While today many are quick to paint guns are instruments of destruction for their own political agenda, for more than 70 years the largest cannon stationed at Coast Guard stations around the country were only trotted out to rescue those in peril on the sea.
The problem
Before what we know today as the U.S. Coast Guard was established, in 1848 the government thought it was a good idea to build and staff rescue stations along parts of the coastline that were prone to shipwrecks.
By 1915, over 270 of these stations were built on every coast and were run by the United States Life-Saving Service. Stations in many cases were ran like local volunteer fire departments with one or two full time government employees stationed there to take care of the equipment and ring the bell if a ship came to close for comfort.
When the bell rang, a crew would assemble and try to launch their small rowboat through the surf and make for the grounded or broken ship. The thing is, as many of these areas were too hazardous to begin with, or during a storm (hey, think about it, when do ships wreck anyway?), all that the intrepid lifesavers could do was sit by and watch.
So in 1875, Sumner Kimball, superintendent of the USLSS reached out to the Army to build them a special cannon.
Enter Lt. Lyle.
When he graduated from West Point in 1869, David A. Lyle accepted his commission in the U.S. Ordnance Department and departed for San Francisco to assume his duties at Benicia Arsenal in the San Francisco area– the main ordnance depot west of the Mississippi at the time. In 1875, thinking the recently promoted 1st Lieutenant had too much spare time on his hands; the Army assigned him the ancillary task of designing the requested cannon for the surfmen.
The 160-ish pound 2.5-inch smoothboore bronze cannon remained in active service until 1952 and the USCG, who inherited the Life-Saving Service in 1915, still keeps a couple around for special occasions.
RODANTHE, N.C. – Petty Officer 1st Class Robert Shay pulls the line on a Lyle gun, firing a metal projectile, and rope to a simulated shipwreck on the beach at the Chicamacomico Life-Saving Station during the Breeches Buoy Drill, Monday, Dec. 14, 2009. (U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Mark Jones) Click to big up
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