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USCGC Bluebell (WLI-313)
USCGC ''Bluebell'' (WLI-313) is a United States Coast Guard inland buoy tender based out of Portland, Oregon. History ''Bluebell'' was commissioned on April 4, 1945. From 1945 to 1973 ''Bluebell'' was stationed in Vancouver, Washington. ''Bluebell'' was moved to Swan Island in Portland, Oregon, in 1973, where she has remained since. ''Bluebell'' is classified as an inland buoy tender and is one of two 100-foot inland buoy tenders in service. The other, is the Coast Guard Cutter ''Buckthorn'' (WLI-642) homeported in Sault Ste. Marie, MI. ''Bluebell'' is the second oldest cutter in the Coast Guard fleet, and the oldest west of the Mississippi River. The ship is home to a crew of 15 led by a chief warrant officer, with a chief petty officer as the second in command. Mission As a buoy tender, the crew's primary mission is to ensure the safety of mariners by establishing and maintaining essential navigation aids along established waterways. The crew is responsible for maintainin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Portland, Oregon
Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous county in Oregon. Portland had a population of 652,503, making it the 26th-most populated city in the United States, the sixth-most populous on the West Coast, and the second-most populous in the Pacific Northwest, after Seattle. Approximately 2.5 million people live in the Portland metropolitan statistical area (MSA), making it the 25th most populous in the United States. About half of Oregon's population resides within the Portland metropolitan area. Named after Portland, Maine, the Oregon settlement began to be populated in the 1840s, near the end of the Oregon Trail. Its water access provided convenient transportation of goods, and the timber industry was a major force in the city's early economy. At the turn of the 20th century, the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maritime Call Sign
Maritime call signs are call signs assigned as unique identifiers to ships and boats. All radio transmissions must be individually identified by the call sign. Merchant and naval vessels are assigned call signs by their national licensing authorities. History One of the earliest applications of radiotelegraph operation, long predating broadcast radio, were marine radio stations installed aboard ships at sea. In the absence of international standards, early transmitters constructed after Guglielmo Marconi's first trans-Atlantic message in 1901 were issued arbitrary two-letter calls by radio companies, alone or later preceded by a one-letter company identifier. These mimicked an earlier railroad telegraph convention where short, two-letter identifiers served as Morse code abbreviations to denote the various individual stations on the line (for instance, AX could represent Halifax). "N" and two letters would identify U.S. Navy; "M" and two letters would be a Marconi station. On Apr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United States Coast Guard
The United States Coast Guard (USCG) is the maritime security, search and rescue, and law enforcement service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the country's eight uniformed services. The service is a maritime, military, multi-mission service unique among the United States military branches for having a maritime law enforcement mission with jurisdiction in both domestic and international waters and a federal regulatory agency mission as part of its duties. It is the largest and most powerful coast guard in the world, rivaling the capabilities and size of most navies. The U.S. Coast Guard is a humanitarian and security service. It protects the United States' borders and economic and security interests abroad; and defends its sovereignty by safeguarding sea lines of communication and commerce across vast territorial waters spanning 95,000 miles of coastline and its Exclusive Economic Zone. With national and economic security depending upon open global trade a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Buoy Tender
A buoy tender is a type of vessel used to maintain and replace navigational buoys. This term can also apply to an actual person who does this work. The United States Coast Guard uses buoy tenders to accomplish one of its primary missions of maintaining all U.S. aids to navigation (ATON). The Canadian Coast Guard uses multi-use vessels (most being icebreakers) with tasks including buoy tending. Types of coast guard buoy tenders United States Coast Guard *240' *225' USCG seagoing buoy tender (WLB) *175' USCG coastal buoy tender (WLM) *100' USCG inland buoy tender ( WLI) *100' USCG inland construction tender (WLIC) * 75' River buoy tender ( WLR) * 75' Inland construction tender (WLIC) * 65' River buoy tender ( WLR) * 65' Inland buoy tender ( WLI) * 49' Buoy utility stern loading boat (BUSL) * Other miscellaneous aids to navigation boats Canadian Coast Guard *272' *272' *228' *228' *198' *180' *179' *180' *144' *125' *66' Further reading * United States Coast ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vancouver, Washington
Vancouver is a city on the north bank of the Columbia River in the U.S. state of Washington, located in Clark County. Incorporated in 1857, Vancouver has a population of 190,915 as of the 2020 census, making it the fourth-largest city in Washington state. Vancouver is the county seat of Clark County and forms part of the Portland-Vancouver metropolitan area, the 25th-largest metropolitan area in the United States. Originally established in 1825 around Fort Vancouver, a fur-trading outpost, the city is located on the Washington–Oregon border along the Columbia River, directly north of Portland, and is considered a suburb of the city along with its surrounding areas. History The Vancouver area was inhabited by several Native American tribes, most recently the Chinook and Klickitat nations, with permanent settlements of timber longhouses. The Chinookan and Klickitat names for the area were reportedly ''Skit-so-to-ho'' and ''Ala-si-kas,'' respectively, meaning "land of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Swan Island (Oregon)
Swan Island is located on the Willamette River about downriver from downtown Portland, Oregon, United States. Although presently connected to the Willamette's east bank, it existed as a river island under natural conditions. Swan Island and a nearby bar posed an obstacle to river traffic during the 19th and early 20th centuries, with vessels being restricted to a narrow channel on the island's east side. Proposals on how to improve navigation around the island included widening one of its channels or removing the island completely. Swan Island was acquired by the Port of Portland in 1921. The Port undertook dredging to expand the channel on the island's west side, using some of the dredged material to connect the island to the Willamette's east bank. Swan Island was the site of the Swan Island Municipal Airport from 1927 until the early 1940s, and was the site of a Kaiser shipyard during the Second World War. The area is presently an industrial park. History The island was fir ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Columbia River
The Columbia River (Upper Chinook: ' or '; Sahaptin: ''Nch’i-Wàna'' or ''Nchi wana''; Sinixt dialect'' '') is the largest river in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. The river rises in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia, Canada. It flows northwest and then south into the U.S. state of Washington, then turns west to form most of the border between Washington and the state of Oregon before emptying into the Pacific Ocean. The river is long, and its largest tributary is the Snake River. Its drainage basin is roughly the size of France and extends into seven US states and a Canadian province. The fourth-largest river in the United States by volume, the Columbia has the greatest flow of any North American river entering the Pacific. The Columbia has the 36th greatest discharge of any river in the world. The Columbia and its tributaries have been central to the region's culture and economy for thousands of years. They have been used for transportation since a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Willamette River
The Willamette River ( ) is a major tributary of the Columbia River, accounting for 12 to 15 percent of the Columbia's flow. The Willamette's main stem is long, lying entirely in northwestern Oregon in the United States. Flowing northward between the Oregon Coast Range and the Cascade Range, the river and its tributaries form the Willamette Valley, a basin that contains two-thirds of Oregon's population, including the state capital, Salem, and the state's largest city, Portland, which surrounds the Willamette's mouth at the Columbia. Originally created by plate tectonics about 35 million years ago and subsequently altered by volcanism and erosion, the river's drainage basin was significantly modified by the Missoula Floods at the end of the most recent ice age. Humans began living in the watershed over 10,000 years ago. There were once many tribal villages along the lower river and in the area around its mouth on the Columbia. Indigenous peoples lived throughout ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Snake River
The Snake River is a major river of the greater Pacific Northwest region in the United States. At long, it is the largest tributary of the Columbia River, in turn, the largest North American river that empties into the Pacific Ocean. The Snake River rises in western Wyoming, then flows through the Snake River Plain of southern Idaho, the rugged Hells Canyon on the Oregon–Idaho border and the rolling Palouse Hills of Washington (state), Washington, emptying into the Columbia River at the Tri-Cities, Washington, Tri-Cities in the Columbia Basin of Eastern Washington. The Snake River drainage basin encompasses parts of six U.S. states (Idaho, Washington, Oregon, Utah, Nevada, and Wyoming) and is known for its varied geologic history. The Snake River Plain was created by a volcanic hotspot (geology), hotspot which now lies underneath the Snake River headwaters in Yellowstone National Park. Gigantic glacial-retreat flooding episodes during the previous Last glacial period, Ice Ag ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Navigational Aid
Navigation is a field of study that focuses on the process of monitoring and controlling the movement of a craft or vehicle from one place to another.Bowditch, 2003:799. The field of navigation includes four general categories: land navigation, marine navigation, aeronautic navigation, and space navigation. It is also the term of art used for the specialized knowledge used by navigators to perform navigation tasks. All navigational techniques involve locating the navigator's position compared to known locations or patterns. Navigation, in a broader sense, can refer to any skill or study that involves the determination of position and direction. In this sense, navigation includes orienteering and pedestrian navigation. History In the European medieval period, navigation was considered part of the set of '' seven mechanical arts'', none of which were used for long voyages across open ocean. Polynesian navigation is probably the earliest form of open-ocean navigation; it was b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pacific Northwest
The Pacific Northwest (sometimes Cascadia, or simply abbreviated as PNW) is a geographic region in western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Though no official boundary exists, the most common conception includes the U.S. states of Oregon, Washington (state), Washington, and Idaho, and the Canadian province of British Columbia. Some broader conceptions reach north into Alaska and Yukon, south into northern California, and east into western Montana. Other conceptions may be limited to the coastal areas west of the Cascade Mountains, Cascade and Coast Mountains, Coast mountains. The variety of definitions can be attributed to partially overlapping commonalities of the region's history, culture, geography, society, ecosystems, and other factors. The Northwest Coast is the coastal region of the Pacific Northwest, and the Northwest Plateau (also commonly known as "British Columbia Interi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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