US Life-Saving Service: Florida's East Coast

by Sandra H. Thurlow, Timothy R. Dring

Overview

Ten houses of refuge, unique to Florida's east coast, were constructed by the US Life—Saving Service between 1876 and 1886. When ships traveling along the almost uninhabited coast were grounded or wrecked on reefs, survivors often made it to land but had no way to reach civilization. House of refuge keepers and their families provided food and shelter to victims of shipwrecks. The keepers' lives were monotonous but punctuated with the excitement of an occasional shipwreck. The US Life—Saving Service provided the framework on which the east coast of Florida developed. With the establishment of the US Coast Guard in 1915, the Life—Saving Service houses of refuge became Coast Guard stations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781467124188
Publisher:	Arcadia Publishing SC
Publication date:	12/12/2016
Series:	Images of America Series
Pages:	128
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Sandra Thurlow, who lives near the only remaining house of refuge, has been collecting and sharing the history of houses of refuge for many years. When she thought she had collected everything available, she met Sarah Prado, whose grandparents served at the Mosquito Lagoon House of Refuge for 22 years and left a treasure trove of photographs. Timothy Dring, president of the US Life—Saving Service Heritage Association, shared numerous official photographs discovered in the National Archives. Thurlow and Dring combined their resources and research to compile this history of the US Life—Saving Service along Florida's east coast.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments 6

Introduction 7

1 Florida's Adaptation of US Life-Saving Service Stations 9

2 The US Coast Guard Era and Beyond 59

3 The Coutant Family and the Mosquito Lagoon House of Refuge 99

4 Fred Hall's World War I-Era Coast Guard Images 119

Supporting Organizations 127

Editorial Reviews

Sandra Thurlow, of Stuart, has been telling the world about the importance of houses of refuge in the development of Florida for decades. She has written magazine articles, as well as a scholarly article for the Florida Historical Quarterly.She has given illustrated lectures about houses of refuge from Jacksonville to Miami. Now she has joined with Dring, president of the U.S. Life—Saving Service Heritage Association, to compile a new book published in Arcadia Press’s Images of America series. TC Palm

Sandra Thurlow has written a series of books about the history of the Indian River region of Florida, including “Gilbert’s Bar House of Refuge: Home of History.” Her new book, co—authored with Timothy Dring, is “U.S. Life Saving Service: Florida’s East Coast.”It’s surprising how sparsely it was populated,” said Thurlow. “They called it ‘a howling wilderness,’ especially the lower east coast. So when shipwrecks happened, the survivors usually came to shore and got to survive that far, but then their life was in question because there was no way to find civilization to get food or water, and they didn’t know which way to go. So after storms, keepers of the Houses of Refuge would walk in either direction, and look for survivors.”While written records for the Houses of Refuge are plentiful, photographs are not. Thurlow and Dring managed to assemble hundreds of photographs for their book from a variety of sources. Florida Today

From the Publisher