Chapter III: Part 3

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.

Dialect spellings were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced.

Illustrations in this eBook have been positioned between paragraphs and outside quotations. In versions of this eBook that support hyperlinks, the page references in the List of Illustrations lead to the corresponding illustrations.