By Nancy Davis 



Consider the days before fancy 

 electronic equipment. 



No radio signals to help sailors 

 keep their bearings. No radar 

 screens to show obstacles in their 

 paths. And no weather reports to 

 warn of impending bad storms. 



Without all those gadgets, ship- 

 wrecks off the treacherous Tar 

 Heel coast were commonplace. 



But those early sailors in distress 

 did have one thing pulling for 

 them— a group of heroes called the 

 U.S. Lifesaving Service. 



From 1848 to 1915, the men of 

 the Lifesaving Service, later to 

 become the U.S. Coast Guard, 

 risked their lives to save others. 



And their record is impressive. 

 From 1871 to 1915, the lifesavers 

 tried to rescue 178,741 people. Of 

 those, they saved 177,286. 



Now, all that remains to remind 

 us of their heroics are a few 

 weather-beaten, shingled lifesaving 

 stations. 



But the heritage is rich, and the 

 descendants of the lifesavers are 

 not about to let their ancestors' 

 stories die. 



The Lifesaving Service's begin- 

 nings go back to 1848 when a New 

 Jersey congressman introduced a 

 bill to provide rescue equipment 

 for shipwrecked sailors off that 

 coast. 



Soon the idea spread, and by 

 1871, Congress had officially estab- 

 lished the U.S. Lifesaving Service as 

 a branch of the Treasury Department. 



From 1873 to 1874 only one 

 shipwrecked sailor died in the area 

 with lifesaving stations already 

 established. That record of success 

 led Congress to grant money for 



stations down through North 

 Carolina. 



Here, as many as 29 stations 

 operated at one time. Most of those 

 were clustered between the Vir- 

 ginia line and the tip of Cape Hat- 

 teras. They were generally spaced 

 7 or 8 miles apart. 



A roster of Tar Heel lifesavers 

 reads like a page from an Outer 

 Banks phone book— Ballance, Dan- 

 iels, Etheridge, Meekins, Midgett. 



Sumner Midgett comes from one 

 of those families that claims a long 

 line of lifesavers. His father and his 

 grandfather were in the Lifesaving 

 Service. 



And Midgett and his father were 

 named after another famous Sum- 

 ner—Sumner Kimball, the first 

 director of the Lifesaving Service. 



Midgett says that at one time, so 

 many men from the Midgett family 

 were lifesavers that folks started 

 calling it the Midgett Navy. 



Midgett spent his younger years 

 moving with his father to stations 

 at Ocracoke, Little Kinnakeet, 

 Duck, Cape Fear and Fort Caswell. 



"Shipwrecks were common 

 then," he says. "We went for a 

 month one time when they never 

 missed a night getting a call." 



On the East Coast, most of the 

 lifesaving stations were of similar 

 construction. Covered with cedar 

 shingles, they were often two 

 stories. The bottom floor was used 

 for storing lifesaving equipment, in- 

 cluding the boats. 



The typical lifesaving vessels 

 were government-contract built, 

 says Mike Alford, curator of mari- 

 time research at the N.C. Maritime 

 Museum. 



They were usually 25 to 35 feet 

 long. They were constructed in the 

 lapstrake fashion. The planks were 

 lapped over and fastened to each 

 other, making for a lighter boat, 

 Alford says. 



For drills or rescues, the boats 

 were rolled out of the stations on 

 carts through large barn-like doors. 

 Once they reached the surf, the 

 lifesavers lifted the boats and 

 launched them. 



Flotation tanks in either end of 

 the boat kept it from sinking if it 

 were swamped with waves, Alford 

 says. 



From a tower on top of the sta- 

 tion, a lifesaver stood watch over 

 the water by day. At night or dur- 

 ing storms or heavy fog, the life- 

 savers took turns patrolling the 

 beach, Midgett says. They'd either 

 walk or ride horses about 3 miles 

 to the north, then 3 miles to the 

 south. 



To prove they had patrolled their 

 section of the beach, the crewman 

 would exchange tokens with the 

 man of the station to the north and 

 south at a keypost between the 

 two. 



If a ship were venturing too close 

 to shore, the lifesavers would signal 

 them with a flare. 



When a ship was in distress, five 

 or six men launched a surfboat and 

 tried to row out through the crash- 

 ing waves. 



If the ship had grounded close 

 enough to shore, the lifesavers 

 would shoot a line out to the vessel 

 with a lyle gun, a small version of 

 a cannon. 



Crew members on the ship 

 secured the line around the mast. 



