United States lightship LV-58

In the course of her brief career, the LV58 suffered two accidents. On July 19, 1904, she was rammed by a steamer while relieving Pollock Rip Lightship LV47. The second accident was more severe. On December 10, 1905, LV58 was sent to relieve Nantucket Lightship LV66 during a storm. Due to a leak in the fire-room, and a subsequent failure of suction pumps, the boilers became flooded. A distress signal was sent and the crew was forced to bail out water by hand for 24 hours before Captain Gibbs and the USS Azalea arrived to tow them in for repairs. After four hours of towing, the crew was forced to abandon ship and she went down 18 mi off the coast of Nantucket.

The fallout of this incident caused a small public uproar. Under Navy rules, the eleven officers and crew members of the LV58 were denied pay while they were recovering from their injuries and until they were posted to new vessels. This situation was appealed to Captain Uriel Sebree, who served as head of the Lighthouse Board at the time, but he did not or was not able to accommodate the situation. Instead, the officers would be given commendations by Secretary Victor H. Metcalf and "preference in future appointments" only. Admiral George Dewey and Sebree also made a recommendation, which was approved, that Captain Gibbs receive a commendation and a pay increase for his service.

This incident marked in the first time in US naval history that a distress message was transmitted by radio. The LV58 had one of the first Marconi radios installed for testing in 1901 and it was brought into full-time use in 1904.

Additional reading

 * United States Coast Guard, Aids to Navigation, (Washington, DC: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1945).
 * Putnam, George R., Lighthouses and Lightships of the United States, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1933).
 * Putnam, George R., Lighthouses and Lightships of the United States, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1933).