The background for the events of the night of Jan. 12, 1850, on the Jersey coast at a place then called Squan is still being debated. But one thing is clear: The vision that Dr. William Newell had while watching men die in the surf off Long Beach Island, and of the system to rescue shipwreck victims, worked.

The East Coast ports of the United States during the 1840s became the destination for hundreds of ships loaded with immigrants from Europe; political unrest in Germany and the potato famine…