Safe Boating

Source: U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Records, East Carolina Manuscript Collection #559

Staff Person: Martha Elmore

Description:
Special Collections in Joyner Library is the official repository for the records of the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary. The Auxiliary was established by Congress in 1939 as a way for owners of motorboats and yachts to volunteer their services and their boats’ services to assist the Coast Guard. During World War II they kept a lookout for suspicious activities along our coastlines such as the smuggling in of arms, narcotics, and spies and saboteurs. Today the group has 27,000 members who are organized into districts which are broken down into regions and divisions and into smaller groups called flotillas. The Auxiliarists volunteer their time to do vessel safety checks, harbor patrols, safe boating courses, search and rescue operations, and marine environmental protection. The records we hold include newsletters, meeting minutes, training materials, histories, scrapbooks, photographs, videos, cassette recordings, rosters, disaster statistics and reports on catastrophic events such as Hurricane Katrina. We receive records on a weekly basis from the Auxiliary groups and are entering information about their records into a searchable database that we hope will go live in the future. This photograph shows “Commodore” (and actor) Lloyd Bridges of the Coast Guard Auxiliary promoting a safe boating course. Click here to learn more about the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Records

Actor Lloyd Bridges helping to promote a safe boating course