[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.”