Navigational Bell Buoy
notes: label: Description
content: Unlike car drivers on land, navigators at sea have no road signs to indicate speed limits, dangers, or routes. Navigational buoys are floating objects anchored to the bottom that serve as aids to navigation. Their distinctive shapes, colors, and other markings provide information indicating their purpose and how to navigate around them.
label: Description
content: The placement and maintenance of navigational buoys are essential to shipping, since they often provide the only guidance for channel locations, shoals, reefs, and other hazards. If damaged by collisions, extinguished, or broken loose from their moorings, the Coast Guard will repair, replace, refuel, or relocate the failed buoy.
label: Description
content: Designated an 8X20 LBR, this particular type of buoy was used by the U.S. Coast Guard Lighthouse Service on the East Coast from around 1930 until the early 1950s. It measures 8 feet in width and 20 feet high, and the letters mean Lighted, Bell, and Radar Reflector. It originally weighed ca. 15,600 pounds, including the 225-lb bell. The bottom of this example was removed to fit into the gallery.
label: Description
content: It was designed to be deployed in shallow, protected coastal waters and could be seen about two miles away in daylight. The light on the top was powered by batteries stored under the round hatches in the large bottom compartment. The bell was rung by the rocking of the buoy in the waves.
topic: label: Subject
content: Fishing
label: related event
content: The Emergence of Modern America
label: related event
content: The Great Depression and World War II
label: related event
content: Postwar United States
setName: label: See more items in
content: Work and Industry: Maritime
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content: Communications
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content: Engineering, Building, and Architecture
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content: Transportation
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content: Measuring & Mapping
label: Exhibition
content: On the Water
label: Exhibition Location
content: National Museum of American History
publisher: label: Related Publication
content: National Museum of American History. On the Water exhibition website
label: Related Web Publication
content: http://americanhistory.si.edu/onthewater
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: US Department of Transportation, U.S. Coast Guard Fifth District (through Paul Glahe)
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: TR.336771
label: accession number
content: 1978.2285
label: catalog number
content: 336771
objectType: label: Object Name
content: buoy, bell
label: Other Terms
content: buoy, bell; Maritime
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: ferrous metal (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: black (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: copper alloy (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 12 ft x 8 ft; 3.6576 m x 2.4384 m