Forerunner of The United States Life-Saving Service
Nathan F. Cobb was named after a ship builder, born in 1797 from Eastham, Massachusetts on Cape Cod. Cobb and his family moved from Eastham to Northampton County, Virginia before purchasing Sand Shoal Island, which later became Cobb Island. It was on Cobb Island, in 1839, that Nathan founded Cobb's Salvaging Company with his sons. They specialized in wrecking and salvaging stranded vessels along the shallow Mid-Atlantic coastline. The Cobbs had a remarkable record; not one person drowned in any of the rescue efforts for the 37 or more ships stranded off their island. The success of the salvaging company earned them the sobriquet "Rothschilds among the toilers of the sea". Despite the company's notable prosperity, the Cobbs were often praised for their humanity and general regard for human life, "Often a crew of ten or twenty would be landed on the island from stranded vessels without a penny, and they were tenderly cared for as though they were millionaires." This practice was a rare creed among wreckers in the 19th century. The Cobbs and others like them transformed the act of salvaging which led way to the forming of the United States Life-Saving Service; this later merged into what is now the United States Coast Guard.
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