|
 "The book says you have to go out. It don’t say nothing about
coming back!”
A letter to the editor of the old Coast Guard Magazine written
by CBM Clarence P. Brady, USCG (Ret.) which was published in the
March 1954 (page 2) issue, states that the first person to make
this remark was Patrick Etheridge. Brady knew him when both were
stationed at the Cape Hatteras Life-Saving Station. Brady tells
the story as follows:
“A ship was stranded off Cape Hatteras on the Diamond Shoals and
one of the Life-Saving crew reported the fact that this ship had
run ashore on the dangerous shoals. The old skipper gave the
command to man the life boat and one of the men shouted out that
we might make it out to the wreck but we would never make it
back. Etheridge looked around and said, “The Blue Book says
we’ve go to go out and it doesn’t say a damn thing about having
to come back.”
 Etheridge was not exaggerating. The Regulations of the
Life-Saving Service of 1899, Article VI “Action at Wrecks,”
section 252, page 58, states that:
“In attempting a rescue the keeper will select either the boat,
breeches buoy, or life car, as in his judgment is best suited to
effectively cope with the existing conditions. If the device
first selected fails after such trial as satisfies him that no
further attempt with it is feasible, he will resort to one of
the others, and if that fails, then to the remaining one, and he
will not desist from his efforts until by actual trial the
impossibility of affecting a rescue is demonstrated. The
statement of the keeper that he did not try to use the boat
because the sea or surf was too heavy will not be acceptable
unless attempts to launch it were actually made and failed, or
unless the conformation of the coast – as bluffs, precipitous
banks, etc. – is such as to unquestionable preclude the use of a
boat.”
This section of the Regulations remained in force after the
creation of the Coast Guard in 1915. The new Instructions for
United States Coast Guard Stations 1934 edition, copied Section
252 word for word as it appeared in 1899. [1934 Instructions for
United States Coast Guard Stations, Paragraph 28, page 4].
Source: US Coast Guard
|
