THE BARTA PRESS, PRINTERS
BOSTON, MASS.
The Life Savers of Cape Cod.
[Illustration: SURFMAN WALKER, ORLEANS STATION, DRESSED FOR STORMY
NIGHT ON THE BEACH.]
Cape Cod’s life savers are known the world over for their intrepid,
enduring bravery, gallant deeds, and the success in rescuing life that
they have achieved in their hazardous duties along the most dangerous
winter coast of the world.
Every night, along the shores of Cape Cod, from Wood End at
Provincetown to Monomoy at Chatham, in moonlight, starlight, thick
darkness, driving tempest, wind, rain, snow or hail, an endless line of
life savers steadily march along the exposed beaches on the outlook for
endangered vessels.
The life saver’s work is always arduous, often terrible. Quicksands,
the blinding snow and cutting sand storms, the fearful blasts of winter
gales, are more often than not to be encountered on their journeys;
storm tides, flooding the beaches, drive them to the tops or back of
the sand dunes, where they plod along their solitary patrol with great
peril.
When a ship is in distress, whatever way the crew is rescued by the
life savers, the task involves great hazard of their lives, hours of
racking labor, protracted exposure to the roughest weather conditions,
and a mental and bodily strain under the spur of exigency and the curb
of discipline that exhaust even these hardy fearless coast guardians.
In cases of boat service tremendous additional peril and hardships are
added.
Death has often claimed the life saver at his work. Or as a result of
his gallant, unselfish toil for the safety of others in the rigors of
winter, one life saver after another is compelled to retire from the
service on account of shattered health.
[Illustration: MAP OF CAPE COD, SHOWING LOCATION OF U. S. L. S.
STATIONS.
Small circles show where principal wrecks have taken place within past
fifty years.]
Beyond their wages of sixty-five dollars per month the surfmen receive
no allowances or emoluments of any kind except the quarters and fuel
provided at the stations.
No person belonging to the service is allowed to hold an interest in
or to be connected with any wrecking company, nor is he entitled to
salvage upon any property he may save or assist to save. A surfman
cannot be discharged from the service without good and sufficient
reason. For well proven neglect of patrol duty or for disobedience or
insubordination at a wreck the keeper may instantly discharge him;
in all other cases special authority must be first obtained from the
general superintendent.
The keeper lives at his station throughout the year, thus being on hand
during the two summer months to summon the crew and volunteers in case
of shipwreck or accident.
In “The Life Savers of Cape Cod” it has been the aim of the author
to pen-picture some of the heroic deeds performed by these guardians
of the “ocean graveyard,” as the shores of Cape Cod are known, the
terrible hardships they are called upon to endure, and the peril they
constantly face in the work of saving life and property, together
with illustrations of the life-saving stations on Cape Cod, the
boats, beach apparatus, breeches-buoy, etc., used in saving lives,
photographs of the crews of the different stations, a historical sketch
of the life-saving service, and stories of historic disasters, with
biographies of the life savers of Cape Cod, their duties, manner of
living, and their achievements.
Cape Cod extends directly out into the Atlantic, like a gigantic
arm with clutched hand, bidding defiance to the mighty ocean, for
a distance of forty miles. Shifting sand bars parallel its eastern
shores, which are an unbroken line of sandy beaches from Monomoy Point
at Chatham to Wood End at Provincetown, a distance of about fifty
miles. Myriads of shoals lie along the coast, and unnumbered vessels
have met their doom along its shores, which rightly bear the name
“Ocean Graveyard.”
The shores of Cape Cod from Monomoy to Wood End are literally strewn
with the bones of once staunch crafts, while unmarked graves in the
burial-places in the villages along the coast mutely relate the sad
tale of the sacrifice of human life.
Scenes of awful terror and heroic rescues have taken place at the time
of shipwreck along these shifting sand bars, and here, too, the life
savers have given up their lives in devotion to their duty.