Rescue swimmers and aircrewmen from Coast Guard Air Station Cape Cod, Mass., conduct hoist training evolutions. (U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Ross Ruddell.)
Lake Erie: Crewmembers aboard the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Morro Bay, a 140-foot icebreaking tug temporarily assigned to the Great Lakes, prepare to pull alongside the Canadian coast guard ship Samuel Risley to transfer a rescued snowmobiler. (Photo courtesy Canadian coast guard ship Samuel Risley.)
A letter to the editor of the old Coast Guard Magazine, written by CBM Clarence P. Brady, USCG (Ret.), published in the March 1954 issue (page 2), stated that the first person to make this remark was Keeper Patrick Etheridge. Brady knew him when both were stationed at the Cape Hatteras LSS. Brady tells the story as follows:
“A ship was stranded off Cape Hatteras on the Diamond Shoals and one of the life saving crew reported the fact that this ship had run ashore on the dangerous shoals. The old skipper gave the command to man the lifeboat and one of the men shouted out that we might make it out to the wreck but we would never make it back. The old skipper looked around and said, ‘The Blue Book says we've got to go out and it doesn't say a damn thing about having to come back.’”