File:USCGC Oak, a buoy tender.jpg

The Oak, a buoy tender

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The Oak [right] worked New York channels, all rivers, Long Island and up the Hudson to West Point. We also had to supply all the lighthouses with coal for winter. When we hauled coal, we boarded up the buoy deck in order to sack coal up about twenty-five feet high – black faces, black ship – dust everywhere, but the lighthouses did get their coal. Since I was aboard for recuperation, this of course was part of it. When you see New York from a buoy tender, you see it from every angle you could imagine. One gets bearings and sees things you don’t run into on the subway or see off the Empire State Building. The Harlem River makes the city of New York an island. Of course, the East River and the Hudson all add together to do the job. We work them all with buoys, etc. Ellis Island / Statue of Liberty – all are used by others for things other than history. Believe it or not, I just got tired of all this. Being a country boy, something was missing. So I put in for a transfer to Florida and got it. In fact it’s an 80-footer out of COTP Miami.