May 24, 2016 – Along the Chicago River and out on Lake Michigan, the city’s boating season officially started on Monday with the “blessing of the fleet.”

The annual tradition is organized by International Shipmasters Association Lodge #3. This year’s blessing also kicked off Safe Boating Week and a campaign by United States Coast Guard to coax more boaters into wearing life jackets.

The message of this year’s Safe Boating Week is, “Wear it!”

Last year, 428 people in the U.S. drowned and of those, according to the Coast Guard, only 63 were wearing a life jacket.

“Each year, hundreds of people lose their lives and they may still be alive if they had been wearing a life jacket,” says John Johnson, CEO of National Association of State Boating Law Administrators. “You never know when there may be a boating mishap, so it’s important that everyone onboard always wears a life jacket.”

(Above) Navy Band Great Lakes performs on the Cap Streeter, a vessel in the Shoreline Sightseeing fleet. Photo by S.P. Senjanin. (Below) Wide view of National Maritime Ceremony at Navy Pier. Photo obtained from Beau D’Arcy.

A wreath was laid in the inner basin south of Navy Pier, as part of the ceremony, and a bugler from Navy Band Great Lakes played “Taps” to honor sailors and mariners who died in the line of duty.

By presidential proclamation, issued every year since 1933, May 22 is National Maritime Day, commemorating the first successful transoceanic voyage under steam propulsion, which happened in 1819.