The importance of lightships in maritime history and the legacy of the lighthouse cannot be overstated. Although the lightship has served little more than two centuries, there is evidence that ancient seamen improvised the concept with flame-filled baskets and oil lanterns placed on ships patrolling vital harbors as a guide to incoming vessels.

To preserve the heritage of these important aids to navigation, the United States Lighthouse Society acquired one of the last remaining lightships " LV605" in 1987. Over the next 15 years, members and volunteers worked to restore the historic vessel to pristine condition. In June 2002, Lightship Relief was permanently docked at Jack London Square in Oakland, California. This floating lighthouse that took more than 19,000 man-hours and over $400,000 to restore, was finally open to the public.

Lightships served mariners in the United States from 1820 to 1983. Over the years, 116 stations were established on all three coasts and in the Great Lakes, and at its peak, 56 lightship stations were in operation. The first US lightship station was in Chesapeake Bay; the last was Nantucket station.

LV605 was one of 174 vessels built to man these stations -- 168 constructed by the US Lighthouse Service and six by the US Coast Guard. According to the USLHS, there are only 15 lightships remaining in this country -- all have been retired or replaced by buoys, large navigational markers or Texas Towers.

Rice Brothers Shipyard, Boothbay, Maine, built this lightship for the Coast Guard in 1950. She was commissioned in 1951 as Overfalls, a lightship station off Delaware. In 1959, the vessel was transferred to the Blunts station off Cape Mendocino, California. Her final designation came in 1969, when she became Relief, relieving all West Coast lightships. The ship was decommissioned in 1975 and given to the city of Olympia, Washington in 1976, for a maritime museum. The city was unsuccessful in its efforts and the ship was sold to Mr. Alan Hosking of Woodside, California in 1979. He sailed the vessel to Oakland for dry-docking, then sailed it to Half Moon Bay, where she remained anchored off Pillar Point. On December 31, 1986, Mr. Hosking donated LV605 to the US Lighthouse Society.

The following February, Society volunteers sailed the ship from Half Moon Bay back to Oakland. It took a decade and a half, but she was restored to her 1951 appearance, thus preserving a vanishing page of lighthouse history. In 1990, the Secretary of the Interior designated LV605 Lightship Relief as a National Historic Landmark, and today, visitors can continue to enjoy her beauty, learn of her valor and savor the magic of seafaring.