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.
Read more about this topic: Nathan F. Cobb
Famous quotes containing the words united, states and/or service:
“Places where he might live and die and never hear of the United States, which make such a noise in the world,—never hear of America, so called from the name of a European gentleman.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I make this direct statement to the American people that there is far less chance of the United States getting into war, if we do all we can now to support the nations defending themselves against attack by the Axis than if we acquiesce in their defeat, submit tamely to an Axis victory, and wait our turn to be the object of attack in another war later on.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“The ruin of the human heart is self-interest, which the American merchant calls self-service. We have become a self- service populace, and all our specious comforts—the automatic elevator, the escalator, the cafeteria—are depriving us of volition and moral and physical energy.”
—Edward Dahlberg (1900–1977)