It is bad enough to move Coast Guard apparatus along the level ocean
shore, dragging it through the sand, but to move it back from the
ocean, up and down over the uneven line of the sand dunes, is more
difficult still. When the ocean is up to the foot of the dunes and is
biting angrily at their bases this difficult portage has to be made.
The Vanton house was not more than a half mile east of the Lone Cove
Station, so the Coast Guardsmen’s task was not as bad as it might have
been in this respect. Sometimes it is necessary to drag life boats
mounted on trucks, and all the other paraphernalia, for several miles.
To be able to work with such a base as this big house right at hand was
an immense advantage, and to be able to work in the lee of it, more or
less huddled under its eastern wall, seemed a piece of fortune hardly
less great.
Everything else was about the worst it could have been in the
circumstances. The darkness was absolute. The gale was of hurricane
force, blowing at more than 60 miles an hour. It was early in the
evening, not yet ten o’clock, and there was all the night to fight
through. The barometer, as Keeper Tom Lupton well knew, was still
falling, and the height of the storm had probably not been reached
and would not be reached until toward morning. The chance of the sky
lightening, until daybreak compelled a recession of the darkness, was
almost nil. The chance of the wind abating was no better. And even
should the night become a little lighter and the wind lessen, the
tremendous seas which were assaulting the sand dunes and breaking over
the stranded ship would not go down. It takes hours after a heavy gale
for the sea it has kicked up to lessen perceptibly.
The wind, against which a man could sometimes hardly stand or keep upon
his feet, was not the worst thing for those who had to make the fight
to save life from the shore. It was hailing intermittently and the
ice particles were fairly driven into the skin of men’s faces like a
peppering of fine shot. There was little snow on the ground, which was
a thing to be thankful for. More, however, would come later when the
wind began to abate.
Keeper Tom marshalled his men and his machinery as close as possible
to the Vanton house. Within forty minutes from the time he himself
finished speaking with Richard Hand, his men and his apparatus were
posted and he was ready to begin operations. In the meantime, Dick Hand
had bumped against him in the blackness and shouted indistinctly:
“Tommy!... Dick! Anything you want ... help you....”
“Thanks!” the keeper had bawled back with his hands on his old friend’s
shoulders.
The little cannon began booming and a thin line began whipping seaward.
Nothing was visible. What those ashore would have seen, if there had
been light, was a three-masted ship which had struck the outer bar
and had been driven past that until she lay on the inner bar, so far
inshore that it might have been possible to wade to her at low tide
in peaceful weather. The stress of her blow on the outer bar and the
pounding to which she had been subjected in being driven past it, as
well as the continuous assault she was now under, had battered her very
badly. She had not opened up at her seams but would, and at almost any
instant. Her foremast had been carried away completely--snapped off
a few feet above her deck. Some of her yards--the spars carrying her
sails--were gone; two of these dangled loosely, menacing the lives of
any one on her decks. But there was no one on her decks. All hands had,
of necessity, taken to the rigging.
They could just be glimpsed by the flare of her rocketing distress
signals--little dark figures in the maintop, in the topgallant
crosstrees, in the mizzen shrouds. They appeared not at all human. They
seemed to be nothing but slight lumps or warts on the fine tracery of
the rigging, the slender filaments of masts and yards and stays, wood,
wire and rope, limned against the formidable blackness in which sky and
sea met each other and were indistinguishable.
No boat, of course, could live for a moment in the sea that was raging.
The only chance was in getting a line to the vessel. And in doing that
every instant counted.
The first shots with the line were useless, as was to have been
expected. It was necessary to determine direction and drift, and to
make a heavy and exact allowance for windage. The ship lay directly
south, the gale was from the southwest. The line had to be shot almost
straight against the wind, which then carried it to the south. But so
shot, it became evident that it was falling short. A heavier charge was
used and still the line fell short.
“We can’t stay here,” bellowed Keeper Tom who, when he wanted to give
an order, was under the practical necessity of bawling it separately
in each man’s ear. “We’ll have to leave the lee of the house and go to
windward, well to windward.”
This was that they might not have to shoot the line squarely in
the teeth of the gale when the wind, getting under it, lifted it
high in the air and seriously shortened the horizontal distance it
travelled--like a “pop” fly in a baseball game or a golf ball driven
straight into the wind.
Leaving the lee of the Vanton house was just another hardship added
to those they were already enduring. All the apparatus was moved and
a post was taken on a dune well to the west. From this site better
results were got almost immediately. The gale still carried the line to
the eastward but this could be allowed for and the lateral journey of
the line was not materially lessened. After a few shots to get the wind
allowance the line was dropped squarely over the wreck.