Service
On February 8, 1931, LV-117 took aboard the eight-man crew of the fishing schooner Aloma, which sank 5 mi (8.0 km) from the lightship. The men were taken ashore by the Coast Guard on February 9.
During a storm on June 27, 1933, the lightship broke her mooring chain and drifted away from her position. She was unable to regain it for several days. Not until the gales subsided on June 30, was her crew able to return LV-117 to her station.
On January 6, 1934, four months before LV-117 was sunk by the Olympic, the lightship had a less serious glancing collision by another liner, SS Washington, at the time the largest ocean liner yet built in the United States. The radio antenna yards were carried away and minor damage occurred to some hull plates. The near-sinking caused great concern to the lightship's crew; in April 1934, radio operator John Parry told friends, "Some day we are just going to get it head on, and that will be the finish. One of those big liners will just ride through us."
Read more about this topic: United States Lightship LV-117
Famous quotes containing the word service:
“We could not help being struck by the seeming, though innocent, indifference of Nature to these men’s necessities, while elsewhere she was equally serving others. Like a true benefactress, the secret of her service is unchangeableness. Thus is the busiest merchant, though within sight of his Lowell, put to pilgrim’s shifts, and soon comes to staff and scrip and scallop-shell.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We have in the service the scum of the earth as common soldiers.”
—Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke Wellington (1769–1852)
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—Tallulah Bankhead (1903–1968)