean City Station and North Beach Station by name: fourteen at one, eleven at the other, and a Hudson still serving at North Beach sixty years after a Hudson kept it.

    Enumeration districts 24-23 and 24-25 are not neighbourhoods. They are institutions, and the enumerator wrote their names across the top of the sheet: 'Ocean City Station, U.S. Coast Guard' and 'North Beach Coast Guard Sta.' — the latter with a note in the location column, 'Located on beach 10 miles north of Ocean City, Maryland, which is the nearest town.' Ocean City Station, 1 April 1940, fourteen men, typed in block capitals: Arthur F. Heffelfinger, 32, of Pennsylvania, at the head of the household; Thomas T. Moore, 63, of Virginia; William J. Massey, 45; James D. Farlow, 45; Clifton Taylor, 33; Harry P. Kelly, 49; Lloyd Dennis, 44; Levin J. Bunting, 41; Harry D. Mitchell, 38; Walter R. Hastings, 29; Claud Donaway, 33; John M. Pusey, 37, of Delaware; George C. Gibbs, 47; and William H. Parker, 35, whose occupation the supplementary question records as surfman. North Beach, eleven: William Larson, 42, of New York, in charge, who had come from Hog Island Coast Guard Station in Northampton County, Virginia; Samuel L. Quillen, 49; Harry J. Pennewell, 37; Robert H. Fisher, 26, from Metomkin Inlet; Francis Massey, 33; Frank C. Phillips, 53; Fred K. Bunting, 22, also from Metomkin Inlet; Elwood W. Adkins, 33, from the Lewes station; Fred Guerin, 41, of Massachusetts, from Indian River; and Amos H. Hudson Jr., 45, of Delaware. Read the residence column and the whole Fifth District is in it: these men moved between Hog Island, Metomkin Inlet, Lewes and Indian River as the service posted them. And read the last name. Capt. John Andrew Jackson Hudson kept the North Beach Life-Saving Station on this same beach from about 1880 to 1909; in April 1940 an Amos H. Hudson Jr. is on its crew.

    United States Life-Saving ServiceArthur F. HeffelfingerWilliam LarsonAmos H. Hudson Jr.Capt. John Andrew Jackson Hudson

    Source · checked 2026-08-11

48. 1941 · 1941-12-13

    For eight hours one December night, red and white flashes lit the Atlantic horizon off Ocean City. The aircraft spotters thought it was a naval battle. The Coast Guard said it was the weather.

    Two papers carried it, and between them the night is unusually well described. The Worcester Democrat: 'Residents of Ocean City last Saturday were alarmed because of unusual flashes of red and white lights sighted on the Atlantic horizon from shortly after 7 p.m. until shortly before dawn Sunday morning. Air craft spotter stations along the coast, who reported the unusual condition, believed that a Naval battle was under way off the Maryland Coast. Coast Guardsmen attributed the condition to "Atmospheric conditions" and no confirmation could be received of a battle from either the Army or Navy headquarters. The flashes kept up intermittently for some eight hours, but no sounds of explosions were heard.' The Salisbury Times, from an Ocean City dateline, adds that the residents 'continued to argue today' about the long red streaks; that the spotters stationed at intervals along the coast first reported them before dawn; that some 'said they heard sounds "like rolling thunder" when the wind shifted'; and that the towermen whose ordinary job was reporting forest fires would probably be asked to take a shift on the spotting schedule. This is the war arriving as a rumour on the horizon rather than as an order from Annapolis, and it is the earliest dated evidence the campaign holds of Ocean City people watching their own sea for an enemy — and of being told, by the service that had been watching it for them since 1878, that there was nothing there.

    Ocean City saw the lights on a Saturday night in mid-December 1941; the daily paper puts it at 13-14 December and the weekly at 20-21 December.

    The Beach

    Source · checked 2026-08-11

49. 1941 · 1941-12-22

    On 22 December 1941 gunfire offshore shook the houses of Ocean City for an hour and a half and was heard eight miles inland at Berlin. The Coast Guard would not comment.

    'Loud explosions offshore rattled windows and slightly shook houses in this resort city today and were heard in Berlin, Md., eight miles inland.' Henry Burbage, an Ocean City garage owner, said the explosions 'continued at intervals for more than an hour and a half' — 'there would be three or four quick explosions, then silence, followed by other outbreaks.' G. E. Henry of Berlin confirmed that they shook houses and rattled windows. 'Coast Guard officials here would not comment.' The sounds were heard all along the lower Delaware coast; Army officers at Fort Miles, Lewes, and at Fort Saulsbury reported hearing them and said neither fort had fired its guns. The Aberdeen proving grounds was firing that day, and on 16 December the Navy Department had asked the paper to give notice that heavy firing would be heard in the Tangier Sound area during target practice through 26 December — but Tangier Sound is on the far side of the peninsula. The Salisbury Times headed it 'HOUSES SHAKE AT OCEAN CITY / Navy Denies Rumor Of Battle In Atlantic'. Fifteen days after Pearl Harbor, and four months before the tanker David H. Atwater was shelled off Assateague, Ocean City had already heard the war at sea and been told nothing about it. — 1942 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: Confirmed, and the route to answering its open question has been tested and reported. The Eastern Sea Frontier war diary for DECEMBER 1941 was located and fetched: as digitised it contains only the cover page and table of contents — Chapters I-III and Appendices I-III — with NO day-by-day Enemy Action Diary or Patrol Log. The daily-log appendices first appear, in the digitised run, with April 1942. So the 22 December 1941 explosions are NOT in the online frontier record and remain unexplained; that is now a measured result rather than an untried lead. What the April 1942 diary does show is that this kind of report DID travel: on 5 April 1942 the Ocean City Coast Guard Station's report of heavy gunfire offshore went through ComFive into the frontier's log with a position on it. Whatever the town heard in December 1941, the machinery that would have recorded it existed within four months.

    Henry Burbage

    Source · checked 2026-08-11

50. 1942 · 1942-03-13

    The U.S. Navy cleared Ocean City's boats to go on fishing in 1942 — the Coast Guard would inspect every marlin boat for seaworthiness first, and most of them were already enrolled in the auxiliary.

    'MARLIN FISHING NOT STOPPED BY THE WAR DANGER,' the county paper ran on 13 March 1942, over a subhead reading 'Fleet Of Vessels Has Been Given Clearance By Order United States Navy' and a second, 'FLEET TO BE SMALLER THAN IN PAST YEARS'. 'There's a Marlin fishing fleet being assembled at Ocean City, Md., in preparation for the coming season. The resort has been given a clearance Order by the United States Navy in commercial and sports fishing in Maryland waters. Perhaps it would be a good idea to put a gun or two on these boats and let 'em go fishing for subs.' The commercial men were setting their ocean pound nets for the March-to-November hauls and predicting record catches. The sport fleet, 'usually thirty-five cruisers', would be smaller, 'and captains expect that an increased demand will make the season a busy one for the fewer available boats.' Some feared the war would thin the tuna, bluefish, bonito and marlin; 'but Mayor Clifford P. Cropper said there would be plenty of fish either in deep waters or close inshore.' Then the part that says what this coast had become: 'All Ocean City marlin boats will be inspected by United States Coast Guards. They must be approved as seaworthy before their owners may take them to sea. Most of the cruisers are already listed in the Coast Guard auxiliary unit, formed here last year, and have been kept in readiness for any emergency call since then.' The White Marlin Capital of the World spent 1942 with its charter fleet enrolled, inspected and on call, fishing a stretch of ocean in which a freighter was shot to pieces three weeks later.

    Coast Guard Auxiliary unit, Ocean CityClifford P. Cropper

    Source · checked 2026-08-11

51. 1942 · 1942-04-02

    On the night of 2 April 1942 U-552 shelled the American freighter David H. Atwater to pieces twenty miles off Ocean City, and by the next evening thirteen of her dead were lying at the Ocean City Coast Guard Station.

    The campaign has carried the Atwater for years without a primary source. It has one now, and it is the United States Navy's own daily log. The Eastern Sea Frontier War Diary for April 1942, Appendix VII, the Enemy Action Diary, Serial #73 for 3 April 1942, records at 2122 the previous evening: 'SOS from S/S DAVID H. ATWATER (U.S. cargo, 2438 tons) being shelled and sunk by sub at 38-00 N., 75-05 W. (hard on Winter Quarter). CESF asked Com 5 to investigate departure and routing of this cargo vessel. U.S.S. NOA and HERBERT were directed to scene, arriving 2400. At 0145 C.G. Cutter LEGARE landed 3 survivors and 4 bodies of crew of 29 at Chincoteague Island Coast Guard Station. Put out immediately for further search.' The following day, Serial #74 at 2355, the frontier wrote the rest of it down: 'Further in re DAVID H. ATWATER shelled and sunk by submarine off Winter Quarter Buoy at 2115 April 2. Total crew was 25. The 3 wounded survivors and 4 dead landed by C.G.C. LEGARE are at the Marine Hospital, Norfolk. 13 bodies picked up by C.G. lifeboats are at Ocean City C.G. Station. 1 body picked up by Eagle 56 is at Lewes, Del. C.G.C. LEGARE reported destroying 2 lifeboats and 1 life raft. 1 lifeboat had been machine gunned.' Read that last sentence twice. The Atwater was not torpedoed; she was shot to death on the surface with a deck gun for about half an hour, and one of her boats was machine-gunned in the water. Position 38-00 N, 75-05 W is on Winter Quarter Shoal, roughly twenty nautical miles south of the Ocean City Inlet and about ten miles off Assateague — close enough that Ocean City's own Coast Guard lifeboats did the recovering, and close enough that the thirteen bodies came back to the station on Caroline Street rather than to Norfolk. The Coast Guard cutter Legare had already been at sea a night and went straight back out. What the town saw of it is remembered only in local accounts, and they disagree: one says the recovered dead were laid out on the Coast Guard dock at South Division Street; another says they were carried by pick-up truck to the Ocean City ice plant at Philadelphia Avenue and Somerset Street and iced for shipment to Norfolk, and that the late George Bert Cropper, called in to help prepare them, said every one had died of gunshot wounds and the bullet wounds were plain.

    Eastern Sea Frontier

    Source · checked 2026-08-11

52. 1942 · 1942-04-03

    On the night of 3 April 1942 — with thirteen dead men from a shelled freighter lying at its Coast Guard station — Ocean City was plunged into total darkness by an order that was never meant for the town at all.

    'Ocean City, April 4 — An emergency blackout that plunged Ocean City into sudden darkness last night was lifted later with the explanation that the total blackout was a mistake in orders from the Fifth Naval District. Even town officials were taken' by surprise, the Salisbury Times reported under the headline 'Emergency Blackout At Ocean City Is Mistake' and the deck 'ORDER PLUNGES SEASIDE RESORT'. The man who explains it is the Commander of the town's own home defence corps: 'When Fifth Naval District headquarters heard Ocean City was blacked out, the city was called immediately to learn why, Corps Commander Jack Lynch said.' 'When informed that the black out order came from their headquarters, through the Coast Guard, naval authorities explained a mistake had been made, Lynch said. The instructions to "extinguish all lights seaward" was intended only for the Coast Guard station. The "dim-out" adopted by Ocean City last week was sufficient for the remainder of the town.' And: 'Lynch said, removes the possibility at first voiced that Ocean City may remain under blackout for the next several nights.' Two things in that story matter beyond the anecdote. The first is the date. The David H. Atwater had been shelled to pieces on Winter Quarter Shoal on the night of 2 April, and at 2355 on 3 April the Eastern Sea Frontier's own diary recorded that thirteen of her dead were at the Ocean City Coast Guard Station. The town went black on that night, and its officials did not know why. The second is the chronology of the dim-out itself: Ocean City had adopted one 'last week' — that is, in the last days of March 1942, five weeks before the Army's county-wide dim-out order and five weeks before the town's own council got round to passing a blackout ordinance. The resort dimmed itself before anybody made it.

    Ocean City Home Defense CouncilEastern Sea FrontierJohn B. LynchCol. Henry S. Barrett

    Source · checked 2026-08-11

53. 1942 · 1942-04-05

    Three days after the Atwater, the Ocean City Coast Guard Station heard heavy gunfire offshore again — and this time it went into the U.S. Navy's own war diary.

    The Eastern Sea Frontier's Enemy Action Diary for Sunday 5 April 1942, Serial #76, records at 1005: 'ComFive informs that Ocean City, Maryland C. G. Station at 0945 heard 4 shots of heavy gunfire to east and south of station. At 0955 three more. Position about 38-15N., 75-00W.' Ten minutes apart, seven shots, in daylight, about eight miles off the beach. This matters for a reason beyond itself. On 22 December 1941 the town had heard gunfire offshore for an hour and a half, loud enough to shake houses and be heard eight miles inland at Berlin, and the Coast Guard would not comment — and the campaign has never been able to say what it was. Here, fifteen weeks later, is the same station hearing the same kind of thing and this time the report travels up through the Commandant of the Fifth Naval District into the frontier's log with a position on it. The diary records no follow-up identifying a target, and the campaign should not supply one. Later the same month, on the evening of 18 April, the diary logs 'SSSS from 104th Observation Squadron in 38-37N, 74-52W, of Ocean City, Md. PE56 and other craft dispatched to position' — a submarine on the surface at five knots about thirty-five miles east-north-east of the town — and at 2330 that night 'Army plane dropped 1 D.C. on sub in 38-45N, 74-43W. Results undetermined. Sub was sighted.'

    Eastern Sea Frontier

    Source · checked 2026-08-11

54. 1942 · 1942-04-10

    Nine days after the sinking the Governor of Maryland told a women's club near Baltimore that the bodies of thirteen seamen had been taken to Ocean City, and that they were shot down in cold blood in their lifeboats.

    The Navy's war diary said thirteen. So, publicly, did Herbert R. O'Conor. Speaking on the evening of 10 April 1942 at a defense meeting conducted by the Linthicum Heights Women's Club, and reported by the Associated Press under a Baltimore dateline the next day, the Governor said American seamen had been 'shot down in cold blood' by an Axis submarine 'as they crowded into lifeboats after their ship was sunk' - and the ship had been sunk 'at our very doors'. 'The sinking occurred "off the coast," O'Conor said... The bodies of 13 seamen were taken to Ocean City, Md.' And in his own words: 'The experience of these men were indeed harrowing. Some of the seamen whose corpses came to Ocean City, as well as others whose lives were lost, were shot down in cold blood by the crew of the Axis submarine.' He then called on every man, woman and child in Maryland to make the war effort their first consideration. Two things make this remarkable. The first is the corroboration: thirteen, at Ocean City, machine-gunned in the boats - an exact match, from a state politician on a platform, to a United States Navy operational log neither he nor the newspaper had seen. The second is what he would not say. The paper's next line is 'For understandable reasons' and the sentence about the Navy Department that follows it: the ship is never named. She is not named in this story and the name David H. Atwater does not appear anywhere in the Salisbury Times for the whole of 1942. Maryland's Governor told the state its dead had come ashore at Ocean City and could not tell it off what.

    Herbert R. O'Conor

    Source · checked 2026-08-12

55. 1943 · 1943-07-11

    A $3,000 fire partly destroyed Lynch's-For-Everything in west Ocean City on 11 July 1943, and it was fought by the Berlin and Ocean City volunteers together with the Coast Guard fire boat and Harbor Control — a fireman and a Coast Guardsman were hurt.

    Ocean City Volunteer Fire DepartmentWilliam BuntingA. O. Lynch

    Source · checked 2026-08-12

56. 1943 · 1943-12-29

    Eighty Army horses lent to the Coast Guard for beach patrol were declared overage at the end of 1943, and twenty of them were put up for auction at the Ocean City Coast Guard station.

    Capt. R. L. Leach

    Source · checked 2026-08-12

57. 1976 · 1976-02-02

    A councilman asked the town to take over the decommissioned Caroline Street Coast Guard station and restore it as a fishing museum for the bicentennial, two years before the Life-Saving Station Museum opened

    Under continued business at the 2 February 1976 regular meeting Councilman William Purnell raised what he called "kind of in conjunction with our bicentennial": "I'd like to see the City, I don't know how it could be done, to spearhead taking over the Coast Guard Station. I know we own it and we don't own it and restoring it back to it's original shape, make it a museum for fishing or whatever it is here in Ocean City. It was built in 1878 and was decommissioned in 1964." He said the only restored station on the East Coast was at Mystic Seaport, that "Ocean City started with fishermen, the Coast Guard, they came here, they married into the local families," and that "it's just an idea and you don't have to act on it tonight, but I personally think it's a hell of an idea." President Cropper placed it "right here behind Caroline Street"; Councilman Frame said he would like "to see that building and front torn down"; Attorney Cathell said the town was awaiting a court decision on the property. The building became the Ocean City Life-Saving Station Museum in 1978.

    Source · checked 2026-09-10

58. 1977 · 1977-09-19

    The council agreed in September 1977 to honour a young Coast Guardsman, Billy Piner, who went overboard to save the Bruce Gibbs family

    Mayor Kelley, 19 September 1977: "I think Newt, you said something to me about the young Coastguardsman, Billy Piner that saved the Bruce Gibbs family, you know, gave assistance. I've gotten a letter here from Mr. Gibbs, he thinks that the City should honor this young man in some fashion, that he didn't have to jump overboard and do all the things that he did to save lives. So, I present that to you-all, he contacted me and he contacted you." President Cropper: "I would certainly hope that you follow through and make a presentation. I'm sure all the Council will agree ... The fellow actually saved their lives is what he did." The same report had the State Police helicopter being based at Salisbury for the summer at the town's request.

    Source · checked 2026-09-10

59. 1977 · 1977-12-19

    A December 1977 storm put a tug and barge ashore in front of the Sheraton, took the Coast Guard and firemen into the surf to bring four men off, and wiped out $150,000 of bulldozed beach in a season the mayor counted as fifty days of northeast wind out of sixty-five

    Mayor Kelley's report of 19 December 1977, the morning after: "The Coast Guard showed an extreme amount of courage going out there. The tug threw a buoy overboard and came ashore. We got that and put a line to it and elevated it. Then the three of them came off ... by the time the Coast Guard and firemen got to them, I'll tell you what that tide was running as strong as I've ever seen it in my life. If you were just knee deep in it, it would knock you down ... [A] man with a little bit of heart trouble was the skipper. The barge floated on down and struck her broadside. He jumped on the barge and Chief Powell and another person threw a line to the barge and that guy came off ... this was close to one o'clock, maybe 12:15 to 12:30." By morning "the tug is broke up completely now and the barge is split," leaking diesel. "We've got a helluva storm, the seas are higher than they were October 14 ... It is very discouraging ... $150,000.00. That's just what we had in it. Friday the beaches were beautiful ... It's gone, ladies and gentlemen. I expect if I wasn't a grown man, I'd want to cry." Rented bulldozers cost "$3,500.00 a week apiece." "I hate to think if we hadn't had that buffer in front of the Sheraton when that barge broke loose and came ashore ... that barge would have been inside of her." "She's been tough this year. Fifty days of northeast winds out of 65." Police, Coast Guard and the Fire Company were ordered to watch every street from 10th Street north through the four o'clock high tide, with bulldozer operators standing by all night. Kelley also gave up his place on the Ocean City train in Mayor Schaefer's Inner Harbor parade in Baltimore the next day: "Unless you specifically tell me to go up in the parade I expect I'll hang around here."

    Ocean City Volunteer Fire Department

    Source · checked 2026-09-10

60. 1982 · 1982-11-15

    The Mayor and Council proclaimed their appreciation of the Ocean City Coast Guard station for rescuing the crew of the capsized Canadian sailing vessel Scrimage through the inlet in the northeaster of 25 October 1982

    At the regular meeting of 15 November 1982 Mayor Kelley called up Chief Powell: "you look like an old salt ... My father was a Coast Guardsman here at the Ocean City Station." "You took risks beyond what is ordinarily done, that was a rough sea, rough inlet, if the big boat hadn't got out there and you put up with some irregularities when you went out first and then came back in and then went back out again." The proclamation: "Whereas, the Personnel of the Ocean City Coast Guard Station did at great personal risk to their own safety execute successfully a difficult rescue of seamen in the face of much adversity created by gale force winds and tumultuous seas during the recent northeast storm ... Whereas, the lives of the crew of the Canadian sailing vessel, Scrimage, was probably saved due to their weakened condition caused by having already capsized and fought the elements many hours prior to said rescue and Whereas, for over 100 years the personnel of the Ocean City Coast Guard Station and their parent organization at the Ocean City Lifesaving Station have demonstrated their dedication in the saving of lives along the Maryland Coast ... honoring the gallantry and bravery displayed during the rescue of the crew of the sailing vessel the Scrimage on October 25th, 1982." Signed Kelley, Trimper and Ellis as secretary. Chief Powell: "The only thing I can say, we were doing our job."

    Harry W. Kelley

    Source · checked 2026-09-10

61. 1989 · 1989-09-04

    The steel lookout tower the Coast Guard had used in the Second World War and deeded to the town in the 1970s was assigned to the museum, because the door was left open, the keys were lost by the dozen and "the bums" were getting in

    President Hurley raised "one little item that my wife mentioned to me" at the regular meeting of 4 September 1989: "The City owns the steel lookout tower that used to belong to the U.S. Coast Guard in World War II. It was deeded over to the City about, when was Dale Cathell city solicitor? In the 70's sometime... They didn't want to maintain it." The town had sandblasted and painted it once since Dennis Dare's arrival; the Coast Guard still kept radio equipment in it but did nothing to maintain it; the police and State Police used it "for traffic spotting and narcotic spotting on occasion." "Quite often the door is left open on top. Various things happen. The keys are lost by the dozens to get into the place with the result that the lock has to be sawed if they want to go in. My Missus is requesting that it be assigned to some place under the City budget like the museum so that someone who cares about how it looks is responsible... That the bums are not going in there and that it's being painted every four or five years." Asked its age, Hurley thought "that type of structure was built in the late '30's"; the Mayor, "an old Coast Guard person": "It was there during the war." Councilman Gisriel asked whether historic-preservation money might help; Hurley recalled that the museum building itself "came that close to being entered on the Historic Register" and had refused. Councilman Hall moved "that we assign the Coast Guard Tower, and make that part of the museum property and the duties to go with it and the funding to go with it. At least there would be a keeper of the building"; it passed unanimously. Mayor Powell: "The bell ringer."

    Source · checked 2026-09-10