Thomas T. Moore
Chief Boatswain's Mate, U.S. Coast Guard; Ocean City station to 1925, then officer in charge, Fenwick Island · active 1910-1925 at Ocean City; from 1 April 1925 at Fenwick Island
Boatswain's mate at the Ocean City Coast Guard station. On the afternoon of 18 July 1920, standing lookout, he saw a fourteen-year-old Wilmington girl, Helen Weiss, struggling on the outer bar two hundred feet off shore and well away from the other bathers. He left his post, swam out and brought her in. The station's own report of it went to headquarters and reached the Delaware papers within four days — one of very few Ocean City rescues in this registry that is documented from an official Coast Guard return rather than from a reporter. HIS NAME AND HIS CAREER, recovered 2026-08-06: he is Chief Boatswain's Mate Thomas T. Moore, in the Coast Guard continuously from 1 August 1910, risen from surfman, at Ocean City until 1 April 1925 and then officer in charge at Fenwick Island. On 15 July 1925 the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury presented him a gold life-saving medal. The citation puts the Helen Weiss rescue among no fewer than seventeen — the registry had recorded one. In 1927 he is serving in the Mississippi Flood District — and the county press still calls him "Mr. Thomas T. Moore of Ocean City, Md." two years after his transfer to Fenwick Island.
In the record (5)
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.
United States Coast GuardCapt. John W. Hudson
Source · checked 2026-08-06
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.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
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.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1938 · 1938-05-31
Ocean City sent twenty-five firemen to Baltimore in 1938 to ask for the state convention, and half the money was a loan against a dance
'Delegation from Fire Co. asked City to finance part of Cost of sending 25 firemen to state Convention in Baltimore to ask for state Convention here next Year. They Estimated the Cost at 25.00 per man.' That was 4 April; the council took it under consideration. On 31 May Capt. T. T. Moore and Fire Chief Archie Davis came back, and 'Council agreed to give 325.00 out right and finance 325.00 for them until they held a dance in August and repaid the 325.00.' Six hundred and fifty dollars for a delegation, half of it a bridging loan to be repaid out of a summer dance. It was the third thing the town did for the fire company that year: $450 towards uniforms on 18 January, permission on 10 May to take the No. 2 truck to the convention at Onancock, Virginia, and permission on 22 November to take a truck to Salisbury for a parade on 25 November.
Ocean City Volunteer Fire DepartmentMaryland State Firemen's AssociationA. C. Davis
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1938 · 1938-08-15
Three hundred people packed the Ocean City Pier convention hall in August 1938 for a War Department hearing on the bridge, and twelve of them spoke against it
Capt. H. T. Miller, District War Department engineer, and Col. John S. Doyle, Senior District Engineer, presided over a public hearing in the Ocean City Pier convention hall on Monday 15 August 1938, 'held to ascertain opinion on the application of the State Roads Commission for a War Department permit to construct a new $450,000 bay bridge at North Division street in Ocean City'. Around three hundred people came, mostly from Ocean City and its neighbourhood. The count was lopsided: 'Two speakers and four documents in favor of granting the State a permit for a North Division street bridge were offset by opposition expressed in ten documents together with verbal statements made by twelve speakers.' Navigation was the only argument that counted. Letters and petitions came from boat captains of St. Martin's River and Isle of Wight Bay, from Ocean City boat captains who offered a petition, and from Trimper's Marine Railway, The Farms Company, Glen Riddle Farms, Peninsula Packing Company, the Beach Gunning Club, the Nordica Hotel, W. Preston Laws and Capt. Thomas T. Moore. Don Harmon, an Ocean City seafood dealer, and Capt. Gilbert of Florida, a party-boat captain, spoke against; so did Capt. Granville Taylor of Crisfield and State Senator Milton L. Veasey. Clarence Carey argued that a North Division Street span 'would be too close to the present Worcester street bridge a few blocks south and would be a menace to navigation'. On the other side, Grice Long, a boat owner and Ocean City summer resident of five years, said 'a bridge at North Division street would be a boon not only to navigation but to traffic'. And Capt. Miller made the ruling that mattered: the State Roads Commission 'must definitely decide whether or not it intends to maintain the present Worcester street bridge at Ocean City, before any permit will be issued by the War Department for a new $450,000 bay bridge at North Division street or any other location.'
The referendum had been overruled and the town's own council had signed the streets away in June. So the fight moved to the only forum left that had not yet ruled - the federal permit - and the argument stopped being about where Ocean City wanted its bridge and became about what would happen to the bridge it already had.
Maryland State Roads CommissionClarence CareyW. Preston LawsCapt. H. T. MillerCol. John S. DoyleMilton L. Veasey
Source · checked 2026-08-11