The Project Gutenberg eBook of Shipwrecks on Cape Cod
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Title: Shipwrecks on Cape Cod
Author: Isaac M. Small
Release date: February 14, 2024 [eBook #72960]
Language: English
Original publication: Chatham, Mass: The Chatham Press Inc, 1928
Credits: Steve Mattern and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHIPWRECKS ON CAPE COD ***
[Illustration: (cover)]
[Illustration: ISAAC M. SMALL
WHO RESPECTFULLY DEDICATES THIS LITTLE VOLUME
OF “SHIPWRECKS”
TO CAPE COD’S SUMMER VISITORS
]
SHIPWRECKS ON CAPE COD
THE STORY OF A FEW OF THE
MANY HUNDRED SHIPWRECKS WHICH HAVE
OCCURRED ON CAPE COD
BY ISAAC M. SMALL
FOR SIXTY YEARS MARINE REPORTING AGENT
FOR BOSTON CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
HIGHLANDS OF NORTH TRURO, MASSACHUSETTS
HIGHLAND LIGHT
MAY 1st, 1928
Reprinted 1967 By
THE CHATHAM PRESS INC.
CHATHAM, MASS.
[Illustration: (logo)]
CONTENTS
PAGE
Author’s Preface 5
Loss of the Josephus 8
The Clara Bell 11
The Loss of the Ship Peruvian 14
The Bark Francis 18
Loss of the Giovanni 21
The Jason 24
Loss of the Steamship Portland 27
The Gift of the Sea 31
A Few of the Many Deep Sea Mysteries 34
The Monte Taber 35
Loss of the Oakland 37
Loss of the Castagnia 39
Thomas W. Lawson--the Largest Schooner 41
Loss of the Ship Asia 42
Barges Wadena and Fitzpatrick 43
Story of the Sloop Trumbull 46
Wreck of the Somerset--British Man of War 48
The Mystery of the Mary Celeste 50
The Self-Steered Craft 52
Tragedy of the Herbert Fuller 53
The Job Jackson Wreck 56
Loss of the Number 238 57
The Palmer Fleet 59
A Gale, and What it Did 61
Loss of the Montclair on Orleans Beach 63
Loss of the Reinhart at Race Point 65
Was it Murder? 67
Stranding of the Barges 69
The John Tracy Mystery 72
Wreck of the Roger Dicky 73
The Gettysburg Tow 75
Loss of the Elsia G. Silva 77
A Terrible Disaster 78
Terrible Submarine Disaster 80
Stranding of the Robert E. Lee 85
PREFACE
I hardly know whether to call this a preface or part of the story, it
seems rather too long for the former and too short for a chapter of the
latter, but I may as well follow the general rule and call it a preface.
Friends have often said to me, “Why don’t you write some stories
concerning shipwrecks which have occurred on Cape Cod?”
Perhaps one of the strongest reasons why I have not done so is
because, to describe all of the sad disasters which have come under my
observation during my more than half a century of service as Marine
Reporting Agent, at Highland Light, Cape Cod, would make a book too
bulky to be interesting, and a second reason has been the difficulty of
selecting such instances as would be of the greatest interest to the
general reader.
But out of the hundreds of shipwrecks which have become a part of the
folk lore and history of this storm beaten coast I have finally decided
to tell something of the circumstances connected with the loss of life
and property in a few of the more prominent cases.
The descriptions herein written are only just “unvarnished tales,”
couched in such language that even the children may understand, and in
order that there may be a clear understanding of how I came to be in
close touch with the events of which I write, it is perhaps necessary
to state briefly a few facts concerning my life work here.
So far back as 1853, the merchants of Boston, desiring to obtain rapid
and frequent reports concerning the movements of their ships along the
coast of Cape Cod, were instrumental in causing the construction of a
telegraph line from Boston to the end of Cape Cod, and a station was
established on the bluffs of the Cape at Highland Light, this station
was equipped with signal flags, books and a powerful telescope, and
an operator placed in charge, whose duty it was to watch the sea from
daybreak until sunset, and so far as possible obtain the names of or
a description of every passing ship. This information was immediately
transmitted over the wires to the rooms of the Chamber of Commerce,
where it was at once spread upon their books for the information of
their subscribers.
When the boys in blue were marching away to southern battlefields at
the beginning of the Civil War, in 1861, I began the work of “Marine
Reporting Agent,” and now on the threshold of 1928, I am still watching
the ships.
A fair sized volume might be written concerning the changes which have
taken place in fifty years, as to class of vessels and methods of
transportation, but that is not what I started to write about.
My duties begin as soon as it is light enough to distinguish the rig
of a vessel two miles distant from the land, and my day’s work is
finished when the sun sinks below the western horizon. Every half hour
through every day of the year we stand ready to answer the call at the
Boston office, and report to them by telegraph every item of marine
intelligence which has come under our observation during the previous
half hour. With our telescope we can, in clear weather, make out the
names of vessels when four miles away. When a shipwreck occurs, either
at night or during the day, we are expected to forward promptly to the
city office every detail of the disaster. If the few stories herein
told serve to interest our friends who tarry with us for a while in the
summer, then the object of the writer will have been attained.
[Illustration: HIGHLAND LIGHT, NORTH TRURO
This is known as Cape Cod Light, more often spoken of as Highland
Light. It stands on a bluff 140 feet above sea level. The brick tower
is 65 feet high. It was built by the United States Government in 1777
and rebuilt in 1851. It is a revolving flash light and its rays can be
seen 45 miles at sea.]
LOSS OF THE JOSEPHUS
The first shipwreck of which I have any personal recollection was that
of the British ship “Josephus,” which occurred about the first of
April, 1849. The terrible circumstances attending the destruction of
this ship were so vividly impressed upon my childish mind, (I was four
years of age at the time) that they are as plain in memory as though
they had occurred but yesterday.
This vessel stranded during a dense fog, on the outer bar, directly
opposite the location of the present Highland Life Saving Station,
about one mile north of the Highland Lighthouse. She was a full rigged
ship from some port in England, bound to Boston, and carried a cargo
of iron bars. Losing her bearings during a protracted fog and severe
easterly gale her keel found the sand bar half a mile from shore,
immediately the huge waves swept her decks, and the ship was doomed to
destruction.
In those days no life savers patrolled the beach to lend a rescuing
hand and the first intimation of the disaster was when, during a
temporary rift in the fog the light keeper, from the cliffs, discovered
the stranded ship. The alarm quickly spread to all the neighboring farm
houses and to the village, from all directions men came hurrying to
the beach, hoping in some way to be able to aid the suffering sailors
on the wreck, which by this time was fast being smashed to pieces by
the thunderous waves which pounded upon her partly submerged hull. Her
masts had already been torn from her decks and with tangled rigging
and strips of sail thrashed her sides in a constant fury. Many of her
crew had been crushed to death and their bodies swept into the boiling
surf. When the spars went down others could be seen clinging to such
portions of the wreck as yet remained above the angry waters, and their
screams for help could be heard above the wild roar of the awful surf,
by the watchers on the shore, utterly powerless to render the least
assistance. At this moment down the cliffs came running two young men,
just home from a fishing voyage. They had not even stopped to visit
their homes and families, but hearing of the wreck had hurried to the
beach. Lying on the sands of the shore was a fisherman’s dory, a small
boat, about twelve feet in length, such as small fishing vessels use
and carry on their decks.
These men were Daniel Cassidy and Jonathan Collins. Immediately they
seized this boat and ran it quickly over the sands to the edge of the
surf. The watchers on the beach stood aghast, and when they realized
that these men intended to launch this frail skiff into that raging
sea strong cries of protest arose from every one. “Why, men,” they
said, “you are crazy to do this, you cannot possibly reach that ship,
and your lives will pay the forfeit of your foolhardy attempt.” But in
the face of the earnest pleadings of their friends and neighbors they
pushed their boat into the gale-driven surf and headed her towards
the wreck. Their last words were, “We cannot stand it longer to see
those poor fellows being swept into the sea, and we are going to try
to reach them.” Standing with my mother and holding by her hand on the
cliffs overlooking the scene I saw the little boat, with the two men
pulling bravely at the oars. They had hardly gone fifty yards from
the shore when a great white cataract of foam and rushing water was
hurled towards them. The next instant it buried men and boat under
its sweeping torrent as it swept onward towards the beach with the
overturned dory riding its crest; two human heads rose for a moment
through the seething sea, only to be covered by the next on-rushing
wave, and they were seen no more. Darkness soon settled over the
terrible scene, the cries of the despairing sailors grew fainter and
ceased, while the mad waves rushed unceasingly towards the shore. The
watchers, believing that every sailor had perished, turned away and
sought their homes with sad hearts. The light keeper, Mr. Hamilton,
coming down from the lighthouse tower at midnight, where he had been
to attend to the lamps, decided to visit the beach again, thinking
possibly that some of the bodies of the lost sailors might drift to
shore. What was his surprise to find upon a piece of the cabin of the
ship, which had washed ashore, a helpless sailor moaning piteously,
still alive but suffering terribly from the hardships he had endured;
he had been scratched and torn by the broken timbers through which he
had been washed and driven.
After great exertion and a long struggle the lightkeeper succeeded in
getting the unfortunate sailor up the cliff and to the lighthouse,
where the man was put to bed and a physician sent for. He finally
recovered, but he was the only man of that ship’s company of 24 souls
who escaped with life, these and the two men who attempted a rescue
made a total death list in this disaster of 25.
It is a far cry from 1849 to 1872, and the broken timbers of many a
lost ship, and the whitened bones of hundreds of dead sailors lie
buried in the drifting sands of this storm beaten coast, between
those dates, but as we cannot here present the details of more than a
very few of them, we only select those having especial and somewhat
different features and so pathetic as to stand out more prominently
than those of a lesser degree of horror, though it would be hard to
describe a shipwreck on this coast devoid of suffering, death and
destruction.
THE CLARA BELL
On the afternoon of March 6th, 1872, a moderate wind was blowing from
the land across the sea, the sun shone full and clear, a great fleet
of sailing vessels, urged forward by the favoring breeze, made rapid
progress over the smooth sea towards their destination. In the late
afternoon, as the sun approached the western horizon, it settled behind
a dark and ominous cloud that was rising towards the zenith and casting
a dark shadow over all the sea.
[Illustration: WRECK OF THE CLARA BELL]
The two masted schooner Clara Bell, Captain Amesbury, with a cargo of
coal for Boston, had that morning sailed out of the harbor of Vineyard
Haven and passed across the shoals of Vineyard Sound, moved rapidly up
the coast, and by ten o’clock that night was nearly opposite Highland
Light. The wind, which had been only fairly strong up to this time,
rapidly increased in velocity, and snow began falling thick and fast.
The wind rapidly increased to a gale, when the vessel had reached a
point two miles north of Highland Light the wind suddenly changed to
north and in a short time became a howling gale; the fast falling
snow hid all the lights and the surrounding sea from view, and the
temperature dropped to zero. In trying to make an off shore tack the
vessel was struck by a huge wave, forced shoreward and with an awful
plunge the schooner struck a bar a fourth of a mile from shore. It
was now nearly midnight; the sea, though running fierce and wild,
had not at this time reached monstrous size, and Captain Amesbury,
thinking that his only hope for life depended upon getting away from
the schooner, decided to make an attempt to launch the ship’s boat.
After great exertion upon the part of himself and crew they succeeded
in getting the boat over the vessel’s side, and the crew of six men and
himself jumped in and cast off the line that held them to the vessel,
but not two strokes of the oars had been taken when the cockleshell,
borne like a chip on the top of an onrushing wave, was thrown bottom
up and her crew were struggling in the icy waters. Captain Amesbury
and one of his men were carried on a towering wave rapidly towards the
shore, but before they could gain a foothold the remorseless undertow
had drawn them back into the swirling waters. With the next oncoming
wave the sailor was thrown shoreward again and succeeded in grasping a
piece of wreckage and by its aid managed to crawl away from the jaws of
death; not so fortunate the captain, who with the other members of his
crew were swept away in the freezing sea and seen no more. The sailor,
finding himself safe beyond the reach of the mad sea on the sand-swept
and desolate shore, started to find shelter. In his struggles to reach
the shore one of his boots had been torn off and lost, he was coatless,
without covering on his head, thoroughly drenched, his clothes freezing
to his benumbed body and limbs. In the blinding snow storm which had
now set in in dead earnest with a cold so intense that it nearly took
his breath away, this poor fellow started out to find if possible some
human habitation; he could make no progress against the freezing gale
so was obliged to turn towards the south and follow the direction of
the wind. Over frozen fields, through brush and brambles that tore
his bare foot at every step, over the ever increasing snow drifts,
through bogs and meadows and hills and hollows, he struggled until the
coming of daylight; then a farmer going out to his stable in the early
morning found this unfortunate, frozen and exhausted sailor standing
in the highway a short distance from the Highland House, so dazed by
his terrible night of torture that he could not speak or move. He
was carried into the farm house and the writer was one of those who
helped to revive him. We were finally made to understand that he
had come from a shipwreck on the coast and that all of his shipmates
were drowned. Leaving him to the care of the women of the household I
hurried with others to the beach, believing it possible that even yet
there might be some other unfortunate still alive on the wreck.
After a somewhat exhausting trip over the drifted snow and the frozen
beach, we reached the stranded vessel, which had in the meantime been
driven by the huge seas completely over the sand bar upon which she
struck and the constant pounding of the waves had driven her high and
dry upon the main beach. We walked on board dry footed and passed down
the cabin stairs. There in the cabin stove burned a nice cheerful fire
and all was dry and warm. The haste of Captain Amesbury and his crew to
leave the strong vessel for a little frail skiff had cost them their
lives, and this has been so often the case, it would seem that sailors
so often exposed to the dangers of the sea would realize when brought
suddenly into positions of extreme danger by the stranding of their
ship, that their only chance for life lay in staying by their vessel,
rather than taking the chances afforded by a small boat in the wild
sea; if their large and strong vessel cannot stand the shock certainly
the little boat cannot. Many men have gone down to their death in the
sea because of too great a faith in the ship’s boat.
The sailor who escaped with his life from this wreck finally recovered
after the amputation of three toes and a finger.
People have sometimes said, “Are there no romances connected
with shipwrecks?” Fiction writers have often distorted the facts
sufficiently to be able to weave about the incidents of a shipwreck
some romantic story, but most of the disasters which overtake those who
go down to the sea in ships to do work on the great waters, partake
so much of the elements of tragedy that there is little room for the
entrance of romance into the situation. In almost every instance
where ships are overwhelmed by the storms and the seas the cold hard
facts are so distressing that every other feature, except the one of
suffering, is lost sight of and only the thought of drowning men takes
possession of the senses. The following story, though bearing the color
of romance, had a sad and heartbreaking ending.
THE LOSS OF THE SHIP PERUVIAN
Over the North Atlantic ocean and the coast of Cape Cod on the night of
the 26th of December, 1873, swept a gale and storm so fierce and wild
that even dwellers of the coast were surprised.
With almost hurricane force the wind-driven sea rushed in mountainous
waves towards the outlying sand bar and hurled themselves with a
terrific roar on the sands of the beach.
Many weeks before from the smooth waters of the harbor of Calcutta the
American ship Peruvian had passed out into the deep sea and with a blue
sky and favoring breeze had spread her white sails and headed for home
on her long voyage.
Beneath her decks was stored a valuable cargo of sugar and block tin
and Boston was her destination.
The ship was in command of Captain Charles H. Vannah. And she carried a
crew of 24 men. With such a bright departure they were anticipating a
quick and safe voyage. All had gone well with ship and crew until this
fateful December morning. All day long the snow had fallen thick and
fast, driven over the deck of the ship and through her rigging by the
ever increasing gale. Riotous waves lifted the big ship to their crests
only to plunge her the next moment into the depths of the deep hollows
as they tore madly away in the approaching darkness.
Captain Vannah had been unable for 24 hours to obtain an observation,
but he knew that his ship was approaching the coast of Cape Cod. Hoping
every moment that some slight abatement in the storm might give him a
chance to pick up some outlying beacon or the glimmer of some friendly
lighthouse he kept the ship’s head to the north with all the sail upon
the spars that they could stand without breaking. Higher and stronger
ran the seas, wilder and more terrific blew the gale, often across
the ship’s decks swept the huge waves, while all about them the dark
skies lowered and the angry waters swirled when suddenly, just before
midnight with a terrible plunge and an awful crash the ship struck
the sand bars of the dreaded Peaked Hill Shoals, nearly a mile from
shore; then utter confusion reigned on the ship. Up to that time only
occasional seas had swept her decks; now the huge waves in torrents
constantly swept her and pounded unceasingly her breaking decks.
Boats, deck fittings and everything movable was swept away in the
darkness and the turbulent sea; her crew driven to the rigging found
there only a temporary place of escape; soon came a mountain-like wave,
overtopping all those which had preceded it and thundered over the
doomed ship, tearing away all of her masts and portions of her deck,
hurling the entire ship’s crew into this mass of thrashing wreckage and
churning sea, and their last sad cries were hushed in the mad seas that
covered them.
With the first glimmer of approaching daylight men hurried to the outer
beach, believing that some terrible disaster had occurred. They found
the shore for miles covered with portions of the cargo and many broken
timbers of the lost ship, but owing to the distance from shore to where
the ship went down only three bodies were ever recovered and those only
after many days of washing about in the surf.
Out there across yonder bar, where you see the waters curl and break
into a ripple, forming a white line against the blue of the sea beyond,
lies the sunken and sea-washed hull of the once stately ship; in that
sparless hull and the rotting and sand covered timbers you cannot
recognize the majestic vessel that only a few short years ago sat out
there in all her splendor and with her strong sides seemed to defy the
elements.
That blue water, so quiet now, and breaking with such gentle ripples on
the shore, does not give you the impression, that in a few hours with
a change of wind, it could be lashed into fury, and with towering foam
capped waves dash upon the beach with the roar of a Niagara.
The storm is o’er and all along the sandy reach,
The shining wavelets ripple on the lonely beach,
Beneath the storm-washed sands and waves of blue,
There rests unclaimed, the members of the lost ship’s crew.
Captain Vannah had been a seafaring man all his life. In a pretty
little town, nestling among the granite hills of New Hampshire, he had
known and loved a dear young girl; for several years they had planned
that when his sea voyages were ended he would come to claim his bride
and would sail the seas no more. He had secured a fair competency and
had promised her that this would be his last voyage. He wrote to her
when his ship sailed out of that far eastern port, advising her of the
probable date of his arrival at Boston. She had made all arrangements
to go down to the city and meet him when his ship should be reported as
approaching the harbor.
She daily scanned the ship news columns of the papers, and on this
December morning she knew his ship must be nearing port, but in her
sheltered home she did not realize what a terrible storm was sweeping
the coast.
Only those who have been suddenly overwhelmed with a paralyzing blow
can appreciate what, with ruined hopes, this young girl felt, when she
opened the daily paper only to read in great black, cruel headlines
these words, “Ship Peruvian goes down off Cape Cod, and all hands are
lost.”
[Illustration: HIGHLAND LIGHT, CLIFFS AND BEACH, NORTH TRURO]
BARK FRANCIS
The same storm that carried the Peruvian and her whole ship’s company
to destruction drove the North German Bark Francis to the same fate
only three miles farther down the coast, but though sad enough in some
of its features this disaster was not attended with the appalling loss
of life that accompanied the loss of the Peruvian.
These two vessels sailed from the same port in Calcutta only a few
days apart, and had almost been in sight of each other during the long
voyage.
The Peruvian was so unfortunate as to become involved in the shallows
of Peaked Hill Bars, while the Francis, in the deeper waters to the
south was driven by wind and sea over the outer line of bars and
finally grounded within two hundred yards of the beach; her hull was of
iron and she soon settled firmly into the sand.
Every avenue of approach to the beach was blocked with snow, huge
drifts covering every highway and hollow. There were no mortar guns and
no life saving crews then, and no boats of any kind on the outer beach
available. At the shore on the bay side of the cape was a whale boat,
a boat sharp at both ends and about eighteen feet in length; this boat
might afford possibly safe means of reaching the imperilled crew on the
ship, but to get it to the scene of the wreck was a problem. Finally,
through the united exertions of twenty strong men, the boat was drawn
to the edge of the pond in the village of North Truro, then dragged
over the frozen surface of the pond to the highway near the Post
Office, where a pair of horses was attached to wheels, the boat mounted
on them and the journey to the outer beach and possible rescue was
fairly begun; when snow drifts were not too deep horses and men hurried
the boat along; when great drifts were encountered shovels were brought
into use and a way broken for the horses; then on again, ever in the
face of the storm swept moors towards the ocean, across the gale swept
hills and snow covered valleys the party struggled, until finally, at
ten o’clock in the forenoon, almost exhausted, they reached a point on
the beach opposite the wreck.
A volunteer crew manned the boat, willing hands helped to push the boat
through the foam covered surf, the men bent to the oars and the trip to
the side of the bark was made in safety.
Captain Kortling, of the bark, had been ill in his cabin for many
days and it was with no little difficulty that he was finally lowered
helpless into the rocking and pitching boat, which the thrashing sea
threatened every moment to dash to pieces against the iron sides of the
ship. Brought to the beach and landed, Captain Kortling was taken in a
farm wagon and hurried to the Highland House. Weakened by disease and
worn out by the terrible exposure of the wreck and the storm, he lived
but four days after reaching shore, and his remains lie buried in the
Old Cemetery on the hill, near the west entrance. The other members of
the crew, twenty in number, were rescued without mishap.
In a few days tugs and lighters were brought to the scene of the wreck
and the work of attempting to save the cargo was begun. A large part
of her cargo was sugar in great straw mats; these in the process of
hoisting out of the hold of the vessel frequently became broken and
the sugar sifted out upon the deck; some twenty-five men were required
to assist in this work of hoisting out the cargo and placing it upon
the lighters. As it was not practicable for these men to go ashore at
noontime they were obliged to take their dinners with them to the ship;
generally a small pail or basket sufficed for carrying the noon meal.
When these men left their work at night the overseer in charge of the
work of unloading would tell the workmen that they might fill their
lunch baskets with the loose sugar which had sifted out of the broken
mats and take it home. In the beginning their pails as a rule held two
or three quarts, but when it became known that the dinner pails could
be filled each night on leaving the ship the size of these lunch pails
and baskets increased amazingly, from a receptacle with a three quart
capacity they soon rose to twenty-five and even fifty pounds capacity,
so that the boat in her last trip to the shore was in danger of being
swamped with the great weight of lunch baskets. This abuse of a
privilege resulted in the cutting off the supply, although many workmen
had already secured a year’s supply of sugar for their families when
the shut off edict was issued.
This vessel seemed to offer the wreckers a good proposition as an
investment and a company was formed with the purpose of making an
attempt to raise and float the vessel. They purchased her of the
Insurance Companies into whose hands the ship had fallen; then they
spent hundreds of dollars in trying to get her from the sand bar;
finally after many weeks of preparation everything seemed ready, a
powerful tug was engaged to stand by and be ready to pull the ship away
as soon as she floated, big steam pumps were installed on board and
all was expectancy; then after a full day’s steady pumping by the great
pumps on her deck, suddenly the big ship stirred in her bed and rose to
the surface with a bound; then a great shout went up from the assembled
crowd on the beach and from the interested investors on the bark’s deck
when they believed their venture was about to be crowned with success,
but this quickly turned to dismay when the ship, as suddenly as she had
come to the surface, sank back again beneath the sea, from which place
she never moved again, and the shifting sands soon covered her.
The rocking of the ship by the waves and the storms that beat over her
on the sand and coarse gravel of the bed of the sea had worn holes
through her iron sides where her masts were stepped into her keel, and
immediately the ship rose from the bottom a great torrent of water
poured in through these openings, flooded the entire ship again and
carried her back into the sandy bed where she had so long reposed. For
many years in the ever changing sands the jagged sides of her ever
diminishing hull would be exposed only to be buried by the next great
storm that swept her.
LOSS OF THE GIOVANNI
A northeast gale and furious snow storm was sweeping the coast of Cape
Cod and hiding the great sea in its smother all through the day of
March 4th, 1875. Late in the afternoon, during a momentary breaking
away of the storm filled clouds, a great vessel was discovered fast
upon the outer sand bar nearly three miles north of Highland Life
Saving Station. It proved to be the Italian bark Giovanni, Captain
Ferri, from Palermo for Boston, with a cargo of sumac, nuts and
brimstone; her sails were blown away, her rudder broken. She was in
a position to be pounded to pieces before another sunrise; her crew
was almost helpless from exposure to the cold storm. The crews of
Life Saving Stations 6 and 7 were promptly at the scene of the wreck,
but owing to the snow bound conditions of the roads and the almost
impassable state of the beach, added to the great distance from the
Life Saving Stations, it was a task almost beyond the power of human
endurance to get their boats and beach apparatus to the shore opposite
the scene of the disaster, but as soon as the position of the vessel
was clearly determined, and it was recognized what kind of gear was
necessary in order to aid the men in the ship, they hurried to their
stations, and after hours of almost superhuman exertions, dragging
their beach carts, mortar guns and apparatus through heavy snow drifts
that had to be broken out before they could proceed. Over sand hills
swept bare by the driving gale, through meadow bogs and brush covered
ridges, they finally reached the beach in the vicinity of the wreck.
No attempt was made to launch the life boat, as such an effort, in the
face of all the terrible conditions that prevailed, the awful sea and
the distance of the vessel from shore, would have been foolhardy in the
extreme, and would only have added to the death roll the lives of the
life-savers, without accomplishing the saving of a single life.
The mortar gun, however, was made ready with all possible dispatch,
though it was recognized from the first that no gun could carry a line
that distance in the face of such a terrific gale. But the gun was
charged, the charge exploded and out over the foam covered sea the shot
line sped, only to fall spent in the wild sea more than a hundred yards
short of the ship. The uselessness of further attempts along these
lines was apparent, but the life savers again made ready with another
line, hoping that the pounding sea would with the rising tide force
the bark over the sand bar and nearer the shore. But it now became
evident that the ship was so firmly impaled upon the treacherous shoal
that there was no hope of her being moved by sea or tide, and in fact
it was but a short time later that there came to the shore evidence
that the vessel was beginning to break up, as portions of her upper
works and even some portion of her cargo could be seen between shore
and wreck and was being driven shoreward by the savage seas that broke
in fury over the sand bars. Just then two men were seen to leap from
the deck house on the after part of the ship, into the roaring torrent
that raged about them; for a moment they were lost to sight in the suds
of the churned up sea, then as they appeared upon the surface they
were seen to seize upon pieces of wreckage that floated near them; to
these they clung desperately, at one moment buried from sight in the
salt spume, the next moment rising to the top of a foam crested wave
rushing onward and almost wrenching the plank to which they clung from
their grasp; when more than two-thirds of the distance from wreck to
shore had been covered the wreckage which had borne one of the sailors
appeared upon the top of an oncoming wave, but there was no human form
clinging to it; nature had made its last long struggle and the poor
fellow had released his grasp and dropped helpless into the wild sea
that covered him forever.
The other man still retained his hold upon the frail support that
bore him shoreward; now it was a question of only minutes, would his
strength stay by him, could he hold on a moment longer, should his
rapidly waning strength desert him now and his grasp relax he would
be swallowed up in the sea instantly and no power could save him. Men
rushed to the edge of the tide, even into the surf, grasping hands as a
living rope; on came man and wreckage, as the broken water smashed down
upon the sands strong hands reached out and seized the sailor before
the relentless undertow could draw him back into its cruel grip. He was
saved, but he was the only one of the whole ship’s company of fifteen
men.
Night shut in but we kindled a huge bonfire on the beach and patrolled
the shore up and down all night, hoping that some other unfortunate
might be brought in with the tide. Long before daybreak the shore for
miles was strewn with flotsam and jetsam from the wreck which was
being constantly rended by the sea; bags of sumac, bags of nuts and
even casks of wine mingled and washed together in the surf, but not
a human body, alive or dead, was cast up by the sea. Every watcher
on the beach believed that the ship had been entirely broken up, and
that every person on board had perished. Still we lingered awaiting
the coming of the sunlight; when it did come and objects were visible
for any distance, what was our surprise to see the after deck house of
the bark still in place, and a portion of her bow and the stump of her
broken foremast still standing; the huge waves were still smashing over
her furiously. If we had been surprised at seeing any portion of the
hull still standing above the water, we were dumbfounded when we saw
a man jump from the bow near the broken foremast and swim through the
fiercely raging waters to the after deck house, and in the face of the
pounding sea that beat upon him, climb under a sheltering piece of the
cabin that had not been torn away.
That a human being could live through such a night as that, in that icy
water and retain his hold upon any part of those ice covered timbers
and sea swept wreck seemed incredible. But the chapter of horrors was
not yet complete in this wretched disaster. Piece by piece the sea
tore away what remained of the wreck until nothing but the deck house
roof remained above the sea; as wave after wave hurled itself against
the battered top it was seen to lift from its fastenings that held
it to the submerged wreck and the next wave bore it off far into the
thrashing sea. Then we saw, clinging to the few remaining pieces of the
frame of the deck house, with a death grasp, four members of the ship’s
company, but endurance had reached its limits and they were quickly
swept from the last possible thing to which they could cling, and
though they made a last heroic effort to seize some piece of wreckage,
two of them did succeed in grasping some floating object and were
carried for a considerable distance towards the shore, but their long
and terrible exposure had so exhausted and chilled them that they could
make no further exertion and the mad sea claimed them.
Some adverse criticism was directed against the men of the Life Saving
corps, for their failure to rescue these sailors, but it was wholly
unmerited as the Life Savers did everything in their power or that it
was possible to do under the circumstances.
It was one of those terrible marine disasters, of which there are many,
where man is a plaything in the grip of the sea when the storm king is
abroad in his might.
THE JASON
Late in the afternoon of December 5th, 1893, the patrol of the coast
guard of Life Savers of Nauset Beach, a few miles south of Highland
Light, during a momentary break in the furious storm driven snow, saw
the outlines of a great ship, not more than two miles from the beach,
heading towards the Port of Boston under close reefed lower topsails,
struggling with the grasp of giant waves which threatened every moment
to overwhelm her. Soon again the increasing gale hid all the turbulent
waters of the great sea. The winter night came on with rapid pace. All
along the shore each Life Saving crew had been warned by telephone to
watch with increased vigilance for a disaster which their experience
had taught them was inevitable. Not a coast guardsman slept that night.
All the boats and beach apparatus were made ready for instant use; the
patrol watches were doubled; the men at their stations stood ready
dressed, anxious, dreading but ever watchful and ready for the call
which they expected to come at any moment.
At 7.15 a surfman of the Pamet River station rushed breathlessly and
excitedly into the station and shouted, “She is ashore, half a mile
north of this station.” All the stations were immediately notified.
Then out into the storm and darkness and the blinding snow, along the
gale swept beach where the flying sand cut their faces like knives,
toiling through the yielding sand with their mortar guns and boats,
hoping to reach the scene of the disaster ere it was too late, the
Life Savers hurried. Chips and logs along the shore were gathered
together and a huge bonfire kindled that those on the ship might know
that every human effort was being exerted to aid them. By the glare of
the light on the shore away over there in the awful night the faint
outlines of the doomed ship could be seen, her great white sails being
torn to shreds by the savage fury of the winter storm. Great torrents
of gale driven sea swept her decks every moment. Her broken masts fell
with a crash to her decks. Soon her iron hull was twisted and wrenched
asunder; through her rended decks and battered sides floated portions
of her cargo to the shore. The cries of her drowning sailors could be
heard above the fury of the storm. The mortar gun of the Life Savers
thundered again and again. The shots sped true to their mark and the
life lines fell across the ship’s hull, but her men could not reach
them, so madly rushed the waters between. Soon a surfman saw a dark
object thrown up by the sea; it was a human being. He was quickly taken
up by willing hands and hurried to the station, restoratives were
applied and soon he was able to tell the story of the wreck:
“Our vessel was the British ship Jason, Capt. McMillan. We were on a
voyage from the East Indies to Boston with jute bales. We did not know
our position until we saw the land at four this afternoon. We tried,
by crowding every sail upon the ship, to weather Cape Cod; we failed.
There were 27 officers and men in our ship’s company. I am the only one
that lives; I saw all my shipmates perish when the mizzenmast fell.”
[Illustration: WRECK OF THE JASON]
Like many another shipwreck the irony of fate pursued this ship’s
company, when her keel was driven into the sand bar by the force of
the mighty waves which hurled her forward, the only spot upon the
whole ship which seemed to offer a place of refuge from the boiling
surf which tore across her deck was the mizzenmast. Into the rigging
of this spar every man hurried except the one man who was saved. He
was swept from the rail before he could gain a foothold with his
shipmates; but what they had hoped would be their haven of safety was
their doom. Scarcely had they climbed above the maelstrom of rushing
waters when the mast went down with a crash into the sea, killing many
of the sailors in its fall and drowning the others in the wreckage. The
foremast stood unmoved by the winter’s storms for many weeks. Could
this unfortunate crew have reached this portion of the ship many of
them would have been rescued on the following day.
Out there today when the tide is low, protruding through the sands of
the bar and the white caps that wash them, are the broken fragments of
the sunken ship looking like tombstones in the village churchyard. All
along the shores of this wind swept and sea washed coast those half
submerged and silent sentinels remind us that up and down this sandy
reach the ever moving sea has covered hundreds of those heroic men who
have gone down in ships on the great sea.
LOSS OF THE STEAMSHIP PORTLAND
Among all the terrible disasters which have made the dreaded shores of
Cape Cod known to mariners the world over, probably the worst of all
was the loss of the steamer Portland, which sailed from her pier in
Boston, on the evening of November 26th, 1898, on one of her regular
trips to Portland, Maine, and before midnight of the following day
her broken timbers, cabin fittings, large quantities of cargo and
dead bodies lined the outer shores of Cape Cod, from Highland Light
to Chatham. Not a person of her 175 passengers and crew survived the
disaster.
The awful hurricane which swept the coast of New England that fateful
Saturday night and Sunday was the worst in the memory of living men;
the wind attained a velocity of approximately one hundred miles an hour.
When the Portland steamed out of Boston Harbor on that eventful
Saturday night her captain did not anticipate that the storm would be
more severe than the ordinary winter gale. She ran quickly down the
smooth waters of the harbor, out by Boston Light, the gale increasing
every moment. She passed Thatcher’s Island and on towards Cape Ann; she
could have made Gloucester Harbor, but her master hoped the storm had
reached its worst; not so, for every moment it grew more furious; the
lights along the coast, one after another, were now blotted out by the
ever thickening snow, the great seas ran riot in the bay. Now it was
too late to turn back; the ship plunged into the wild seas that rose
like mountains before her. To have attempted to turn the ship about
with her high superstructure when she would have fallen off into the
trough of the sea would mean her speedy destruction. On she staggered
in the inky darkness of the wretched night until the fury of the gale
and sea checked her further progress; then their only hope lay in being
able to keep the ship’s head towards the wind. All through the long
night and far into the next day, Sunday, the ship reared and plunged
in the mad sea, slowly but surely every hour being carried nearer the
lee shore of Cape Cod, drifting helplessly but ever with her bow to
the sea. At 4 o’clock on the afternoon of Sunday the Life Savers at
Race Point Station heard two distinct blasts of a steamer’s whistle,
sharp and piercing; at 10 o’clock that night the patrolmen from
stations south of Race Point came upon great masses of broken beams,
deck-houses, furniture, boxes and barrels of freight and several dead
bodies.
It is believed by men on the coast familiar with storms and tides that
the whistle heard by the Race Point Life Savers at 4 o’clock was the
last despairing cry sent up by the doomed ship before the sea engulfed
her and those on board, and that between that hour and 7 o’clock that
night the ship’s total destruction was accomplished.
It is no doubt a fact that the ship was held to her course until
suddenly her steering gear was torn away by some huge sea more vicious
than those before, she immediately fell off into the trough of the sea,
and amid the crash of broken timbers and the thunder of the awful sea
the ship went down with all on board.
There has been much speculation and prolonged search by the government
and others to determine if possible approximately where this ship was
swallowed up in the sea; the location of this terrible disaster has
never been satisfactorily determined, but there is no question in the
minds of sea coast men but that this ship went down somewhere between 8
and 12 miles north of Highland Light.
Out of the entire company of passengers and crew which went down with
the ship only 60 bodies were recovered. Some of those found were fully
dressed with life preservers upon them, indicating that the wearers
knew that their chances for life were slight indeed. Other bodies were
entirely nude when recovered, showing that some of the passengers had
evidently retired to their staterooms in the earlier hours of the
voyage and were made so ill by the terrible pitching and rolling that
they made no exertion to dress themselves before the ship went down.
It is believed that no less than 500 human lives were the sea’s death
toll in this awful hurricane that swept the shores of Cape Cod and
Massachusetts Bay in that frightful storm.
This disaster will pass into the annals of Cape Cod’s shipwreck history
as the one which concerned the greatest loss of life from a single
vessel.
The fury of such a gale can hardly be understood or appreciated by any
one not having had personal experience with sea coast storms. As far as
the eye could reach on that Sunday morning over the wild sea not the
least bit of blue water could be seen for a distance of two miles from
the shore; the whole ocean was a mass of seething foam; this driven
shoreward by the gale would be caught from the beach by the wind and
blown skyward high over the towering bluffs, then swept inland and
break like bursting soap bubbles in the fields hundreds of yards away.
[Illustration:
x( Where wreckage first landed from S.S. Portland Sunday night.
P Place five miles N. E. of High Head Life Saving Station, where
it is thought by all coast men the Portland went down.
]
Such was the force of this hurricane of wind that every window pane on
the ocean side of our house (the Signal Station at Highland Light) was
blown in and smashed into a thousand fragments. Men exposed to the full
force of the storm were blown from their feet and hurled about like
blocks of wood.
Men of the Life Saving service were exhausted by their exertions in
trying to cover their beats, and several of them were completely
unnerved by their frequent trying experiences in dragging torn and
sea-washed bodies from the surf. There were cases where some of the men
of this service were made almost nervous wrecks by their almost nightly
contact with the disfigured and unfortunate victims thrown up to their
feet by the sea.
Destruction widespread on land and sea was the result of this fearful
storm.
Never had its like been seen before.
* * * * *
My daughter for a number of years was my assistant and the following
story, which originally appeared in the New York World, may be of
interest in this connection:
THE GIFT OF THE SEA
_A true tale of Cape Cod, written for the New York World by Lillian May
Small, only official woman marine observer in the United States._
Fishing schooner Polly, Capt. Peter Rider, weighed anchor one spring
morning in 1800 and sailed away from Provincetown. She was a staunch
craft of eighty tons, bound on a fishing voyage to Chaleurs Bay.
Besides the captain there were on board Jot Rider, the captain’s son;
Ben Smith, broad-shouldered and strong as an ox; the two Larkin boys,
ready to furl a gafftopsail in any weather; George Barnes, Tom Olsen,
the Swede; Nick Adams, Bob Atwood, the cook, and Ned, the “boy,” a
bright lad of ten years, Capt. Peter’s nephew.
This was Ned’s first trip, and he thought himself quite a man until the
Polly had rounded Race Point and began to roll about in the great green
swell of the turbulent ocean; then he wished himself back in Granny
Rider’s kitchen, where the open fireplace kept a fellow dry, where the
dishes didn’t roll off the table, where things smelled good and clean,
not like the nasty bilge water that washed about in the Polly’s run,
but where a boy could take off his boots when he went to bed, you know.
But he couldn’t go back, so, with a quiet cry now and then, all by
himself up in the bow of the Polly, where the men wouldn’t see him, he
managed to brace up and help the cook down in the fo’cas’tle, and pull
on the main sheet and reef an furl, anything except steer; discipline
aboard a “codder” was as strict as on a man-of-war and boys were not
allowed to handle the tiller. Favoring winds wafted the boat eastward
along the northern coast, past jutting, rocky headlands and surf-washed
spits, to an anchorage on the fishing banks. Three months the Polly
swung at her anchors, at times idly upon the smooth waters, at times
pitching wildly with a savage pull at the cable when the tempest beat
down upon the stormy waters of that desolate coast.
But now the low-set hull told the story of a successful catch. The last
basketful of salt had been “wet,” the fishing lines were snugly coiled
upon the reels. It was Sunday morning. Capt. Peter was no autocrat, and
it was his custom to have “all hands” down to breakfast in the cabin on
Sabbath mornings.
“Well, boys,” said Capt. Peter, when all were gathered around the rough
table, “we’ve got a putty good trip under hatches, so arter breakfuss
I guess we’ll get the hook aboard and head the Polly for home.”
If there was any one in that ship’s company who felt his heart give a
sudden bound of joyous anticipation it was Ned. Every day of all those
long weeks Ned had scored the mental calculation, “one day nearer home.”
From his thoughts of home he was startled by a human cry.
Again he heard it coming faintly across the smooth water.
Rushing to where his uncle sat, tiller in hand, for the Captain would
allow no one but himself to guide the Polly out of that “pesky hole,”
Ned sang out, “Did you hear that, uncle? Somebody is crying for help
out there toward that rock.”
“Oh, nonsense, boy,” replied Capt. Rider, as he gave the tiller a sharp
pull to bring the Polly up a point, “guess you was asleep and had a
dream.”
“No, uncle, listen; there it is again, ’tis a baby’s cry.”
“Bless my skin, boy, I b’lieve yer right; my hearin’ ain’t extra good,
but I do hear su’thin off thar to wind’ard. But what in the world could
a baby be doin’ out thar? I don’t see no vessel nor no boat. But we
won’t leave no mortal round in this hole to drown.”
“Here, George,” he shouted, “you and Nick get the boat over and see if
ye can find whar that distressed creeter is. And Ned, you kin go along
to help. I’ll put the Polly’s sheets to wind and jog around so you
won’t lose us.”
The tide-ruffled waters splashed and sparkled as the oars, in the hands
of the hardy fishermen, rose and fell in unison.
“There, I hear it again,” exclaimed Ned from his seat at the stern of
the boat; “it comes right from that rock.”
The oars sent the boat straight toward the huge rock, on whose sides
the tide lapped with a soft rhythmic “swish, swish,” gaining slowly,
surely. Only a few feet of its slippery top remained exposed, and the
water was creeping up inch by inch until soon only a swirl and a fleck
of foam would mark the place of the hidden reef.
There on the shelving side of the rock, with the tide lapping her tiny
feet, chilled from long exposure and crying bitterly, sat a little girl.
Rough but willing hands soon had the little waif safely in the boat.
When they reached the side of the Polly Uncle Peter stood ready to
receive the strange charge.
“Well, by hooky, boys,” he exclaimed as he received from Ned’s arms the
little dripping form. “How could she ’ve got on to that rock?”
“There’s only one way I can ’count for it,” said George Barnes. “Some
devil wanted to get rid of her, and left her thar to drown.”
“Well, I’d like to catch the chap that did it; either he or I’d go
overboard,” said Ben Smith.
Ned gazed wonderingly into the face of the little child, who now,
somewhat reassured, lay smiling in the bunk where the crew had placed
her after removing the water-soaked clothing.
“Well, boys,” said Capt. Peter after all that was possible had been
done for the little charge, “we don’t know whar this baby girl came
from, and we ain’t goin’ to try hard to find out; we ain’t very handy
or well fixed for girl babies aboard the Polly, but, by hooky, we’re a
nuff site more human than the critters that left that tot out dar on
the rock to be killed piecemeal.”
The summer winds blew gently on the Polly; homeward she sped. One
bright morning the anchor dropped and the codder was home again in the
smooth waters of Provincetown Harbor.
Little Ruth (so the crew of the Polly had named her) had fared well
on the voyage, and when the boat had been rowed ashore and the fisher
wives and maidens had come down to welcome home their loved ones, great
was their astonishment at what had come home with the Polly’s fishermen.
Granny Rider, with her motherly face against little Ruth’s cheek, as
she received the charge from Capt. Peter, almost forgot to kiss Ned, so
interested was she in the wondrous tale. Over and over the story was
told, and soon everybody knew of the baby girl that had come in the
Polly.
Ruth was the joy of Capt. Peter and Granny Rider’s home. Ned was never
so happy as when playing with the little sea waif in Granny’s kitchen.
No one ever learned her history; no one apparently ever cared to do so.
Those who go down to the sea in ships learn to leave many mysteries
unsolved.
Summer passed into winter, winter into spring, and again the Polly
sailed. Ned kissed his little playmate good-by and turned to the duties
of the voyage. Years passed, the boy became a man, Capt. Peter turned
the command of the Polly to Ned. Little Ruth had grown to womanhood.
They no longer played together as children, but looked forward more
eagerly to the homecoming as the years went by. One day in Granny’s
cozy home two happy hearts were joined, and on the sea of life their
little bark sailed out on the summer sea of years.
A FEW OF THE MANY DEEP SEA MYSTERIES
The great sea is ever full of unsolved mysteries, ships sail out into
the wide ocean and are seen and heard from no more. And the many human
lives on board are blotted out as completely as though they had never
been.
* * * * *
We have space for but few instances, and most of the following ships
when starting out on their last voyages passed out by Cape Cod.
* * * * *
The full rigged ship Brynhilda, with a full cargo and deck load of
lumber, sailed away on September 27, 1914. After many adventures in
Russian waters, neither ship nor crew were seen again.
* * * * *
Then the ship Avon pushed out on the deep blue sea and was never seen
or heard from again.
* * * * *
In 1914 the Balmaha faded away in the ocean’s mist.
* * * * *
In the following year the Pass of Balmaha, carrying a cargo of cotton
valued at a million dollars, joined the fleet of mystery ships.
* * * * *
In 1917 the great Navy Collier Cyclops, with a complement of 300
officers and men, disappeared in the mists and the darkness of the ever
restless sea and another strange mystery was added to the long and ever
increasing list of unsolved tragedies.
THE MONTE TABER
On September 14th, 1896, the Italian Bark Monte Taber struck on Peaked
Hill Bars during a furious northeast gale. The disaster was attended
by loss of five men, whose deaths were attended by circumstances of
mysterious and almost romantic interest. It was learned that there
had been three suicides on board the vessel, and the fate of the
other members of the crew could not be definitely determined; they
disappeared in the storm and in the breaking up of the doomed craft.
[Illustration: THE MONTE TABER--AFTER THE STORM HAS DONE ITS WORK]
The bark hailed from Genoa, and carried a crew of twelve men, including
the officers and two boys. She had a cargo of salt from Trapan, Island
of Sicily, for Boston.
The craft had been struck by a hurricane on September 9th, and when off
Cape Cod on the night of the 13th, in endeavoring to make Provincetown
Harbor, struck the dreaded Peaked Hill Bars. She was discovered by
patrolman Silvey, of the Peaked Hill Station. The night was dark as ink
and the sea was running high, and smashing over the bars with terrific
force, and the bark soon gave evidence of speedy destruction.
Owing to the darkness and the storm the coast guard crew could not
locate the wreck; there was nothing that could be seen to shoot at and
nothing to pull to, even if a boat could have been launched, which was
impossible. It is believed that the Captain was so humiliated by the
loss of his vessel, that he fell into a frenzy of despair and took his
own life, and some of the officers and crew followed his example.
Six of the crew managed to reach the shore on top of the cabin which
had broken away from the ship and were pulled from the surf by the Life
Savers. One of the boys said he swam ashore. An investigation conducted
by the Italian government, disclosed that the Captain did commit
suicide.
It has been said, whether true or not, that it is a tradition among
Italians that when a master of a vessel is so unfortunate as to lose
the craft he is in duty bound to do away with himself, as he could
never again expect to command a vessel.
LOSS OF THE OAKLAND
One of those sudden storms which so often develop and sweep down
along the Cape Cod Coast without warning in the fall of the year,
broke over the Cape on the night of the 12th of October, 1913. The
tug Paoli, towing three coal laden barges, which left Vineyard Haven
the day before, was caught in the rush of the gale between Wellfleet
and Highland Light. Hoping to pull through and round Race Point for
an anchorage, the tug struggled on through the ever increasing gale;
when opposite Highland Light, with the monstrous seas sweeping over
the barges every moment, the strain on the towing hawser proved too
great and it snapped away from the tug when the tow was two miles from
shore. The barges became separated and were drifting helplessly towards
the outlying sand bars, over which a wild sea was breaking. Two of the
barges were able to get up some sail, drove before the gale down the
coast and escaped; not so with the Oakland, which was the third barge
in the tow. Those on board finding that the barge was being forced
rapidly towards the sand bars, and those on the barge hoping that the
gale might moderate, dropped both anchors and brought the vessel to a
stop one mile from shore and just clear of the bar.
The tug was then able to get near enough to the barge to take off
the three members of her crew, but the Captain and mate refused to
leave the craft. As the day of the 13th advanced the gale and the sea
steadily increased and the barge strained heavily at her anchors.
All through the day until late in the afternoon we watched the barge
pitching and rolling in the great seas that swept her, expecting every
moment to see her drag to the bar and be pounded to pieces. We knew
that a leak must sooner or later pour water into her hold. Soon we saw
smoke rising from her pumping engine which indicated that water was
coming in, and those on board were making an effort to prevent the
flooding of the hold, but we could see that they would be unable to
overcome the leak and the water was slowly but surely sinking the craft.
This barge carried a small dory on the deck house. Pretty soon we saw
the captain and mate unlash the boat and take it down on deck; then
they went into the cabin and came out each with a suit case; these
they placed in the dory; then they lowered the boat into the water
and we realized that they were preparing to take to this frail skiff
and abandon the barge. Heavens, we knew that they might as well jump
into the sea at once rather than prolong the agony, that boat had no
more chance to reach the shore than the men had to swim there. Soon
they cut the rope that held the boat to the sinking craft, seized
the oars and pulled around the stern of the barge; for about fifteen
minutes they were able to keep the boat heading the sea, then came
a great overpowering wave that swept the boat to its crest and sent
it a hundred feet away, hurling the men into the rushing waves and
turning the boat bottom up, for a brief moment the heads of the men
appeared above the wild sea, then dropped from sight. Their bodies were
recovered next day far down the beach from where the sea swallowed them
up.
[Illustration: ALL THAT REMAINED OF THE OAKLAND]
When the sun rose next morning all that was visible protruding above
the still raging sea was one lone mast above the sunken hull, mute
evidence of another tragedy of the sea.
In a few days the broken hull was washed up on the beach and the cargo
was scattered along the shore.
LOSS OF THE CASTAGNIA
For a day or two previous to February 17th, 1914, the weather had been
extremely bad along the New England coast with very cold northeast
and northwest winds with snow squalls. On the afternoon of the 16th a
deeply laden bark was seen by the Cahoons Hollow Coast Station acting
very strangely. She would first sail up the coast for quite a distance
and then tack and sail down the coast. This was repeated several times,
and it seemed to the Life Savers that the officers of the bark had
completely lost their bearings. The vessel finally drove away in the
mists of the night under short sail. At daylight next morning the Coast
Guard patrol discovered the vessel hard and fast on the outlying sand
bar.
It was bitterly cold and the tattered sail of the vessel slatted
against the broken spars; ice covered her decks and hung in great
bunches to her broken ropes. Her crew had been driven to the rigging by
the raging seas which constantly swept over her, and the Coast Guard
could see a number of human figures clinging desperately to the rigging.
Then the Coast Guard apparatus was placed in position and a shot sent
over the vessel; three times the shot and line sped over the craft, but
the men in the rigging made no effort to secure the line; then Capt.
Tobin decided that an effort must be made to launch the life boat.
But under the terrible conditions which prevailed it was an undertaking
fraught with much danger.
But the boat was launched and the Life Savers pulled away. Soon they
reached the side of the ship and called to the men in the rigging to
come down. Eight of them after much effort and assisted by the Coast
Guard crew were finally gotten into the boat. Capt. Tobin of the Coast
Guard crew said to one of the rescued sailors, “Why don’t those other
men come down?” “They cannot,” was the reply. “They are dead, frozen
to death.” The boat returning to shore was pretty well overloaded with
crew and rescued, and as the bow touched the beach was overturned,
but all of the men were thrown clear of the boat except Capt. Tobin,
who was caught between the steering oar and the stern of the boat and
considerably injured. The Coast Guard station was more than two miles
away from the scene of the disaster but the Marconi Wireless station
was only a mile away and to this house the half frozen sailors were
hurried as fast as their almost helpless condition would permit. A
physician was summoned from Wellfleet and the condition of the men made
as comfortable as possible, then hurried by the next train to Boston
hospitals. All of them lost fingers or toes.
The three dead sailors, from necessity, were left lashed to the rigging
where they had died, until the next day, when the bodies were brought
to shore and buried in the town cemetery. In a few days the hull of the
ship lay a battered wreck on the shore.
[Illustration: HIGHLAND CLIFFS AND SIGNAL STATION
The author’s home from which the passing ships are sighted and reported
by telegraph or telephone to Boston and the Newspapers]
THOMAS W. LAWSON
THE LARGEST SCHOONER
An interesting vessel of this class was the seven masted schooner,
Thomas W. Lawson, built in 1902 by the Fore River Ship and Engine
Company of Quincy, Mass. She was of steel, 368 feet long, 50 feet beam,
34½ feet depth of hold and of 10,000 tons displacement, thus being the
largest vessel of this class ever constructed for sailing only.
She was built for the Coastwise Transportation Company, at a cost of
about $150,000.
Mr. Lawson was a considerable contributor in the cost of her
construction and the vessel was named for him.
She sailed from Delaware Breakwater on the 2nd of December, 1907, with
a cargo of coal for some port in France. She carried a complement of a
crew of 19 officers and men. And in a bad storm was driven on the rocks
a short distance from France on Friday, December 13, 1907. There 17 men
of the ship’s company perished. The vessel was a total wreck. No other
attempt was ever made to construct a vessel of this type. She was too
large to operate in the coastwise trade. She was a bad sea boat and not
satisfactory as an ocean going proposition. The loss of her crew was
not on our coast but unusual conditions surrounding the craft make it
of moment to note her loss in this connection.
LOSS OF THE SHIP ASIA
This was one of the worst wrecks that had occurred on the New England
coast in many years.
This ship was on a voyage from Manila for Boston with a cargo of East
India goods. Approaching the Cape Cod coast she encountered a terrific
storm and struck one of the outlying shoals off Nantucket.
The furious sea which drove over her decks in torrents soon began the
work of destruction. When she struck the shoal on Sunday morning there
was a furious northeast gale tearing the sea into a fearful condition.
The next day the ship gave every indication that she must soon be a
broken and dismantled wreck.
Besides the crew of twenty-three men, Capt. Dakin’s wife and little
daughter were on board.
When the ship began to pound to pieces the mate and such members of the
crew as had not already been swept overboard did all in their power to
assist Capt. Dakin in shielding his wife and daughter from being swept
away by the seas which broke in fury over the vessel. Before the ship
broke up the mate lashed the captain’s daughter and himself to a large
piece of wreckage, hoping in that way to reach the shore.
Capt. Dakin and his wife were swept away before they could fasten
themselves to any part of the wreckage. Of the whole number on board
the ill-fated craft but three were saved. These were sailors who clung
to a piece of the ship, and after drifting about in Vineyard Sound for
several days were finally picked up, and placed on the lightship, more
dead than alive.
The bodies of the mate with his arms locked about the captain’s
daughter, and both securely lashed to a piece of wreckage, were picked
up a few days later far down the coast. Both had been frozen to death.
The bodies of the captain and his wife were never recovered, and only a
few bodies of the crew were ever found.
BARGES WADENA AND FITZPATRICK
On March 17th, 1902, after some very bad weather, two coal carrying
barges lay stranded on the shoals off Monomoy Point, and the terrible
disaster which followed was the worst in some ways that ever happened
on this wreck strewn shore. Seven members of the Monomoy Coast Guard
and five men whom they went to rescue perished in the awful sea that
swept over the shoals and rips.
Following is the story by Captain Ellis of the Monomoy Station, the
only surviving member of the crew that started to the rescue.
On Tuesday, March 17th, about 1 o’clock in the morning, the schooner
rigged barges Wadena and Fitzpatrick, which had broken away from tug
Peter Smith, lay stranded on the southern point of Monomoy. The barges
remained on the shoals without lightening their cargoes. On the night
of the 16th the weather became threatening, and all except five of the
persons on the Wadena, who had been engaged in handling the cargo, were
taken ashore by the tug.
Shortly before 8 o’clock on the morning of the 17th one of the
patrolmen from our station reported that the Wadena appeared to be all
right, but later Capt. Eldredge, then keeper of the station, received
word from Hyannis asking if there was anything wrong on the barge. Up
to this time no one at the station had any knowledge of there being any
person on the barge, supposing that the tug had taken all off the night
before.
Then Capt. Eldredge walked down to the end of the point where he could
better see the situation. Arriving there he found that the barge was
flying signals for help. He at once telephoned me, as I was No. 1, at
the station, telling me to launch the surf boat from the inside of the
point, and with the crew pull down to the end, about two and a half
miles from the station. There we took on Capt. Eldredge and I gave him
the steering oar.
The wind was fresh from the southeast and a heavy sea running. None
of us were of the opinion that the barge was in any danger, as she
was lying easy, but Capt. Eldredge decided that it was better to pull
around the Point and try to reach the barge. At certain places on the
shoals the sea was especially rough, and some water was shipped on
the way out to the vessel, but without much trouble we succeeded in
bringing the surf boat under the lee of the barge just abaft the fore
rigging, the only place where it was practical to go alongside.
As soon as we got up to the barge a line was quickly thrown aboard and
made fast by those on the craft. The persons on board were much excited
and wanted to be taken right off. Capt. Eldredge immediately directed
them to come down into the boat.
The sea was breaking heavily around the stern of the barge, and there
was little room for operations in the smooth water, and the rail of the
barge was 12 or 14 feet above the surf boat. Four of the five men on
board lowered themselves over the side of the barge one at a time into
the surf boat without mishap by means of the rope, but the fifth man,
who was a heavy person, when half way down lost his grip on the rope
and dropped with a crash onto the middle thwart of the boat. All five
being finally landed in the boat, the captain placed two of them in the
bow, two aft and one in the middle, and told them to sit still and keep
close down to the bottom of the boat. In order to get away from the
barge quickly the painter was cut and the surf boat was shoved off. In
order to clear the line of breakers that extended from the stern of the
barge so that we could lay a good course for the shore, a part of the
surfmen were backing hard on the port oars, while the others gave way
with full powers on the starboard side. Before we could get the boat
turned around a big wave struck us with fearful force and quite a lot
of water poured in over the rail of the surfboat. Capt. Eldredge stood
in the stern of the boat with the steering oar giving his orders and
the surfmen stuck to their posts.
As soon as the water came into the boat, the rescued men from the barge
became panic stricken, threw their arms about the necks of the surf men
so that none of us could use our oars; the seas, one after another,
struck us, and the boat, filling with water, turned bottom up, throwing
all of us into the raging sea. The seas kept striking us after the boat
upset and we were soon in among the heaviest breakers. Twice we righted
the boat, but before it could be gotten into position it was again
capsized.
After righting the boat twice our strength was fast leaving us and we
all knew that we could not survive long without assistance.
The five men that we had taken off the barge were the first to be
swept off the overturned boat and perish before our eyes; they did not
regain hold of the boat after the first capsize.
All of us clung to the boat, giving each other all the encouragement
we could. Surfman Chase was the first one of our crew to go, then
Nickerson and Small were swept to their death. Capt. Eldredge, surfmen
Kendrick, Foye, Rogers and myself still managed to hold onto the boat;
every sea that struck the boat nearly smothered us. Kendrick was the
next to drop into the sea, and Foye soon followed. Capt. Eldredge,
Rogers and myself expected that we too would share their fate. Rogers
was clinging to the boat amidships, while Capt. Eldredge and myself
were holding near the stern. The captain called to me to help him
get a better hold and I managed to pull him up on the bottom of the
boat, when a sea struck us and washed us both off. I managed to regain
my hold on the bottom of the boat; looking around I saw the captain
clinging to the mast and sail which had washed out of the boat. When I
last saw our brave captain he was drifting away holding on to the spar
and sail.
My strength was fast going and when poor Rogers asked me to help him
get farther up on the boat the only thing I could do was to tell him to
try to hold on as we were drifting nearer shore. But he had lost his
strength, however, and failing to get a better hold he dropped beneath
the waves.
I was now alone on the bottom of the boat, and seeing that the center
board had slipped part way out, I managed to get hold of it, and
holding on with one hand managed with the other to get off my oil
clothes, under coat, vest and boots. By that time the overturned boat
had drifted down over the shoals near the barge Fitzpatrick, and when I
sighted the craft I waved my hand as a signal for help. I soon saw the
man on the barge fling a dory over the side, but could see nothing more
after that of the dory owing to the mist and spray arising from the
water. Finally it came in sight with a man rowing towards me, and it
was brave Capt. Elmer Mayo. He pulled me into the boat. I was so used
up I could not speak.
To land in that small boat through that surf was a perilous
undertaking, but Mayo was a skillful boatman and we landed safely.
If those five men taken off the barge had kept their heads and done as
we told them all hands would have landed in safety.
STORY OF THE SLOOP TRUMBULL
Between Highland and Race Point Lighthouses, on Cape Cod, stretches a
long line of treacherous, dangerous sand bars. Situated midway between
these points on the shore is the Coast Guard Building known as the
Peaked Hill Bars Station. From this station the surfmen have rescued
many lives and have seen many sailors go down to death in the raging
sea.
On November 30th, 1880, a cold northerly gale was sweeping down the
coast from Massachusetts Bay and lashing into fury the waters that
pounded over the sand bars from Race Point to Wellfleet.
On the afternoon of the previous day one of those ungainly stone
carrying sloops, with a deck load of granite bound from Rockport for
New York, sailed out of Rockport Harbor. She carried besides her
captain a crew of four men.
When daylight broke on the morning of the 30th the patrol from Peaked
Hill Bars Station discovered this sloop hard and fast on the outlying
sand bar, a half mile south of the station. Capt. David H. Atkins of
the Peaked Hill Station decided that the sea was not so severe but
that the surf boat might be launched. This was done and the following
members of the Coast Guard Station, Elisha Taylor, Stephen Mayo, Isaiah
Young, Chas. P. Kelley, Samuel O. Fisher, with Capt. Atkins at the
steering oar, pushed the boat through the surf and pulled away through
the angry sea for the rescue. Surfman John Cole was left on the beach
to assist the boat’s crew on its return. They reached the vicinity of
the stranded vessel but the sea was so rough and the vessel rolled so
in the troubled waters that a near approach to the craft was unsafe and
in fact almost impossible.
The men on the sloop were told to jump and the Coast Guardsmen stood
ready to pick them up. Three of the men did as requested and were
pulled into the life boat, but the captain and mate refused to take the
chance, thus making it necessary for Capt. Atkins and his men to return
to the shore. This they did and landed the three sailors.
Capt. Atkins, fearing that the sloop would be destroyed and the two men
drowned, again went out to try and induce them to leave the vessel. As
the surf boat neared the vessel the rush of the tide and sea carried
the boat towards the long projecting boom and the loosened main sheet
carried over and back with every roll of the craft caught under the
bow of the boat and turned it completely over, throwing the entire crew
into the mad waters. The surfmen, finding it impossible to right the
boat, clung desperately to her bottom. Soon Capt. Atkins, who was not
a strong swimmer, dropped exhausted into the sea. He was soon followed
by Elisha Taylor and Stephen Mayo. Young, Kelley and Fisher, who were
good swimmers, seeing that if they clung much longer to the boat must
soon go as had their mates before them, so kicking off rubber boots and
as much clothing as they could, struck out boldly for the shore, which
they reached exhausted and chilled, and were pulled from the surf by
Cole who had been standing by.
The bodies of Capt. Atkins and surfmen Taylor and Mayo were recovered
the same day many miles down the coast from where the disaster occurred.
One of the crew of the Highland Station who helped to recover Capt.
Atkins’ body from the surf was his own son.
With the incoming tide and moderating wind the Trumbull floated away
from the sand bar and sailed down the coast with the captain and mate
on board.
This tragedy could have been averted had not the requirements of the
service and the sense of duty urged the Coast Guardsmen to attempt the
rescue.
[Illustration]
WRECK OF THE SOMERSET
BRITISH MAN OF WAR
So far back as November 2nd, 1778, the British warship Somerset was
wrecked on Peaked Hill Bars, two miles east of Race Point Lighthouse.
The Somerset was one of a fleet of British warships which had been
throwing shot and shell at Bunker Hill Monument and terrorizing Boston
and the surrounding coast towns for many weeks.
[Illustration: THE WRECK OF THE SOMERSET--BRITISH MAN OF WAR]
She often anchored in Provincetown Harbor, and a few days before this
November day on which she was lost, left the harbor for the purpose
of intercepting some French merchant ships which were due in Boston.
On the second day of the cruise, and while attempting to re-enter the
harbor, she encountered thick weather and a fierce northeast gale.
Losing her bearings she stranded on Peaked Hill Bars and everything
movable was speedily swept from her decks. She carried a list of nearly
500 officers and men, more than 200 of whom were swept from her decks
and drowned when the ship stranded.
Next day the ship was beaten over the bars by the rough sea which
continued, and she was forced near enough to the beach to allow of the
rescue of the remainder of the ship’s company.
Capt. Hallet of Yarmouth and Col. Doane of Wellfleet with a detachment
of the Militia came down the Cape to the wreck, put Capt. Aurey of the
frigate under arrest and marched them all up the Cape to Boston, where
they were imprisoned.
For more than a hundred years the old ship lay buried in the sands of
the beach; then the ever moving sands and the currents of the ocean
tore away the sand bars and exposed the timbers and rust covered cannon
of the once proud ship, but it was not for long that the remains of the
hull lay exposed. Relic hunters carried away many of the old timbers as
souvenirs; then the relentless sea drove back the ever shifting sands
and completely covered ship and guns. That was more than fifty years
ago and since that day no part of the old Man of War has shown on the
surface.
She was supposed to have carried sixty guns, most of them 24-pounders;
that is, they shot a solid ball that weighed twenty-four pounds.
[Illustration]
MYSTERY OF THE MARY CELESTE
The possible solution of the fifty year old mystery of the Mary
Celeste, which has baffled the investigators the world over, is herein
explained.
The story is told by Capt. Lucy of the British Reserves. Capt. Lucy is
70 years old and lives in India, but was recently on a visit to England.
The history of the abandoning of the Mary Celeste was told to him by a
man who was boatswain on the Celeste, but only on Capt. Lucy’s solemn
oath not to divulge it until his informant was dead.
For more than forty years Capt. Lucy has kept the secret but now
considers himself free to speak.
The Mary Celeste, a brig rigged vessel, sailed from Baltimore for
Genoa, on the 7th of November, 1872, with a cargo of alcohol. She was
captained by a man named Briggs, whose wife and daughter accompanied
him. The crew consisted of 17 Americans, Danes and Norwegians. On
December 13th the brig was found with all sails set and was towed into
Bermuda. There was not a soul on board, and no sign of a struggle, but
all of her boats were missing. Meals were found spread on the table in
the cabin.
According to Capt. Lucy’s informant, who called himself Triggs,
probably an assumed name, told the story to Capt. Lucy in Melbourne.
The voyage of the Celeste was uneventful until nearing the coast of
Bermuda, when a derelict, an abandoned steamer, was sighted.
Triggs and four others launched a boat and rowed to the derelict but
were unable to identify the craft because the salt water had washed
away the name. London as hailing port was legible. In the purser’s
cabin they found a safe. The captain of the Celeste and a carpenter
were sent for.
The safe was broken open and about 3500 pounds of gold and silver
were found inside. After opening the water cocks, so the derelict
would sink, because it was a menace to navigation, the boarding party
returned to the Celeste with the booty and there split it up, the
captain taking 1200 pounds, the mate 600, the second mate 400, Triggs
400 and the crew the rest among them. The captain’s wife and daughter
had no share.
Then the officers and men of the Celeste began to fear they had
committed an illegal act. No one was very well posted in marine law,
and the officers became seriously worried.
So the captain called the other officers to his cabin and it was
decided to sink the Celeste and make for the nearest land.
But in the meantime a passing vessel had spoken with the Mary Celeste
and they, on board the Celeste, felt there had been a suspicion, on
board the hailing vessel, of possible foul play if they sank the
vessel. So instead they abandoned the brig, making off in the boats
which they had. They left meals on the cabin table to make the affair
as mysterious as possible so as to throw off investigation.
They painted on the boats they rowed away in, the name of a schooner
that had been recently lost, and arriving at Bermuda reported the loss
of the schooner whose name they had painted on the boats.
Triggs declared that he never again saw any member of the Celeste’s
crew.
From private enquiries Capt. Lucy was inclined to credit Triggs’ story,
because he seemed to be well supplied with money and had money in the
banks at Melbourne.
_A very interesting story, but quite improbable._
A more reasonable explanation of this mystery lies in the fact that a
slight fire developed in the galley, and those on board knowing what an
inflammable and dangerous cargo was beneath them hurriedly launched the
boats and all of the crew scrambled in and pulled away from the vessel
but probably lay by for a while to see if an explosion would follow,
then a breeze sprang up and the Celeste, with all sails set, sailed
rapidly away and they could not overtake her.
Very likely before those in the boat could reach land a gale came on,
swamped the boat and all were drowned.
THE SELF-STEERED CRAFT
Late in the afternoon of October 23, 1854, a great storm was sweeping
the New England coast. Watchers on the cliffs sighted through the
thick and driving mists a brig rigged vessel over which the sea was
constantly breaking, heading directly towards the shore. Soon, wind and
sea driven, she drove through the onsweeping waves over the outlying
line of sand bars. Suddenly, when directly between the outer and inner
line of bars, she swung broadside to the sea and headed straight up
the coast, when it was seen that her crew had been forced to mount and
cling to the main rigging, where they were clinging desperately above
the raging sea which was pouring in torrents across the vessel’s deck,
making any attempt to regain the use of the wheel impossible. Before
being driven to the rigging the crew had lashed the wheel. Then up the
coast, under short sail, the vessel drove onward without guiding hand
clear to the end of the Cape and around Race Point into Massachusetts
Bay; across this tumbling sea of mad waters she rushed on until she
piled up on the rocks at Scituate, and there in a few hours she was
ground to pieces, where the entire crew of seven men were swallowed up
in the sea.
As she drove along the surf opposite Highland Station a great brown pig
was swept from her deck and came rolling up in the surf on the shore.
He was a good swimmer and had made the distance, somewhat out of breath
but intact. A spectator took him home and he grew to be a big and lusty
porker. If he could have talked we would have known the name of his
ship.
TRAGEDY OF THE HERBERT FULLER
The death of Lester H. Monks, early in 1927, recalls one of the most
mysterious crime cases in the history of the country. It was that of
the murders committed on the barkentine Herbert Fuller, which in 1896
sent a chill of horror down the spine of everyone who read the details
of these wicked murders.
Somewhere between the port of Halifax and Delaware Breakwater, on a
starlit night in early June of that year, the captain and second mate
and the captain’s wife were brutally murdered with an axe, in the cabin
of the Fuller. This vessel was carrying a cargo of lumber to Cuba.
The arrival of the barkentine off the port of Halifax with the three
bodies of the murdered victims in a canvas covered boat towed behind
the Fuller, unfolded a tale of horror to shock humanity and unequalled
in criminal history.
The ship was in charge of Monks, a young Harvard student who was taking
this trip on the Fuller for his health, while the first mate, Thomas
Bram, a colored man, and a seaman named Charles Brown, were in irons.
The Halifax authorities locked up Monks and the entire crew. Monks was
the son of fine people, respected and well-to-do ship owners, and he
was quickly given his liberty on parole, but the other members of the
crew were held until an investigation could be made.
It appeared that upon the night of the murders only six persons were
aft. On deck were Bram, the first mate, in charge of the ship, and
Brown, the helmsman. The other four were below, only half a level lower
than the after deck. They were Captain Charles I. Nash, asleep in the
chart room; Augustus Blandburg, second mate, in his bunk in the room
adjoining the chart room; Mrs. Nash, in her stateroom leading from the
main cabin; and Monks, whose room was between the chart room and the
captain’s cabin.
In the middle of the night, Monks testified that he was awakened by
a woman’s scream, loud and piercing. Dressing as quick as possible,
he seized his revolver from the table--and it was discovered later it
was the only one on board--and rushed up the companionway stairs to
the deck. In doing so he had to run through the chart room, and on the
floor he saw the body of the captain. As he reached the deck he said
he saw Bram at the head of the stairs holding in his hand a heavy piece
of board which he threw at Monks. Bram said afterwards that seeing the
passenger rushing up the stairs with a pistol, he became frightened and
threw the board as a matter of protection.
The entire crew was then aroused and the cabin inspected. The second
mate’s body was found on his bunk and Mrs. Nash’s body in bed in her
cabin.
Monks’ escape was considered miraculous in view of the fact that
he alone of the four persons below decks at the time escaped the
slaughter. All of the rooms here practically opened into the main cabin.
In the panic which followed the finding of the bodies, Monks and the
cook, Jonathan Spencer, took charge. Every man, particularly Bram and
Brown, were watched. On the morning of the fourth day Spencer became
suspicious of Bram and had him put in irons.
After being ironed, Bram declared that on the night of the murders, he
had, through a window of the chart room, seen Brown murder the captain.
Brown in turn accused Bram of the killing. There was considerable doubt
whether Brown could have left the wheel, committed the murders and
returned to the wheel without the course of the ship being very evident
to the others of the crew.
For a few days after the murders the bodies were lying in the cabin
where they fell. Then they were sewed up in canvas, placed in the
ship’s jollyboat and towed astern.
About this time some member of the crew found the blood-stained axe,
with which the murders were committed, hid away in the lumber of the
vessel’s deckload, and it was thrown overboard, fearing that some
person on board might get it and use it as a weapon for further killing.
Bram and Brown were accused of the murders. It developed that Brown’s
real name was Leopold Westerburg, and that he once shot a man in
Wurtenburg, in Germany, but had escaped by pleading insanity. Later
the charge was dropped and he was accused of only having concealed the
crime which another had committed.
Bram went to trial in Boston, October 29th, 1896. After a sensational
and hard fought battle by some of the most prominent lawyers in the
state, he was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged, but his counsel
got a new trial on a writ of error. Meanwhile the United States had
passed a law permitting a jury to return a verdict of murder in first
degree, but with a recommend of life imprisonment instead, and though
again Bram was found guilty, life imprisonment was given him and he
was committed to Charlestown State Prison for life.
In November, 1906, Bram was removed to the Federal Prison at Atlanta.
He always protested his innocence of the crime, and this coupled with
good behavior, secured his pardon, August 27, 1913.
On receiving his pardon he asked the citizens of Atlanta for a chance
to vindicate himself. He opened a restaurant there and became a highly
respected citizen and business man.
Monks got his degree from Harvard in 1898, and he became a prominent
figure in the business world.
Though this story was not closely connected with the coast of Cape Cod,
the writer had seen the Herbert Fuller many times in her voyaging up
and down the coast.
Later reports of Bram find that after he had sold his restaurant
business in Atlanta he purchased a four masted schooner and engaged
in the transportation of lumber on the coast and made many successful
voyages.
[Illustration]
THE JOB JACKSON WRECK
On the 5th day of January, 1895, the big coal laden schooner Job
H. Jackson, in a howling northeast gale, went ashore on the outer
bar between Peaked Hill Bar and Race Point Coast Guard Station, and
was torn to pieces in the terrific gale that drove the great waves
constantly over her.
Eight of her crew of nine men were rescued after much difficulty by the
life savers of the two stations. She was deeply laden with coal and was
so far from shore that no mortar lines could be shot over her.
The first attempt of the Coast Guard to launch a boat resulted in a
capsize. On the second try the boat was successfully launched through
the towering seas, but could not approach nearer than two hundred feet
of the wreck.
In the meantime the entire crew of the vessel had climbed into the
rigging, to prevent being swept overboard by the deluge of water that
swept the decks of the fast breaking up craft.
Then the men one by one jumped from the rigging into the wild surf and
were pulled into the surf boat; all but one man of the crew made it.
Then the somewhat overloaded boat was headed through the breakers for
the shore.
Just as the boat rode the last wave at the shore it was again
overturned, but twenty men on the shore stood ready and the crew of the
schooner and the Coast Guardsmen were snatched from the surf. By noon
of the following day all that remained of the Jackson were broken spars
and deck houses scattered along the sands of the beach.
LOSS OF THE NUMBER 238
On the morning of February 18th, 1927, a northeast storm was developing
on the North Atlantic coast and white-capped waves were driving towards
the shore all the way from Chatham to Race Point.
The Coast Guard cruiser No. 238, one of the smaller boats of this
fleet engaged in patrolling the coast for the purpose of intercepting
rum runners, was several miles off Nantucket Lightship. This boat had
rendezvous at Provincetown and those on board, recognizing that a gale
of unusual violence was rapidly approaching the coast, the return of
the boat to port should be immediate. So the officers of the cruiser
felt that as a matter of safety all possible speed should be made for
Provincetown Harbor.
The boat made good time up the coast in the ever increasing gale which
drove water in torrents over her decks. When she had reached a position
one mile east of the Peaked Hills Buoy, suddenly her engines went dead
and she became a helpless, drifting craft. Every possible effort was
made to repair the engine without avail.
On board the stricken craft they signalled to the Highland Coast Guard
Station and asked that help be sent to them. Conditions of wind and sea
grew constantly worse. Soon the darkness of night came on and from the
disabled boat signal lights flashed every little while telling of the
seriousness of their condition. These signals were seen and understood
by the Highland Coast Guard crew. It was seen that the boat was being
driven nearer and nearer the sea-swept sand bars.
Over the dark and rushing sea came to those on shore by the flashing
signals this message: “We are helpless; both anchors are down but they
do not hold us and we are slowly but surely going to our destruction;
unless you can send help we must surely perish.”
Telephone and telegraph messages were hurriedly sent to the authorities
in Boston, and a large ship was dispatched from the Navy Yard at
Charlestown, but she had not proceeded two miles beyond Boston Light,
when, from the fury of the storm, she, too, broke down and had a
struggle to get back to shelter, coming dangerously near to foundering
herself.
All night long until midnight frequently from the distressed boat came
frantic cries across the surging waters, but no earthly power could
reach them.
Miss Olive Williams, manager of the Western Union Telegraph and Marine
Reporting Station on the cliffs at Highland Light, remained on duty all
the night long to keep in touch with the boat and the stations on shore.
At midnight the last signals from the doomed 238 flashed across the
angry sea--the end had come.
With daylight next morning, out there, two hundred yards from the
shore, lay a mass of broken timbers and twisted iron, all that remained
of the little cruiser, and the bodies of her crew of eight officers and
men were being washed about in the cruel waters that thundered to the
shore.
This was the worst disaster in this immediate vicinity since the
terrible storm of November 27th, 1898, when the Portland foundered,
carrying to death 165 persons.
Only two bodies of the cruiser’s crew were ever recovered from the sea.
[Illustration]
THE PALMER FLEET
About the beginning of the Civil War and for several years thereafter,
there were many four and five masted schooners built and operated in
the coal carrying trade along the North Atlantic coast.
Capt. Wm. H. Palmer and Associates built and managed a fleet of this
class of schooners, which were known as the “Palmer Fleet.” Each vessel
when built took on the name of some member of the Palmer family. Capt.
Palmer became the managing owner. These were great, beautiful vessels,
and when with a favoring breeze they sailed gaily up and down the
coast, presented a picture worth going many miles to see.
About that time and for some fifteen years thereafter, the coal
carrying business from Philadelphia and Baltimore to Boston and ports
beyond was very good, and much money was made in the business, and
these large schooners were built especially to handle this trade along
the Atlantic seaboard.
The Palmer fleet did not by any means include all the four and five
masters engaged in this transportation business. There were other firms
that, in addition to handling four and five masters, were building and
operating six masters.
Of all the six masters, I do not know of a single one afloat on the New
England coast today, and the four and five masters are very few indeed.
Following are the names of the schooners of the Palmer Fleet, and so
far as I know there is not one of them afloat today, December 15th,
1927.
The first of this fleet, the Jane Palmer, was built at Harbor View,
East Boston, and she had a carrying capacity of 4400 tons of coal. Her
draft was 29 feet, that is, she required more than 29 feet of water in
which to float when loaded.
The others were Paul Palmer, Baker Palmer, Dorothy Palmer, Singleton
Palmer, Davis Palmer, Fuller Palmer, Elizabeth Palmer, Prescott Palmer,
and Harwood Palmer, these were the ten five masters, and the Maud
Palmer and Marie Palmer were the two four masters.
The Davis Palmer was the largest of the fleet and had a carrying
capacity of 5000 tons. The four masters carried only 2800 tons each.
There were two schooners named Paul Palmer. The first one was stranded
on the Jersey Coast, later was floated and re-named George P. Hudson.
The second Paul Palmer was totally destroyed by fire five miles east of
Race Point Light.
The Davis Palmer was lost in the terrible Christmas blizzard of 1909,
and with her entire crew of nine officers and men went to the bottom in
Broad Sound, in Boston Harbor.
[Illustration: SIGHTED BY SHIPS OFF CAPE COD]
A GALE, AND WHAT IT DID
The sea, powerful, wonderful and ever full of mystery, ever restless
and uncontrolled by human efforts, destructive in its might when sea
and wind and tide combine, calm and beautiful when the summer sun
shines across its blue surface, over which the ships move grandly and
safely; but when the flying snow sweeps over the frozen surface of the
gale-swept ocean with seas that scatter destruction as it is hurled
upon craft or shore, it is a different story.
This is a book primarily of shipwrecks, where there is loss of human
lives that drop to untimely graves in the wild seas.
But there are many strange events on the sea coasts, though not
directly concerned in the sacrifice of human lives, but are so strange
and unusual that they appeal to our wonder and interest.
We want to tell you a little about what the wind and the sea did in and
around Provincetown Harbor one night in December, 1926.
At this time and for some time previously the waters in the immediate
vicinity of the harbor had been used for the testing grounds of the
submarines of the United States Navy, and this made it necessary for
some large vessel to be stationed here for the purpose of carrying the
supplies and parts that might be needed on the submarine boats, and the
ship selected for this purpose was the large Government cutter Morrill.
This ship, on the afternoon of a day in December, returning from a
short cruise in the bay, tied up at her anchorage in the harbor.
All day the wind had been coming strong from the southeast and blowing
directly into the harbor. As darkness came on the gale steadily
increased, and before midnight had reached hurricane force. It was a
time in the month when the tides were very high. All around the harbor
little power fishing boats were straining at their anchors as the
rising seas swept constantly over them.
Soon the force of the gale, as it drove the rising seas against the
high sides of the Morrill, slowly but surely forced her constantly
nearer the shore of the harbor, dragging her anchors with her as wave
after wave beat against her bow and sides. Suddenly the anchor chains
snapped and the ship began her wild course of destruction across the
harbor. Swinging to the right she crashed into a fishing boat and sent
it to the bottom, then sharply to the left she sent another fishing
boat to destruction, continuing her swinging, zigzag course until she
had passed over or through three more boats. Then, as a big wave drove
with great force at her quarter, she swung around towards the west and
plunged into the centre of a long pier which extended into the harbor.
This offered no appreciable check to her onward course; tearing through
this, scattering timbers and wharf logs in every direction; then on to
a short pier on the shore she smashed into a good sized building on the
head of this wharf which had been used during the summer as a playhouse
and restaurant. Her further progress was then checked but not until she
had landed within a hundred yards of the main street in Provincetown.
For miles along the shore front at Provincetown the beach was littered
with wharf logs and debris by the ton. Cottages were undermined, boats
were wrecked and driven ashore, buildings damaged, cellars flooded, and
the whole harbor front presented a scene of desolation. The loss to
property ran into thousands and thousands of dollars.
In the Congress of the December Session of 1927, a bill was introduced
to obtain money to reimburse the fishermen for the loss of their boats
in the mad voyage of the Morrill.
From 1845 to about 1870 was the period of the highest efficiency in
this type of sailing craft and the full rigged ship sailed upon every
sea and navigated every ocean of the civilized world, and with their
great white sails spread in the sunlight, were pictures of delight upon
every sea.
Shortly after the Civil War steam propelled vessels began to assume
a place in the passenger and freight carrying business of the sea
somewhat to the exclusion of the sailing ship. Slowly but surely they
were forced back and driven from the sea, growing less and less in
numbers until this year of 1928 it is doubtful if there is one vessel
of this type on the Atlantic coast of this country today, and very few
on any ocean of the world. Steam and electric power have driven them
into the discard.
LOSS OF THE MONTCLAIR ON ORLEANS BEACH
The beginning of 1927 was a season which resulted in many disasters
along the North Atlantic coast, and especially on the outer coast of
Cape Cod. It is a matter of record that not since the terrible disaster
of the loss of the steamship Portland in 1898, had so many people gone
to their deaths in the cold waters of the gale-swept sea from Nantucket
to Boston.
On the second day of February the three masted schooner Montclair of
New Jersey, from Bangor for New York, with a cargo of lumber, after
battling a fierce gale for forty-eight hours, drove ashore one-fourth
of a mile from the Orleans Coast Guard Station.
She struck the bar at low water and instead of driving over she held
fast and the waves poured in awful force over the doomed craft’s decks
from stem to stern, tearing away her deck load of laths which were
piled high above her rails and scattering them into the wild sea that
ran racing towards the shore.
Soon her deck houses yielded to the terrific pounding of the
storm-borne waves. The strings that held the laths in bundles were soon
broken and these little strips of wood a quarter of an inch thick,
an inch and a half wide and four feet long, were being smashed into
kindlings, thrown about in the surf until they formed a great stack of
broken stuff, and a short distance away looked like a huge hay stack.
Her crew consisted of a captain and six seamen. Into this mass of
broken and jumbled sticks the vessel’s crew were hurled by the never
ending rush of the driving sea.
Two of the crew were fortunate enough to get hold of a bit of floating
wreckage and were swept clear of the tangled mass of laths and thrown
to the shore where rescuers succeeded in pulling them from the surf.
Not so with the other five members of the crew. The onrushing current
swept them from the deck of the fast breaking up craft and threw
them directly into the surging mass of broken and piled up laths,
practically cutting off nearly every possible chance of escape. Had the
lumber been of boards and timbers the chance for the sailors to reach
shore would have been much better.
The Coast Guard from Nauset and Chatham reached the scene as promptly
as they could, but they were a long distance from the wreck, and the
nature of the cargo made it practically impossible to send a line over
the vessel, and the distance from the shore where the craft lay still
further operated against the rescue of the unfortunate crew.
Sometimes the Government has fits of economy, but the Coast Guard
service is a poor place to begin the practice of it. Some time before
the Coast Guard Station at Orleans had been abandoned, that is, the
crews had been withdrawn and the station locked up.
Another case of the irony of fate that under these conditions this
schooner should be thrown at the very doors of the station that had
been abandoned.
Had this station been manned it is quite probable that every man of the
crew of this craft would have been saved.
After this experience the Government made haste to reopen the Orleans
station and a full crew went on duty December 1st, 1927. This seems to
be another case of locking the stable door after the horse has been
stolen.
[Illustration]
LOSS OF THE REINHART AT RACE POINT
A short time previous to the seventh day of December, 1926, a storm of
considerable violence had prevailed all over the North Atlantic and in
and around the waters of Massachusetts Bay and along the shores of Cape
Cod.
The temperature had been low for several days, and high easterly winds
with frequent flurries of snow and sleet, and the sea was running
riot all over the ocean from Maine to Nantucket Shoals. Under these
conditions, late in the afternoon of the 7th, the three masted schooner
W. H. Reinhart, Capt. Barton, from Bangor for Philadelphia, with a load
of lumber, was driven hard and fast upon the outlying sand bars at Race
Point, about half way between Race Point Coast Guard Station and the
Light.
Several of the crew were more or less frost bitten and exhausted by the
trying conditions with which their vessel had been beaten about in the
storms. The Coast Guard men were promptly on the scene and after a hard
struggle succeeded in taking off from the vessel Capt. Barton and the
seven members of his crew and rushed them to the Coast Guard Station.
The storm continued and before daylight next morning the schooner
showed unmistakable signs of going to pieces, and later the mizzen mast
smashed off and fell into the sea. The ever rising gale swept the big
waves in torrents over the deck of the stranded craft and after a while
tearing much of her cargo of lumber from her decks and scattered it
along the shore, men on the shore were able to secure a considerable
portion of the deck load which had come driving in with the sea.
The owner of the cargo then contracted with E. Hayes Small to salvage
the lumber and deliver it in Provincetown or some nearby point from
which it could be sent to destination.
Mr. Small, manager of the Highland Hotel, ten miles away, kept on his
farm there eight strong horses which had been accustomed to work on the
beaches and sands. The contract provided that he should use whatever
lumber was needed for the construction of a suitable shed or stable in
which his horses could be kept near the wreck. The horses were, with
grain and hay, removed to the beach and three men left there to watch
and care for them. This stable was necessary because of the distance
from the hotel which barred going back and forth every day.
Rapid progress was made in recovering the cargo. Then the stripping
from the vessel of all material of any value began. Rigging, sails,
anchors and material of various kinds were brought ashore at every
favorable opportunity.
[Illustration: WHAT THE SEAS DO AT RACE POINT, CAPE COD]
In the meantime the vessel was being pounded to pieces. The next storm
tore away the mainmast and the hull became more and more battered until
finally the foremast toppled into the sea and only the smashed up hulk
lay scattered on the storm-swept shore.
Mr. Small’s contract also provided that he should have the lumber
with which the temporary stable was built; then it was carted to the
Highlands in North Truro and went into the construction of a fine
cottage which bears the name of “Mayflower.”
This was begun in January, 1927, and completed in June. Fortunately no
lives were lost in this disaster, but it caused many hours of suffering
for those men who comprised the crew of the wreck.
WAS IT MURDER?
Tragedy stalks abroad on the great sea and land always, not only on the
wide stretches of the great ocean but all along the bordering coasts
and inlets.
A big ship sails away into the mists and fogs of the pulsing deep and
never comes back, a fisherman pulls out in his little boat to draw his
nets and drops as completely out of sight as though he had never been.
This little book tells of shipwrecks and disasters and in the same line
we may note the passing of human life on the sea wherever it may be.
Mystery goes hand and hand with passing events on the ever restless
waters.
The following little story is but one of many like it.
Mr. Eugene W. Haines was a much respected, active citizen of the town
of Sandwich, Cape Cod. He had held many important offices in the town
and was a member of the Board of Selectmen and engaged in several lines
of business.
During the summer season he set a string of lobster pots in the bay. He
owned a small power boat which he used in going to and from his lobster
traps.
On the 19th of November, 1927, an hour or more before daylight, as was
his custom, he sailed away in his boat to draw his lobster pots, and
from that hour he was never seen again by those on shore who awaited
his return.
For many days the waters of the bay were unruffled by any strong wind
and the waters were smooth. When he did not return by mid-afternoon
searching parties started out from many points and men patrolled the
coast beaches from Provincetown to Plymouth, and boats dragged the
nearby waters of the bay for many hours. Every foot of the coast
beaches were covered but not a single trace was found of the missing
man or his boat.
There was but one possible clue to this strange situation. A gang of
rum runners had been operating in and about the bay for some time and
some of them had been caught, and Mr. Haines had been instrumental in
bringing some of them to trial and punishment.
The theory has been advanced and quite generally accepted that these
law-breakers, holding a feeling of enmity against Haines, watched his
daily going out in his boat until there came a time in which to get him.
It is generally believed that they overtook his boat, made him a
prisoner, and took the boat in tow and then proceeded out in the sea
miles from land, where they murdered their victim, weighted his body
and dropped it to the bottom of the sea, then weighted and sank the
boat and left no trace.
During the last week in November a man patrolling the shore came upon
two oars and a few things such as are carried in fishing boats which
were identified as having belonged to Haines’ boat. But this does not
clear up the mystery of the lost fishing boat, and the how and where of
the tragedy will ever remain, like many others, unsolved.
On the 20th of December portions of Haines power dory drifted ashore at
Sandwich.
[Illustration]
STRANDING OF THE BARGES
On the afternoon of April 3rd, 1915, the steam tug Mars, belonging to
the Reading Railroad Company, left the harbor of Bangor, Maine, with
three light barges bound to Philadelphia. The barges were the Tunnel
Ridge, Coleraine and Manheim.
[Illustration: DECK HOUSE OF BARGE COLERAINE
Wrecked on Cape Cod. Now Highland Golf Club House]
Soon after clearing the outer roadstead at Bangor, the weather, which
had been fine, became overcast and threatening, but the wind, though
strong, was fair, so that sail was made on the barges and the tow made
good progress. The captain of the tug hoped to pick up the Highland
Light in a short time, but on the morning of the 4th snow began
falling, the wind swung out to the northeast and soon increased to a
gale, and the tow was soon wallowing in a rapidly rising sea. At six
o’clock on the afternoon of the 4th suddenly, right under the bow of
the tug, came great rolling waves, breaking white capped over the
sand bars, only a hundred yards from the tug. The captain immediately
realized that unless his boat could get away from this danger the tug
would be smashed to pieces on the sands of the bar. The only safe thing
to do was to cut away from the barges. This was done; then by all the
power in the tug’s engines he was able to pull away, round Race Point
and anchor in Provincetown Harbor. Hardly had this been accomplished
when the propeller of the tug dropped off. Had this happened when the
tug was attached to the barges or was battling the sea outside of Cape
Cod, it is quite probable the tug would have foundered and her entire
crew lost.
The barges left to the fury of the storm drove rapidly towards the
sand bars and on towards the beach. In this encounter with the sea the
Tunnel Ridge and the Coleraine were so badly smashed that they were not
worth any attempt to float them, and it was only by the prompt action
of the Highland Coast Guard crew that those on the barges were brought
safely to shore.
Capt. George Israel of the Manheim, a man of many experiences in
shipwrecks, believing he could save his vessel, dropped both anchors
off the bow of the barge. This only checked for a short time the onward
drive of the barge. Capt. Israel had mistaken the force of the sea on
the outside of Cape Cod in a storm, and his barge dragging her anchors
was forced nearer and nearer the shore, until he and his crew of four
men had to be brought ashore in the breeches buoy by the Coast Guard
men.
The fury of the gale and the high and rising tide soon forced the
barges well up on the beach, so that on the following morning one might
walk dry footed entirely around them. The Manheim escaped serious
injury. Then began an effort to float her. Soon it was found that the
action of the sea and tide was building up a great breakwater of sand
around the Tunnel Ridge and Coleraine which were stranded one on each
side of the Manheim. There could be no hope of floating the latter
until these hulks were removed. Kerosene was liberally poured over
them and on a dark night a torch was applied, and the burning hulls
lit up the sea and shore for many miles around. When it was decided to
burn the barges, Capt. Israel told E. Hayes Small if he would send a
gang of men on board and remove the deckhouses from the Coleraine he
could have them; he did so, and a few days work landed the houses on
the sands of the beach, where they were cut into three pieces. Some
planks were laid on the slope of the 100 feet high cliff, and with four
horses the three parts were skidded to the top of the cliffs; then on
trucks the parts were drawn to a point on the south side of the town
road leading to Highland Light, there put together and converted to a
three-room cottage. Later on, with a small addition on the south side,
made the club house of the Highland House golf links.
Capt. Israel, with two of his men, lived on the Manheim all winter,
and on the 4th day of April, 1916, just a year to a day from the
time the Manheim stranded, she was floated off and entered the coal
transportation business again.
[Illustration]
THE JOHN TRACY MYSTERY
On the 9th day of January, 1927, the big 2000 ton freighter John Tracy
of the M. & J. Tracy Transportation Line, with some 2500 tons of coal
for Boston, steamed out of the harbor of Philadelphia, but she never
reached her destination, and from that day to this no word has come
to land to tell what befell her. Every effort by search in every port
on the coast, by telephone, by wireless, and the hunt through every
possible avenue for information, failed to obtain the slightest clue
to the missing boat. Another tragedy of the sea had been added to the
long and ever increasing list of sea tragedies of lost ships that have
dropped beneath the sea.
Knowing the usual speed with which these ships move along the coast
and knowing the conditions which prevailed, it is estimated that this
ship would have been in the immediate vicinity of Highland Light on the
night of January 11th, when conditions on the sea were dark and stormy,
with a gale-driven fog over all the sea.
In the early morning of the 10th, the three masted schooner Charles
Whittemore, with a high deck load of piling (logs), bound from Portland
to New York, encountered a strong gale and rough sea when a few miles
east of Highland Light and her entire deck load of these big logs was
swept from her decks. It has been quite generally believed that the
Tracy, steaming up the coast in the darkness and storm, ran directly
into this mass of floating logs, and the fury of the sea drove one of
them through the steamer’s side and sent her to the bottom in a very
few minutes.
On the ship were thirty-one officers and men. No man or message ever
came back to tell how, why and where it happened. No wreckage came to
the surface or the shore, but this is readily explained because of the
fact that this was an iron ship, with very little material that could
be washed from her decks, so the ship carried everything with her when
she went to the bottom of the sea.
WRECK OF THE ROGER DICKY
On the first day of January, 1927, one of those fierce easterly gales
which frequently sweep the North Atlantic coast and the outside of Cape
Cod from Chatham to Boston Light, caught the fishing schooner Roger
Dicky in a dense fog and drove her hard and fast on the outside beach a
short distance beyond the Cahoon’s Hollow Coast Guard Station, within
the boundaries of Wellfleet.
[Illustration: ROGER DICKY
Wrecked on Cape Cod, January 1st, 1927]
She was coming in from the fishing grounds bound to Boston with 20,000
pounds of cod and haddock. The Coast Guardsmen from Cahoon’s Hollow
Station were promptly on hand and brought the entire ship’s crew of
fifteen men safely to shore.
The Dicky was a staunch craft, only a year old, but the terrific seas
soon made a complete wreck of her. She was a very modern boat and quite
up to date in equipment of electric lights, hot and cold water, and the
most valuable piece of her expensive furnishings was a $12,000 electric
engine.
When it was seen that the vessel must speedily break up, preparations
were made to strip from the hull everything of value that could be
moved.
This craft stranded directly in front of a hundred feet high cliff, and
the nearest place at which teams could approach the wreck was more than
two miles at Pamet River Coast Guard Station.
The rigging and sails were quickly taken off, but the great problem
which confronted them was how to land that engine.
At that time Mr. Hayes Small, of the Highland House Hotel, owned eight
powerful horses, and Capt. Pine, of Boston, who had been sent down by
the owners of the craft to take charge, made a contract with Mr. Small
to truck the engine along the beach up through the Pamet River valley
and on to Provincetown.
By lively work on the part of a gang of men the engine was removed from
the vessel to the waiting trucks and four horses pulled it quickly up
the beach and on to destination.
Three days later the Roger Dicky was only a mass of broken timbers and
twisted chains.
Fortunately no lives were lost in this disaster.
THE GETTYSBURG TOW
On the 21st day of June, 1927, the ocean-going tug Gettysburg, of the
Reading Coal Company, towing four empty barges from Portland for Port
Reading, Pennsylvania, was proceeding down the coast outside of Cape
Cod. When the tow had reached a point east of Race Point Light, the
wind, which had been strong from the northwest, began shifting to the
northeast and increasing in violence, but as it was fair and favorable
for running down the coast, the tow kept on instead of pulling up for
Provincetown.
Every moment the wind increased in force, and when the tow was four
miles east of Highland Light the wind had increased to a strong gale
and the sea had become very rough. Suddenly at noon the hawser holding
the tug to the first barge snapped and the four empty barges comprising
the tow were adrift in the raging sea.
Then the tug made strenuous efforts to recover the barges, but the gale
and the sea made this impossible.
All the while the storm and the sea were driving the helpless barges
nearer and nearer to the sea-swept sand bars where they might be torn
to pieces if their keels once touched the bottom. The crews on the
barges, realizing that there was no hope of the tug being able to
recover them, dropped all the anchors with which they were equipped.
This held them, but it was by no means certain that they would be able
to do so if the sea and gale further increased.
Capt. Andrews, of the Highland Coast Guard Station, assembled his
entire crew and they took their life-saving apparatus up to a point
directly opposite the Signal Station of the Weather Bureau on the
Highland Cliffs. The tide was running high and sweeping the entire foot
of the cliffs and it might be a question whether it would be possible
to use the gun and shot line from the shore. So Capt. Andrews placed
part of his crew on the cliffs and the others on the beach, and there
from this point they watched the situation through the night.
Fortunately the gale did not further increase and by mid-forenoon
of the following day the storm had so far moderated that it became
possible for the tug to return to pick up her barges and proceed to
destination.
The moderating of the gale made it possible to avert what might have
been another death-dealing disaster.
[Illustration: CLIFF WHERE THE COAST GUARD WATCHED THE DRIFTING BARGES]
LOSS OF THE ELSIA G. SILVA
The fishing schooner Elsia G. Silva of Gloucester, coming in from a
fishing trip to the South Shoals, off Nantucket, on the afternoon of
February 14th, 1927, encountered a strong wind with fog when nearing
Chatham Bars. This condition grew constantly worse and the storm
increased until it reached gale force, driving a high sea over the
outlying bars, and the thick mist obscured the shore of the entire
coast. The dense fog enveloped everything except the wildly rushing
sea, and before daylight the following morning the little schooner was
borne high upon the crest of the great white-capped waves, only the
next moment to be dashed into the deep hollows of the gale-swept sea as
it rushed onward towards the beach.
Her crew of sixteen men, with much difficulty and danger, clung to the
rigging of the tossing vessel.
The Coast Guardsmen from Cahoons Hollow Station promptly reached the
vicinity of the wave-swept boat, which soon stranded on the beach one
mile north of the station. They could render no help to the crew of the
Silva by means of boats or gear, and could only stand by to pull the
men from the surf as they were washed from her decks. One by one the
fishermen’s crew were pulled from the surf until the entire sixteen
were safely brought out of the surf that tore across the doomed craft’s
deck.
Soon the fury of the sea tore the vessel to pieces, carrying away
her deckhouses and all movable things from her deck. Soon the masts
fell with a crash into the sea, and sails, rigging and spars mixed in
a jumble of wreckage, and then was scattered along the sands of the
beach. The boat was carrying a fair catch of fish, all of which was
mixed with the wreckage and scattered in the sea.
Soon the men from the village came to the beach and gathered up such
material as had not already been swept far down the coast, and a few
days later only a protruding bit of broken spar or a bit of rope
dangling from some buried anchor marked the spot where the Elsia
stranded.
This again was another fortunate escape of the crew from the deck of a
wrecked vessel; only a little difference in the conditions might have
sent sixteen men to untimely deaths.
A TERRIBLE DISASTER
For several years the Pacific Mail Steamship Company has been operating
a fleet of several large ocean liners, each bearing the name of a
President of the United States. These ships had been making around the
world trips, and in 1927 one of these ships, the Presidente Wilson, was
under charter to the Cosulich Line, an Italian company.
In the autumn of 1927, the Presidente Wilson was returning from an all
around the world trip, with a large passenger list and tons of freight
from Europe and the Far East, to Boston. She had left Seattle quite a
number of days before, passed through the Panama Canal, touched at New
York and on to Boston, which would end the trip.
The weather held good until she had reached the vicinity of Nantucket
Shoals, where she ran into a dense fog, making it necessary to slow
down and pick her way through the fog that enveloped her and covered
all the coast.
She left New York on the morning of October 28th, and on the morning
of the 29th, at four o’clock in the morning, she had reached a point
four miles directly east of Highland Light. Out of the thick mist not
a hundred yards away, directly in the ship’s path, loomed the masts
and faint outlines of a fishing schooner, which later proved to be the
Avalon, a vessel of about a hundred tons, with home port at Gloucester,
bound on a fishing trip to the banks. She had left Boston the afternoon
before and was jogging along under short sail waiting for the fog to
lift. She was under such small amount of sail that she could not have
moved had she made the attempt.
The oncoming great ship, towering many feet above her, had no chance to
swing clear of the fishing craft and amid the clanging of bells, the
blast of steam whistles, and the shouts and screams of those both on
the big ship and on the fishing boat, they came together with a crash.
The momentum of the huge craft carried her right on over the Avalon and
sent her, broken and wrecked, to the bottom of the sea, carrying with
her nearly all of her crew, who were imprisoned in her cabin. From the
time of the crash until she had disappeared beneath the sea, there had
been no time for the crew to escape.
The Avalon had a crew of sixteen men and only three of them escaped
with their lives, these three being the deck watch at the time. The
other thirteen were in their bunks and had no chance to get to the
surface before death overtook them.
Boats from the ship were promptly put over and with those of other
vessels which happened to be nearby cruised about the waters for
several hours, but no other man of the fishing boat crew was recovered.
An hour after the disaster, the fog which had been responsible for this
tragedy cleared all away, the sun shone brightly and the blue waters of
the sea rolled smoothly on. The big liner steamed away on her course
and thirteen unfortunate sailors lay dead on the bottom of the sea.
Those who go down to the sea in ships do not know what may be in store
for them.
[Illustration]
TERRIBLE SUBMARINE DISASTER
A certain section of the waters in and around Provincetown Harbor
have for several years been used as the testing ground for new or
reconditioned submarines of the U. S. Navy.
Early in December of 1927, the submarine S-4 was at this testing
ground, standardizing her engines following some changes which had
been completed at the Charlestown Navy Yard. Her complement of forty
officers and men were on board, and two civilian visitors.
In the early afternoon of December 17th this submarine went under to
test some part of her machinery and a little workout, and steamed
submerged out of the harbor; when about half a mile south of the Wood
End Lighthouse, and directly in the channel for vessels leaving or
entering the harbor, started to come to the surface. Just at this
moment, coming in from a patrol cruise along the coast, came the Coast
Guard cutter Paulding, steaming for an anchorage in the harbor at a
sixteen miles an hour speed, and crashed with great force into the
side of the submarine, just breaking the surface water. The sharp iron
stem of the Paulding tore a great ragged hole in the side of the S-4,
just forward of the conning tower, and passed completely over her. The
torrent of water which poured through this hole sent the under-sea boat
to the bottom of the sea in five minutes, with her crew of forty-two
imprisoned in her iron hull, with walls that barred their escape from
certain death. Caught like rats in a trap without the possibility or
hope of escape, they were sealed up in their coffin more than one
hundred feet beneath the sea.
When this disaster became known, and it was within five minutes of
the crash, radio and wireless messages sent it to every section of
the country. It sent a thrill of horror to every point the news had
reached; the awful tidings were broadcast to the whole country and even
to points in Europe.
Every available means of possible rescue were hurried to the scene. A
dozen deep sea divers were rushed by train and auto from New London.
Provincetown was the nearest point of approach to the location of the
disaster. Big ships and tugs carrying chains and appliances were rushed
forward by every available means, hoping to accomplish something
towards raising the sunken boat before all her officers and men had
perished by drowning or suffocation.
There was hope that at least some of the men might have been able to
close the watertight compartments before they were overcome by the
inrushing current.
Many kinds of appliances were hurried to the locality by fast ships;
many tugs and steamers gathered over the place where the S-4 lay at the
bottom of the sea off Long Point. Over the sunken boat white-capped
waves were breaking, forced over the surging waters of the bay by a
thirty-mile northwest gale.
As soon as the divers reached the locality a man was sent down and
succeeded in placing a chain over the bow of the submarine; they had
hoped to raise the bow enough to tip the bow towards the surface, but
failed to offer any help.
Again a man was sent down with a hammer, and instructed to pound along
the iron sides of the sunken boat; if he got any response from the
inside it would indicate that there was life there.
The diver when a short distance forward of the locality of the conning
tower and the great hole which had been torn open by the Paulding when
she overwhelmed the under-sea boat, heard a responsive tapping from
the inside. Then the diver tapped out in the telegraph code, “Are
you alive.” The answer quickly came back, “Yes, six of us are alive
here.” Again the diver tapped, “Everything possible is being done to
help you.” Again from the inside, “The air is very bad in here, please
hurry.” This was Sunday afternoon, twenty-four hours after the disaster.
When it was found that six men were still alive renewed and strenuous
efforts were made to reach the men. All day Sunday and all Sunday night
a hundred men with such appliances as it was possible to get, labored
to bring the bow of the boat to the surface.
Late in the afternoon of Sunday a diver went down and in response
to his tapping found that the six men were still alive, but they
signalled, “We are still alive but growing weaker. We cannot stand it
much longer. Please hurry.”
The diver’s tapping along all other parts of the ship obtained no other
response.
The other men on the boat had been imprisoned either in the engine room
or the after compartments and were all probably drowned when the ship
went to the bottom.
Monday morning brought no change or any hope of relief. The northwest
gale had become bitterly cold, and it was more and more certain that
not a man on the boat was alive, as these men had been entombed more
than forty-eight hours, so the probability or even possibility of any
man being alive down there a hundred feet under the sea was remote
indeed.
What still further added to the horror of the situation, the increasing
cold and freezing winds drove the rescuers from their work, because it
was impossible to send divers down. By this time the imprisoned men had
been so long in their iron coffin, it was not possible that human life
could endure for that time or withstand the terrible conditions.
Sunday night two monstrous pontoons were brought to the scene, hoping
by their use the bow of the boat might be brought to the surface. These
pontoons were brought from New London by four powerful tugs, through
the Cape Cod Canal, but this was unavoidably slow on account of the
unwieldy shape of the tow and there was no hope that these pontoons
could reach the spot until it was too late.
Eight skilled divers were already on the scene. Diver Thomas Eadie
went over the side earlier in the day and it was he who was able to
communicate with the entombed men by means of the hammer tapping
signals.
The last signals tapped from the inside of the ship were, “How long
will you be now, hurry.”
Late Sunday P. M. diver Michaels heard from the dying men, “We cannot
live beyond six o’clock.”
In some way this diver’s life line became entangled in a part of the
ragged hole in the hull, and though he struggled frantically to clear
himself, after he had been down more than half an hour it became
evident that something was wrong. Then diver Eadie, with a hack saw,
went down and found Michaels badly tangled in projecting bits of broken
iron of the hull, and it required another half hour for Eadie to saw
off the piece of iron that held Michaels. He had been held there more
than two and a half hours and another half hour would have resulted in
his death. He was hurried to a hospital in Boston and was ill for some
time.
Up to this time every effort to raise the boat or rescue any one of her
crew had utterly failed and some of the boats and gear departed for
other duties.
The attempts to rescue these imprisoned men encountered awfully adverse
conditions.
This disaster happened on Sunday, on that afternoon, and on Monday,
the next day, had there been adequate saving appliances at hand it is
believed some of the men might have been saved, but it required so
much time to get them on the ground that all attempts were futile.
Another case where men have gone down in the deep sea in a vessel that
was the meanest type of craft ever conceived by man.
Forty good men sent to untimely graves because someone failed to
observe proper care.
“Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do or die,
Somebody blundered.”
What a miscarriage of justice this building of this type of vessel is.
If these vessels are built for fighting purposes, it is an uncivilized
method of warfare and every nation on the earth should be barred from
building another submarine. Already we have sent the battleships to the
scrapheap. By all means send the submarine to join them.
In regard to the wretched lack of proper appliances for handling
such a terrible disaster, we see one more tragedy. Men familiar with
submarines, their building and handling, declare that it was a case
of criminal carelessness on the part of the Government and the Navy
Department in particular.
Secretary Wilbur, of the United States Navy, visited the locality of
the disaster and ordered that the work of salvaging the submarine and
bringing out the bodies must proceed until every one is brought to
shore.
On the 4th day of January three bodies were recovered from the engine
room of the under-sea boat and in time the others in the after
compartments will be brought to the surface.
Representative Gifford came on from Washington to learn from personal
observation if everything possible had been done to save the men from
their coffin.
Among the crew of the S-4 when she went down was a seaman by the
name of Walter Bishop. He had previously been on a submarine when an
accident happened, and among his effects, left with relatives, was
found a poem of thirteen verses, in which he described the situation
and conditions on these ships in full detail. We have room for only the
first verse, which certainly hits the mark.
“IN THE CANKEROUS MIND OF THE DEVIL,
THERE FESTERED A FIENDISH SCHEME,
HE CALLED HIS COHORTS TOGETHER,
AND THEY DESIGNED THE SUBMARINE.”
The time having long passed when it was possible for any human being to
be alive, the only thing to do was to some day raise the boat to the
surface.
Submarines have figured in some of the most awful tragedies of modern
times. Only a partial record is available, but a recent statement of
the story discloses that no less than 295 human beings have gone to
death in submarines in the last decade.
In 1923 a Japanese boat carried down to death eighty-five persons. In
1925 the No. 51 with thirty-three men, and now the S-4 with forty.
[Illustration: THE MUTE REMAINS OF A TRAGEDY OF THE SEA]
STRANDING OF THE ROBERT E. LEE
On the afternoon of March 9th, 1928, a northeast wind pushed in from
the sea and by five P. M. it had developed into a howling gale with
blinding snow. Out from her home dock at India Wharf in Boston the big
passenger and freight boat _Robert E. Lee_ pulled out for her trip to
New York, via the Cape Cod Canal. The storm instead of diminishing grew
constantly worse, but she ploughed her way through the wildly rushing
sea, and though only two miles from the beach along the Manomet and
Sandwich shores not a glimpse could be had of the land through the snow
filled air, and navigation became a matter of dead reckoning and a hope
to pick up the lighthouse at the Cape Cod Bay entrance of the Canal.
When the ship had reached a point about two miles from the Canal
entrance she crashed with terrific force upon the rocks of a projecting
ledge and was there held fast on the “Mary Ann Rocks,” a short distance
south of the Manomet Coast Guard station. This found the _Robert Lee_
in a most dangerous position, where the great seas driving straight
across Cape Cod Bay swept the ship from stem to stern. The ship carried
150 passengers and a crew of 110.
S. O. S. calls were quickly sent out and Coast Guard and Naval boats
hurried to the scene.
The Coast Guard boats from Gurnet, Manomet, Sandwich and Provincetown
were promptly brought into service, but as the conditions of wind
and sea were so dangerous it was not deemed advisable to attempt the
transfer of the passengers from the stranded ship just then.
Towards morning the fury of the gale having subsided the work of taking
off the passengers began, and was successfully accomplished a few hours
later with no serious mishap to the passengers and the ship’s crew
remained on board. But the affair was not to escape without the tragedy
of the loss of human lives.
The Coast Guard boat of the Manomet Station in trying to make
connection with the stranded steamer, was caught under the bow by a
huge sea that swept fiercely around the counter of the _Lee_, turned
the boat completely over and sent her crew of eight men helplessly
into the sea, four of them clung desperately to the overturned boat,
the other four struck out in an attempt to reach the shore, but those
clinging to the boat and those fighting for the shore were finally
rescued. But those from the overturned boat were so thoroughly chilled
and exhausted that they were immediately hurried to Chelsea Hospital
where three of them died.
If there are people who think that the men who man the stations along
our storm swept coasts have a sinecure, would they like to have been in
the Manomet surf boat that day?
Many names of heroes are emblazoned upon the scroll of human endeavor
the world over but there are deeds equally as deserving of record that
pass unnoticed and unsung.
The recent disaster on the rocks at Manomet brought prominently before
us several instances of unselfish heroism, not on bloody fields of
battle, but in the freezing waters of the cruel sea.
Not detracting in the least from the brave efforts of the Coast
Guardsmen, three of whom gave up their lives in the struggle, or the
men and boy who pushed out in small and leaking boats to help, there
was one case of glorious heroism that stands out preeminently, and
whose name should stand high up on the roll of honor, and that is
Ernest Douglas, a man unskilled in the use of boats, but he stripped
from his clothing his money and watch, handed them to a friend, and as
he sprang into the surf boat to take the place of an absent member of
the Surf Boat crew, called back to his friend on shore, “If I do not
come back give them to my wife.”
We are glad to record that he did come back safely.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: (logo on back cover)]
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