Aids to Navigation 



Without 20th century aids to navigation, sea travel would be far 

 more hazardous than it is, and transoceanic air transport would be 

 seriously impeded. In the United States, aids to navigation began as 

 they did in most lands, with lighthouses built in the earliest days of 

 the country's settlement. 



In 1789, the first Congress of the newly-independent United States 

 accepted title to 12 lighthouses and other navigational aids along the 

 Atlantic coast. From that beginning, aids to navigation has developed 

 into one of the most important of the Coast Guard's 10 major missions. 

 Of the 31,000 total personnel, aids to navigation is the primary duty 

 of 6,350 oiRcers and men, and another 9,388 officers and men spend a 

 substantial part of their time in carrying out this mission. 



Today, the Coast Guard operates seven types of aids to navigation. 

 They are : lighthouses, lightships, buoys, daybeacons, long-range elec- 

 tronic aids (LORAN), short-range electronic aids (radio-beacons, 

 RATAN), and fog signals. Their cost and complexity vary from an 

 inexpensive river buoy costing less than $100 to a multimillion-dollar 

 LORAN station. The 41,101 aids of all types includes one experi- 

 mental radar-television (RATAN) installation. 



The Coast Guard also provides meteorological data to the Weather 

 Bureau and helps the mariner with storm warnings and weather 

 broadcasts. A Coast Guard aircraft photographs uncharted areas 

 for Coast and Geodetic Survey, helping that agency's mapping and 

 charting program while adding to their own data on aids to naviga- 

 tion. 



In cooperation with the Council of State Governments and State 

 boating officials Coast Guard has developed a Uniform State Water- 

 way Marking System, chiefly for pleasure craft. 



Another function is operation of the International Ice Patrol dur- 

 ing the ice season, which it has done since 1914, except during war 



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