law), this provision was disallowed and the past policy of 50-percent local and 50-percent 

 Federal funding for the investigations was continued; (2) the law authorized the BEB to 

 publish whatever information concerning beach protection it considered to be useful to the 

 people of the Nation ; (3) it stipulated that all projects having to do with shore protection 

 were to continue to be reviewed by the BEB and not the Board of Engineers for Rivers and 

 Harbors (BERH) (BERH is an all-miUtary Board set up in 1902 to review all proposed 

 Corps of Engineers river and harbor improvement projects); (4) it required the BEB to 

 include in its reports comments on three items: "(a) the advisability of adopting the 

 project, (b) what Federal interest, if any, is involved in the proposed improvement, and 

 (c) what share of the expense, if any, should be borne by the United States;"^ "^^ and 

 (5) Public Law 834 defined the geographical areas of "beaches" as applicable to the act. 



But with all these provisions, the 1936 legislation did not specify research as a BEB 

 function. Moreover, it precluded a comprehensive approach to the shoreline problems of the 

 United States by retaining the general policy of the past, i.e., that each study be requested 

 by some local group. As explained by Thorn dike Saville, "... the Board has to wait for a 

 request before such a cooperative investigation can be undertaken; such requests naturally 

 are sporadic, located in communities widely separated along the sea and lake coasts of the 

 United States; quite unrelated in time, and whoUy incapable of being coordinated into any 

 comprehensive study of the general problem for the United States as a whole."^^^ Thus, 

 from several points of view, PubUc Law 834 left room for improvement. Due to World 

 War II, however, it was not until 9 years later that any new legislation concerned with BEB 

 activities was passed. 



/. Personnel Losses. The late 1930's and early 1940's brought the loss of several early 

 leaders in the beach erosion movement, Rear Adm. Raymond S. Patton died on November 

 25, 1937. Although never a member of the BEB, Patton 's concern for, and scientific interest 

 in, beach erosion played an important role in exposing the great need for work on this 

 problem. A few months later, on January 22, 1938, Victor Gelineau died suddenly. His 

 deatli left a vacancy on the seven-member BEB among the State agency engineers. By 

 Special Order No. 73 dated July 27, 1938, Morrough P. O'Brien, by then chairman of the 

 Department of Mechanical Engineering of the University of California, Berkeley, was 

 appointed to fill this position. During his previous associations with both the BSMBE and 

 the BEB, O'Brien had made numerous contributions of new knowledge based on field and 

 laboratory investigation. Moreover, he had developed a graduate study and research program 

 in coastal engineering at the University of California which had become preeminent in the 

 field. O'Brien was to serve as a member of the BEB for the remainder of the agency's 

 existence.* 



*Since 1963, O'Brien has been a member of the Coastal Engineering Research Board of the U.S. Army, Corps of 

 Engineers. 



39 



