USA > New Jersey > The New Jersey coast in three centuries; history of the New Jersey coast with genealogical and historic-biographical appendix, Vol. I > Part 49
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When the tent was completed and the company were comfortably,
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sheltered, the boat was passed to and fro again through the surf to bring provisions on shore. A party of seamen remained on board for this pur- pose, loading the boat at the ship and drawing it out again when unloaded on the shore. The company assembled under the tent dried their clothes by fires built for the purpose and then made a rude breakfast from the pro- visions brought from the ship; and when thus in some degree rested and refreshed, they were all conveyed safely in boats to the mainland.
A most distressing shipwreck was that of the ship "Catherine Jack- son,' wrecked on Squan Beach, in a year not now identified. It was before the organization of a life saving service, and before life saving appliances were in use. The narrative which follows is substantially as it was subse- quently given by Captain Samuel P. Curtis, of Squan, who was the hero of the occasion, and who was hailed as saviour by the three hundred and seventy people whom he safely landed with loss of not a single life :
"I went to the beach, as was my usual custom, about three o'clock in the morning, and saw a ship ashore. I got my crew and launched my boat, against the persuasions and protests of many friends on shore, as the sea was so rough that there was danger of drowning all hands. I said, 'They must all drown on board the ship unless some one goes to them,' and I asked my men if they were willing to go. They said, 'We'll do as you do.' Then I said, "Well, strip yourselves and we'll go to the ship.' The sea was then so rough as to cover all but the highest sandhills, and from one of these we shoved off our boat, and in about ten minutes reached the ill- fated ship.
"I got up in the mizzen rigging and asked, 'Where is the captain of this ship?' 'I am the captain. My God; we must all be drowned!' I said, 'There is no such letters in the book. We will cut her masts away, and she will right up on her feet.' He contended that she would not do it and I contended that she would. He then said, 'Do as you please. I place the ship in your hands.'
"Then I ordered his men to cut away the main and fore lanyard, all but the fore and main backstays. Then, after lashing a man to the fiferail of the mainmast, and another to that of the foremast, I ordered them to cut the mast as the sea left them; as it came on they were submerged. They succeeded in cutting off the masts, which fell after the backstays were cut.
"After she went overboard she came up on her bottom on the second or third sea and swung head inshore, so high out of water that the sea did not break over her stern.
"Then I shoved off the booby hatches and let the passengers out of the hold, who were standing in water two or three feet deep, and the chil- dren locked in the windward bunks. Then I told the captain I must leave
HISTORY OF THE NEW JERSEY COAST. 457
him as my boat would not live alongside the ship, and that I did not wish to imperil my crew, and that I would be back as soon as the tide fell. The captain wanted to go on shore with me, but I told him he had better stay aboard and take care of his ship and passengers.
"When we landed we found that a boat's crew had attempted and failed to board the bark "Esperanza," which lay ashore about half a mile south from where the 'Catherine Jackson' lay. One of the underwriters' agents said to me, 'You are so smart you had better take your crew and their boat and board her.' I said, 'Perhaps they will not let me have her.' I then asked the captain, who gave his consent, saying, 'We can't board her.'
"We then took their boat and boarded the 'Esperanza.' And, although the sea was very rough, we brought the captain, crew and all hands safely to shore.
"As the tide had fallen, I and my crew went back to the 'Catherine Jackson,' on board of which were three hundred and seventy anxious souls. There were no life-saving crews or apparatus at that time, yet by sun- down on that memorable day every soul from the ill-fated ship was safely landed on shore."
Below are briefly narrated the circumstances attending a number of wrecks which have occurred since the establishment of the Life Saving Service.
A dreadful disaster was that of the capsizing of the yacht "A. B. Thompson," in Atlantic City Inlet, July IS, 1874. The lost were Daniel O. Sharpless and wife, with their daughter, Caroline, Master Alfred Sharpless and Miss Anna Roberts. Mrs. Edward Bettle and a Mr. Clarke were saved.
The steamship "South Carolina," from Charleston to New York, went ashore at Barnegat Inlet, December 22, 1874. All on board, forty- six souls, were saved.
The "Margaret and Lucy" three-master, Captain Benjamin Wick, sailing from New York to Charleston, was stranded near Toms River March 2, 1877. The vessel went to pieces so suddenly during the night that all on board perished, and their bodies were picked up during the two days following, on Squan Beach, twelve miles distant.
The bark "Bethany," Captain Walter J. Bendell, from Hong Kong to New York, was wrecked March 9, 1877, on Two-mile Beach. The crew of eleven men were saved, with a portion of the cargo of tea, silks and china, valued at $600,000. The vessel was a total loss.
The steamship "Rusland," sailing from Antwerp to New York, on the night of March 17, 1877, struck on the wreck of the sunken "Adonis." at Long Branch, opposite the cottage of General U. S. Grant, and went
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to pieces. The two hundred and four people on board were all saved by the Life Saving crew and citizens.
Among the annals of sea adventure and escape, one incident of occur- rence on the New Jersey coast is of thrilling interest.
On the morning of January 23, 1878, the seventy ton schooner "Twvi- light" was storm-caught, torn from her anchorage in the inlet off Rum Point and driven out to sea. The only soul on board was a fifteen year old lad, Adolphus Parker. The boy clung desperately to the wheel, its hold- ing taxing his strength to the utmost as the rudder was beaten backward and forth by the fierce hammering of the waves. In passing out of the inlet the vessel struck the ground and then veered northward. The little hero made endeavor to steer her ashore on Brigantine Beach, but his effort was in yain. Then he dropped the kedge anchor, the only one he could reach, which failed to hold. The life saving crew discovered his plight, but their boat could not make its way through the raging surf. The little sailor kept his post at the wheel throughout that day in sight of hun- dreds of people on shore who, aware of his peril, anxiously watched the craft they were unable to reach. All the following night, too, he kept his weary watch, still at the wheel, and holding his vessel head to the wind. With the dawn of morning he went below for food, and on the instant was almost run down by a passing vessel. Before he could explain his predica- ment and ask for aid the stranger was far beyond his call.
The weather continued thick, but the boy's endurance remained and he headed his craft landward. Before nightfall he again saw the shore and made gallant endeavor to steer toward the inlet out of which he had been driven, but was unable to complete his task. He finally beached the ship at Shell Gut Inlet, near Little Egg Harbor life saving station, by whose crew he was brought ashore, while the "Twilight" went to pieces., When young Parker was rescued he was physically collapsed, and his hands were bruised and bleeding from his long struggle with the wheel. It was several months before he recovered from the exhaustion of his dreadful ordeal.
In the dreadful storm of February 3, 1880, which is referred to in another chapter in connection with the award of Life Saving Service Medals of Honor, the three-masted schooner "Stephen Harding," loaded with lumber, bound from Florida to: New York, struck one mile north of Sta- tion No. 2 (Captain J. W. Edwards, Keeper) at two o'clock in the morn- ing. A line was sent aboard, and all were safely landed-Captain Harding and his wife, the crew of six men, and a young man named William Ray, who had been picked up at sea, the sole survivor of the crew of the "Kate Newman," sunk in collision with another vessel.
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About the same time the brig "Castalia," loaded with cotton, and bound from Galveston to New York, went ashore three-quarters of a mile from Station Nc. 3, Captain A. H. West. In three and one-half hours all aboard the vessel, the captain and his wife, and a crew of ten men, were safely landed.
At five o'clock the same morning, the schooner "Light Boat," bound from Norfolk to New York, went ashore, and this crew were rescued by the men of Life Saving Station No. 5, Captain W. S. Green, Keeper.
The same night when occurred the before mentioned disasters, the schooner "George Taulane," bound from Virginia to New York, manned by a crew of six men, was driven ashore two miles south of Station No. II. Captain Britton C. Miller, Station Keeper, with his men, proceeded toward the wreck and were met by the crew of Station No. 12, Captain William P. Chadwick, who came with their gun and other apparatus. The united crews now engaged in a struggle which taxed their courage and physical endurance to the utmost. The vessel was four hundred yards from the beach, and the seas were breaking so high that the men were forced into the rigging. Several shots were discharged from the line-carrying gun, but fell short, and the life savers took to the water in an ineffectual effort to put a line aboard the vessel, sustaining bruises from the floating wreck- age which, in some instances, were hurtful for months afterward. The schooner rolled and drifted along the coast and the life savers followed, traveling in all about three miles, dragging their heavy equipment with them, through treacherous sand and deep lagoons. A vantage point was finally reached, communication with the vessel was established, and all its crew were brought to land save two men who had become benumbed by the cold and had fallen out of the rigging to die by drowning.
Near Ocean City is to be seen a portion of the hull of the brigantine "Zetland," bound from Turk's Island to Philadelphia, which was stranded November 2, 1881. The captain had died at sea, and the vessel was lost through the ignorance of the crew, none of whom understood navigation. No lives were lost.
The Spanish brig "Panchito" went ashore near Ocean City, February 13, 1888. The thirteen people on board were saved. The ship was loaded with logwood, and pieces of the timber are afloat on the coast to the pres- ent day.
The bark "Geestemande" went ashore September 12, 1889, opposite the lower part of Atlantic City. No lives were lost.
The Spanish steamer "Viscaya" and the schooner "Cornelius Har- grave" came in collision October 30, 1890, off Barnegat, and both vessels
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went down. Fifty-nine of the ninety-three men on board the "Viscaya" were lost. Ten of the crew of the "Hargrave" were saved.
The sloop "Sallie and Eliza" was capsized in a heavy sea, August 20, 1892, near Ocean City. The owner, Captain Hackett, was swept over- board and drowned. The only other occupant of the vessel was rescued by Captain J. S. Willets, of the Ocean City Life Saving Station, with a volun- teer crew, and the feat is recalled as one of the bravest and most daring known in the annals of the coast.
The ship "Francis" caught fire and was burned on the bar opposite Little Egg Harbor Inlet, May 8, 1897. The crew of twenty-five men were saved.
The steamer "Antilla," bound from the Bahamas to New York, ran ashore in a fog December 24, 1900, on the Great Egg Harbor bar. The people on board were taken off by the Life Saving crew and the vessel was afterward floated.
December 4, 1900, the schooner "Oliver Scofield" became water- logged in a storm off Chadwick, in Ocean county. The surfmen imme- diately went out with beach apparatus and upon arriving abreast of her fired a line over her. Her main and mizzen masts had already gone by the . board, and the foremast fell about the time the line was placed aboard. The cargo of lumber was washed off, and much debris surrounded the wreck, which lay about two hundred yards from the beach. The hawser was finally set up and three men were hauled ashore in the buoy. By this time the Mantoloking crew arrived and assisted in the rescue. While the fourth man was being taken ashore the whip parted, having been chafed off by the wreckage, and he had to be hauled back to the wreck. The broken part was then sent off by the sound part, and the fourth man was landed. This left the master and mate aboard, and the whip having parted again in landing the last man, the broken part was once more started off by the sound part. It was caught and held fast in the wreckage, however, and no further use could be made of it. The hawser was now hauled taut, and the master and mate made their way along it, hand over hand. The surfmen waded out with the lines, which they passed around the two men, while those on the beach hauled in. All were finally landed in safety, but several of the life-savers had been more or less injured by being knocked down by the seas or struck by the floating debris. The ยท shipwrecked men were served with hot coffee at the station, and the keeper gave them dry clothes from the stores of the Women's National Relief Association box. They were succored at the station two days. The vessel was a total loss.
January 20, 1901, the schooner "A. J. Coleman" was stranded off
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Atlantic City during a storm, having sprung a leak which compelled the master to run for a harbor. The crew hoisted a signal of distress and then took to the rigging. After a hard struggle the surfmen reached the wreck and took the crew of four men from the rigging into the surf-boat. This was accomplished, however, by work involving great peril, as the deck load of lumber was being washed off the schooner by the heavy sea and the masts were tottering. Within ten minutes after the rescue was made the masts fell, and within half an hour not a vestige of the wreck re- mained on the bar. The rescued crew were taken to the station, where they were furnished with food and dry clothing from the stores of the Women's National Relief Association.
March 11, 1901, the schooner "Nathaniel T. Parker" went ashore at Long Beach, about three o'clock in the morning. She was discovered by the life saving patrol about fifteen minutes later, and surfmen reached the scene with their beach apparatus at 4:30 a. m. Assisted by the crew from Bonds Stations, the surfmen fired across the schooner a line, which her crew failed to find. They fired a second line, and then the schooner's crew found the first line and hauled off the whip. The crew of twelve men on the schooner were safely landed in the breeches buoy. Afterwards, the surf becoming smooth, a wrecking vessel took the crew back to their vessel and released her on the 19th instant.
The British schooner "Mola" went ashore at Chadwick some days later. Surfmen from both Chadwick and Toms River station reached the wreck at 4:45 a. m., the Chadwick crew having their beach apparatus. They threw a heaving line on board, set up the gear, safely landed the crew of eight men in the breeches buoy, and took them to the Chadwick station, where the keeper supplied them with food and dry clothes from the stores of the Women's National Relief Association. At low water the surfmen went aboard the wreck and carried to the station the personal effects of the crew. A wrecking company floated the schooner on May 9th and towed her to New York for repairs.
The Italian bark "Bianca Aspasia" stranded at Ship Bottom about midnight on May 23, 1901. The night was very dark and there was a rough sea. Surfmen quickly dragged their beach apparatus to the scene and, assisted by the crew from Long Beach Station, fired a line across the vessel, but her crew) were unable to find it. They fired another, and the crew on board hauled off the whip line, but they made it fast improperly and the surfmen could not set up the gear. As daylight was then breaking the keeper launched the surf-boat, boarded the wreck and, after making five trips, safely landed the crew of fifteen men and their clothing. The crew was succored at the station for three days and the master for six days.
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Wreckers stripped the bark of her sails and rigging, but the hull and cargo became a total loss.
The barkentine "Antilla," of Boston, Captain James Reed, bound from Montevideo to New York, went ashore on Long Beach, March 28, 1902. All on board were saved by the Life Saving Crew and the affair is worthy or narration as illustrative of the operations of the splendid service of the present time.
The weather had been thick and foggy from the evening previous to the disaster, and the life savers at Long Beach station doubled the night patrol and kept up flaming fires. The vessel struck about five o'clock in the morning, and pounded hard on the strand, while the heavy breakers covered her almost continually. The commander sent up blue rockets, the call for immediate assistance, which was answered from on shore almost on the instant. Within a quarter of an hour the life saving crew! had brought their apparatus to the beach opposite the wreck, which was two hundred yards off the shore. The sea was running too high to risk a life boat, and after several ineffectual attempts a line fired from the mortar found lodgment across the bows of the vessel, and a cable was hauled aboard. The breeches buoy was attached and set in operation, making eighteen trips, each time bringing a man ashore. This was not accom- plished without great peril, the buoy in each passage being overwhelmed by the breakers, and all but drowning the occupant. Several of the sailors needed restoratives, and one was finally resuscitated after it appeared that life was extinct. At the life saving station all the shipwrecked men were provided with dry clothing and were abundantly fed.
While the record of foreign wrecks upon the coast is appalling, it is to be noted that the people of that region have also been great sufferers. In 1888 Mr. Heston, in his "Hand Book of Atlantic City," asserted that during the preceding fifty years no less than fifty vessels hailing from At- lantic City alone, an average of one a year, had left port under fair skies never to return, vessels and crews having been swallowed up in some storm or having otherwise perished at sea. About the same number of vessels from that county had also been wrecked somewhere on the coast, but the greater number of the men aboard were saved. During the period covered two hundred and fifty-three lives were lost, and about two million dollars in property.
From the earliest times of its history, vague stories of smuggling and piracy have been rife concerning Sandy Hook. A good proportion of such stories was either fabulous or was founded on such slim foundation of fact that the foundation itself has disappeared. In its early ante-resort
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days it must have been a wild and deserted place, its storms even more ter- rible than now, and the imaginations of the few visitors were quickened by the wind and desolation, the solemn stillness that prevailed, except for the low moaning of the sea in times of placidity, or its terrible howling when the Atlantic, roused to fury, seemed to break in all its anger on the sandy bar. Little wonder that popular imagination and innate human su- perstition associated the dunes and creeks and bays and points with tales of strange, weird doings, and that such stories gathered in importance and weirdness and tragedy as they sped on from mouth to mouth. Such stories have become too vague to be regarded as history, but it is a pity that some of them had not been preserved. Many of the exploits of Heyler and Mar- riner, the patriot freebooters, were performed in these waters.
There is a story of one known as Bennett, who settled at a place which came to be known as Bennett's Neck, about a mile below Barnegat. But if this man had a piratical record, it was prior to his coming. It was said that, while a young man, he was bound apprentice to a seafaring man who joined Captain Kidd, taking his apprentice with him; and that when Kidd and some of his followers were brought to trial, Bennett, who was among them, was acquitted, and came to the New Jersey coast, where he lived an honest life.
Tradition also pointed suspiciously to Jonas Tow, another resident of Barnegat, but the only incriminating circumstance was the fact that he was possessor of a collection of articles which were remarkably curious in the eyes of his neighbors, who could only account for their possession by him in the supposition that he had been a plunderer on the high seas.
But, regarding the times as they were, it is not too much to surmise that to the New Jersey coast came as settlers some who had been guilty of what tradition charges. Nor is it any the less credible that some such came to live useful lives and left honorable descendants. After all. it is only recently that the law of meum et tuum came to be properly regarded, and Raleigh and Hawkins and others who laid the foundations of the maritime importance of Great Britain, were they now living, would be classed as "pirates," and nations of the earth would proclaim "hue and cry" against them.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE LIFE SAVING SERVICE.
To no man comes such noble mission as that of imperilling his own life in saving that of another. From the earliest days of letters, historians have delighted in narrating the achievements of the soldier on the field of battle, and poets have been inspired to the loftiest heights in singing his praises. But the saver of human life, not its destroyer, is he who merits the greater praise. His deeds are not undertaken in the hot blood which quickens the step to the charge, nor under the eye of a leader of men whose approbation is prized as was the knight-making sword-stroke of the mon- arch in days of old, nor do they lead to those high places in civil and military life to which the gallant soldier is so often called. On the contrary, his effort is exerted in a hazardous undertaking in face of the most dreadful forces of nature, the tempest and the storm, frequently in the darkest hours of the night, and with no witnesses save his few; companions on an errand of mercy which they may not accomplish and in which they may be doomed to sudden death, and with no record of their supreme devotion save that brief mention made in a formal official paper which never comes before the public eye.
The peculiar dangers of the New Jersey coast, owing to its contour and currents, have been previously described in this work in the preceding chapter. The horrors of shipwreck upon such a shore, the heroic effort of those who essay the work of rescue, and the dreadful dangers which they encounter, are beyond description. Shortly after the French steamer "L'Amerique" went ashore at Seabright, in 1877, the wreck was viewed by the gifted painter Bierstadt. He saw it in weather like to that at the time of the disaster, and he listened to the narratives of gallant men who had struggled nobly in the merciful work of rescue and of those whom they had saved. Yet he confessed his inability to portray the scene on canvass. It defied his art. The raging storm, the howling wind, the blind- ing snow, the seething foam, the strange dim lights on the doomed vessel, the answering signals on shore, the wild shrieks of the imperilled passen-
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gers and crew, men, women and children, and the seemingly: hopeless struggle of the life saving crew against the elements-all this made up a scene not to be delineated by painter nor described by poet. Yet in such dreadful picture, of which the mind may form feeble conception, the cen- tral figure was the life saver.
To residents and hardy sailors of the New Jersey coast is due the great distinction of being the authors of the present United States Life Saving Service, so beneficent in its operations, and whose annals are adorned with countless thrilling narratives of splendid effort and unparalleled cour- age. As in all undertakings essayed in behalf of humanity, it had its foundation in urgent necessity, and its development was slow and laborious. Long before there was organized effort, shore dwellers who were accus- tomed to the sea, moved by humane purposes, at the risk of their lives, on many occasions manned their own frail boats and took many human beings from vessels stranded and breaking up within sight of their dwellings.
At a later day, fishermen who were also engaged in the wrecking busi- ness constructed strong whale-boats for the latter purpose. As a rule, in case of shipwreck, their first care was to bring off imperilled passengers and crew, leaving to a later time the cargo saving, which was to bring them reward, and of which they were often deprived, the elements of nature completing the destruction of vessel and merchandise almost as soon as their life-saving mission had been accomplished. Yet later, com- panies of wreckers were formed at various coast points, and larger vessels were built for their purposes.
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