USA > New York > New York City > In olde New York; sketches of old times and places in both the state and the city > Part 13
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better model, and did better work at Port Jefferson than in other places; hence secured better prices. "Besides," he continued, "many of the ships built here are owned by the townspeople. We are thrifty, build our own ships, furnish the men to man them, and charter them for cargoes; our vessels are chiefly engaged in the Southern trade, plying between New York and Charleston or Savannah." Two steamers, I learned, besides sailing vessels, were built here one year, and some eighty yachts are laid up each winter, their furbishing and refitting in the spring giving additional animation to the yards. The tourist finds little to attract in the village aside from its quaintness, but unless very difficult to please will be charmed by a sail through its harbor and the waters adjacent. Setauket Harbor and its tributary, Old Field Bay, have a common inlet from the Sound and extend west several miles, forming a labyrinth of straits and bays lying between wooded points and islands.
To the student of old men and days the whole region is storied, having been the scene of some of the most gallant deeds of the whale-boat privateersmen of the Revolution. It is singular that no more of these men has been told in history. Many readers are unaware of their existence; yet they formed an efficient arm of the Continental service, especially in the transmission of intelligence, and may be regarded as the germ of the American navy. Long before Connecticut's war
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governor had placed on the Sound the Spy, the Crom- well, the Trumbull, and other audacious privateers to capture the British storeships, the whaleboat crews were abroad, anticipating them in the matter of taking stores, and making reprisals on the Tories who swarmed on the Sound shore of Long Island. The war found them already organized for the capture of the whale and, leaving leviathan, they turned their attention to nobler game. Companies seem to have existed at this time at Stamford, Norwalk, Fairfield, Stratford, Derby, and New Haven, although Fairfield, a leader in the Whig movement, was the center of operations.
Their whale-boats were well adapted to a predatory warfare. They were about thirty-five feet long and were propelled by eight rowers. Each boat carried a large swivel as armament. Their operations were con- ducted swiftly and silently, usually at night. Some- times a British fort or magazine on the island was the objective point; sometimes a Tory murder or outrage was to be avenged, or a prominent leader captured in reprisal; again, a supply-ship or armed vessel was the object - two of the latter having been captured and towed into Fairfield during the war. In all cases the leader mustered his men secretly, the boats pushed off at nightfall, rowed swiftly and silently across the Sound, struck their blow, and were out of reach of pursuit when morning broke. Setauket Harbor, directly opposite Fairfield, and but sixteen miles
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distant, was the landing point of most of these ex- peditions.
Some of the exploits were not equaled in daring and romance by any feats of the border. In 1777 a large body of the British and Tories had seized the Presby- terian Church at Setauket and converted it into a fortress, using it as a stronghold from which to send out marauding parties. On the 14th of August of that year Colonel Parsons with 150 men embarked at Fair- field in whale-boats, crossed the Sound, and about day- break made an attack on the fort. The firing had scarcely begun, however, when a messenger came from the boats with the news that several British men-of-war were coming down the Sound, and, fearing that their return might be cut off, the gallant band was forced to retreat.
A second expedition, organized three years later with another object in view, was much more successful. At Mastic, on a point projecting into Great South Bay, the British had erected a formidable fort, encircled by a deep ditch and wall, the whole surrounded by an abattis of sharpened pickets. Several supply vessels and 300 tons of forage were protected by the fort. Hearing through his spies that the fort was garrisoned by but fifty-four men, Colonel Tallmadge determined to capture it, and left Fairfield on the 21st of November, 1780, with eight whale-boats, carrying in all but eighty men. They reached Old Mans - a harbor three miles
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east of Port Jefferson, at nine o'clock in the evening, and disembarked; but a heavy rain setting in, they were forced to lie all that night and the next day concealed in the bushes. On the second night the rain ceased, and the troops marched across the island - here some twenty miles wide - captured the fort by sur- prise, dismantled it, burned the vessels, stores, and forage, marched back to their boats with their prisoners, and were in Fairfield by eleven o'clock the next morn- ing, without the loss of a man. Congress passed a resolution highly complimenting the officers and men engaged, and Washington wrote to the commander from Morristown to thank him for his "judicious planning and spirited execution of this business."
A still bolder feat of the whale-boatmen had been executed the year previous. In 1779 the house of General Silliman, in Fairfield, had been surrounded by a body of Tories from Long Island, and the General and his young son were borne away captives. The Americans had no prisoner of equal rank to offer in exchange and decided to procure one. The Hon. Thomas Jones, of Fort Neck, a Justice of the Supreme Court of New York, was selected, and a volunteer company of twenty-five men, commanded by Captain Hawley, set out from Newfield Harbor (now Bridge- port) to capture him. They landed at Stony Brook on the morning of the 4th of November, and began their march to the Judge's residence, more than thirty
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miles distant, arriving there at 9 o'clock on the evening of the 6th. No man could have been more unsuspicious of danger than he. There was a gay party of young people in the house, and the dance was proceeding merrily, when Captain Hawley and his body of grim retainers appeared at the door. The Judge was found in the hall, and was taken with scant ceremony, a young gentleman named Hewlett being forced to accompany him as a makeweight for the General's son. The party met with many adventures before reaching their boats, being forced to hide in the forest by day, and narrowly escaping capture on two occa- sions by the light horse, which were soon scouring the country in pursuit. Six laggards were taken, but the others succeeded in regaining their boats, and reached Fairfield on the 8th with their prisoners. It was not, however, until the succeeding May that their exchange was effected.
Quite equal to these in dash and courage were the exploits of Capt. Caleb Brewster, one of the most noted leaders of the service. He was a native of Setauket, but a resident of Fairfield during the war, and accom- panied both the expeditions of Colonel Parsons and Major Tallmadge as a volunteer. In 1781 with his whale-boats he boldly attacked a British armed vessel in the Sound, and after a sharp action brought her a prize into Fairfield. Again, on the 7th of December, 1782, from his post at Fairfield he discovered a number
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of armed boats in the Sound, evidently bent on some predatory excursion, and gave chase. The forces were about equal, and a desperate encounter ensued, nearly every man on both sides being killed or wounded; but the enemy at last escaped with the loss of two of his boats, which were borne into Fairfield in triumph. Brewster himself was shot through the body in this action, but recovered from the wound. The next year, on the 9th of March, 1783, he took the British armed vessel Fox in an action lasting but two minutes, and without the loss of a man. In addition to these duties, from the beginning to the end of the struggle he was the confidential agent of Washington in securing in- formation of the enemy's movements.
CHAPTER XXIV
HARVARD'S FIRST GRADUATE
THE REV. NATHANIEL BREWSTER OF SETAUKET
N a gentle elevation that slopes down to Setauket Harbor on the east, its steeple facing the west, with the village schoolhouse on the right and the Clark Memorial Library on the left, stands the Presbyterian Church of Setauket, a church which has as much history connected with it and of as interesting a charac- ter as any of the famous churches of New England. Its early records have been lost, but we know that it was founded in 1660, five years after the Independents of Connecticut had come over and settled Setauket. What is of more general interest is the fact that its first pastor, the Rev. Nathaniel Brewster, a grandson of the famous Elder Brewster of the Mayflower, was the first native graduate of Harvard College. Mr. Brewster died during his pastorate here and was buried, according to the present pastor, the Rev. William Littell, who has held his post for thirty years and is a careful student of his church's history, near a corner of the church, though nothing to-day marks the spot. It would be a graceful tribute for the alumni of Har-
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vard to erect a simple shaft above his grave in memory of the first of the long line of able and brilliant men who have reflected luster on their alma mater.
The second minister, the Rev. George Phillip, also a graduate of Harvard, was sleeping quietly in the churchyard which surrounds the sacred edifice, when the differences of opinion between Britain and her American colonies culminated in the Revolution. The British soon overran Long Island and maintained a strong garrison here at Setauket, no doubt to overawe the Independents at New Haven, Fairfield, and other points on the "Christian shore," as the patriots called Connecticut. They seized the Presbyterian church and turned it into a barracks for their soldiers, as they did in many other towns of the island, in some cases using them for stables.
"They built a fort around the church," wrote a quaint chronicler of the day, "and cast up the bones of many of the dead. They destroyed the pulpit and the whole inside work of the church, and the tomb- stone of Parson Phillips was among those destroyed. The minister in charge through all the troublous days of the Revolution was the Rev. Benjamin Tallmadge, whose pastorate lasted from 1754 to 1786. It did not endear him to the British that his son, Benjamin Tall- madge, Jr., who had settled in Litchfield, Conn., was one of the boldest, most dashing and most successful partisan colonels in the Continental service.
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In 1797 there came here as pastor the Rev. Zachariah Greene, a man of marked individuality, of whom many good stories are told. When the war broke out, Greene, then a lad of sixteen threw aside his books and entered the patriotic army, doing good service, it is said, in more than one pitched battle; but at last a wound in the shoulder and another in the back dis- abled him for further military service, and he returned to his books. He was one of Parson's men in the attack on the church at Setauket in 1777, and on assuming the pastorate here made a note of the fact that where formerly he had fought the forces of evil with carnal weapons, he had now come to combat them with spiritual. For fifty years he was acting pastor here, and then for ten years longer pastor emeritus, residing with friends at Hempstead. The older men in the church remember him to this day. Old Father Greene they call him, in speaking of him. He had five fingers on his left hand, and the Presbytery in calling him stipulated that he should keep that hand gloved. He was a good preacher and faithful pastor, the chief founder of the Long Island Bible Society.
During the last years of his pastorate he was assisted by the Rev. John Gile, a young man of much promise. On the very same day that Father Greene started to go to his friends in Hempstead, leaving Mr. Gile in charge of the church, the latter went to Stony Brook Harbor, three miles west, to bring home a sailboat
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that had been given him. He sailed out of that har- bor into the Sound to bring her around into Setauket Bay, and neither man nor boat was ever again heard of.
The present church succeeded in 1812 the one riddled in the Revolution, and is not, therefore, of hoary antiquity.
There are some very old and quaint tombstones in the churchyard. Two very heavy tables of sandstones resting horizontally on piers have a square stone of different color let into the center, on which the in- scription is cut. That on the north reads:
" Richard Floyd, Esq., late Colonel of this County and a Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, who deceased February 23, 1737, in ye 73d yr. of his age."
The other stone, without doubt from its position that of his wife, once bore an inscription, but it has been effaced. Why was this done ?
CHAPTER XXV
FIRE ISLAND
O FFSPRING of ocean and air, fruitful of nothing but beach grass, hop-toads, snakes, and mos- quitoes, Fire Island Beach when I visited it in 1885, still attracted the summer visitor, and held its own bravely with newer and more widely advertised resorts.
A strange bit of earth this beach is, to be sure - a barren, wind-swept, desolate sand-bar, interposed between the Atlantic and the quiet waters of Great South Bay, pushed out nine miles into the ocean, so low and flat that it would seem the first winter storm must blot it out, yet increasing year by year rather than diminishing. It is easy to read its genesis. Ages ago a sand-bar rose out of the waves nine miles off the mainland of Long Island; built up by waves and winds, it grew and lengthened eastward and west- ward, and in process of time formed a wide smooth beach from Coney Island to Southampton, eighty-one miles, broken at intervals by inlets through which the tides rushed to fill the bays formed by the barrier within. The first glance of the beach shows that man has come over and captured it. Here is the brick
THE SURF HOTEL, FIRE ISLAND Reproduced from an old print
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tower of the lighthouse 185 feet high, the quaint cottage of Life-Saving Station No. 25, and the square signal tower of the Western Union Company. There is also a great hotel,1 unique in its way, and a model for all seaside hotels, with rows of cottages attached to it, and a mile or more of covered board walks leading to the ocean strand on the south, and to the bayside and steamboat wharf on the north.
As you approach from Babylon across the bay, the hotel looms up like the line of barracks at some great army post, for it is long and low, with three rows of windows like the portholes in a three-decker. The host, Mr. Sammis, is a landlord of the old-fashioned sort, said to be the third oldest inn-keeper on Long Island. After a business career in town as druggist and hotel-keeper, Mr. Sammis came to Fire Island and opened a hotel on the sands. That was in 1855. The first year his hotel was a chowder-house - a sort of day resort for parties from the mainland. It was very successful, and the next year he added 100 feet, and opened the present Surf Hotel. It has grown modestly and safely since then, and is now 625 feet long, with accommodations for 400 guests.
In its old registers may be found the names of some of the best known people of New York and the country. The attractions are mostly such as nature
1 The Surf Hotel was burned some years ago, and conditions on Fire Island have materially changed since this was written.
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offers. A dip in the surf before the eight o'clock breakfast begins your day. After breakfast you will find half-a-dozen bronzed bay skippers waiting to take you to the fishing-grounds. Fine sport has been had this year in the waters of both bay and inlet, the gamy bluefish being the special quarry just now. Trolling is the favorite form of sport with the guests, but "chumming" is practised. I can see from my windows now a long line of boats anchored in the bay, with their lines down in the water, taking bluefish that have been attracted there by throwing out bait for days beforehand. The fishermen are back in time for a plunge in the surf or bay before dinner. After dinner sailing parties are in order, or excursions to explore the island - an interesting diver- sion. The lighthouse and the life-saving station lie southeast of the hotel, not ten minutes' walk, and have many visitors.
The old keeper, who has the true nautical flavor about him, leads the way up the one hundred and ninety-five steps of the tower to the platform that runs around the outside just below the huge Fresnel lens. He is very proud of his light, which is the first that the great ocean liners sight in approaching New York from sea, and therefore one of the most important on the coast. It is a first-order light, with a lamp of 500-candle power, which pilots have seen in good weather at a distance of thirty miles,
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but whose usual range is twenty-five miles. To feed the flame of this lamp requires two quarts of the best kerosene oil every hour. We very much desire to visit the light after dark, but the keeper is proof against all blandishments - he points to the regulations of the Lighthouse Board forbidding visitors to the tower after sunset, and says the inspector assured him that it would be as much as his place was worth to disobey the order. It must be an eerie place up here in a nor'easter on a winter night, when the tower rocks under the fury of the gale, and sand, and spray, and snow clouds the windows. On such nights the keeper often hears the crash of some heavy objects striking the glass, and finds next morning beneath his windows the dead bodies of wild geese and duck which have struck the tower in the night.
Life-Saving Station No. 25, as before remarked, lies a little to the southwest, almost within hailing distance. Its doors have been closed whenever the writer has passed that way, but a flock of contented chickens gave evidence that it was inhabited, as is the fact, the keeper being sole custodian during the summer months, but with power to summon assistance if it should be re- quired. The Signal Station, or more properly the reporting station of the Western Union Company, is the third of the structures which go to make this barren strip of sand an important commercial center - although innocent of ships, except those unfortu-
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nates whose barnacled ribs may be seen protruding above the sands or swaying in the surf. The Signal Station is a large square tower on the sands, midway between the Surf Hotel and the ocean strand. Fire Island, as before remarked, is the first point of land sighted by the great ocean racers westward bound, and so the Western Union Company maintains here one of its most expert operators, who reports the arrival of steamers not only to their owners, but to those who may have friends on board, several hours before they are due at their docks in New York. The operator is Mr. Peter Keegan, a specialist in his calling and a most interesting man to talk with. If to learn the names of passing ships by reading the signals displayed by them were all he had to do, his work would be mere routine, but to distinguish scores of passing vessels daily by the cut of their jibs or the color of their smoke- stacks, some of them perhaps when only four or five feet of their topmasts are visible, a keenness of vision and wide knowledge of ships and shipping is required. He is a man whose place cannot be filled. Summer and winter since the service was organized in 1878, he has been at his post, with only one day in the year that he can call his own. The room in which he spends most of his time is in the extreme top of the building, and by means of windows and portholes commands a view of the ocean, the inlet, the bay, and the long line of beach. In one corner is a well-selected library, in
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another the electric key which keeps the vigilant watcher in communication with the outside world, a reclining chair, a cozy rocker, and inviting seats scattered around to complete the furniture. In a third corner is a package of books, tied with a string, that were recovered from the wreck of the Oregon, which foundered a few miles off the station. There are two portholes in the southeast corner of the room, and through one a long and powerful telescope is thrust. The little instrument in the corner keeps up a merry clicking - in winter when the hotel is closed, and all the summer visitors departed, the only sound from the outer world that reaches the lonely watcher. "So long as the instrument is in order," says Mr. Keegan, "I don't feel so isolated, for I know that by a few touches I can talk with my most distant friends, or summon aid if needed; but when the cable breaks and the clicking stops, the silence becomes almost un- bearable." It is no uncommon thing for the wires to get out of order in the terrible winter storms.
The uninitiated reader no doubt supposes that ships are reported by their signals; if this were the case, the operator's duties would be much simplified, as he would only need to be master of the signal code; but in these days of fierce competition and record-break- ing trips, very few of the great ocean-racers run in sufficiently near to display signals - to do so would de- lay them an hour or more - but keep a straight course
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for Sandy Hook Light, thus passing from fifteen to twenty-five miles out to sea. To the visitor it is a standing wonder how steamers can be distinguished and accurately reported at that distance. Mr. Keegan explains it. "In the first place I know just when to expect the steamers. The name and hour of sailing from the other side of each vessel is reported to me, and I am so familiar with their runs that I know the very hour that they should pass my station. For instance, the new French steamer Bretagne, one of four new steamers built for the Havre Line within the last three years, left Havre on the 20th, and is due here to-day - the 29th, at this hour - and there are her topmasts already rising above the horizon. Wednes- day I shall look for the fast steamer City of Paris, which left Queenstown at 1.30 P.M. on Thursday, and will be due here at 8 A.M. on Wednesday. Then, with my glass, I can see a vessel very distinctly twenty miles distant, and am enabled to distinguish them by my special knowledge of their characteristic marks. Masts and smoke-stacks are the chief distinguishing features. I have reported vessels when but four or five feet of their masts were visible."
"Do you never make mistakes?" is asked.
"But one in four years," he replied, " and this is how it happened: I was expecting a certain steamer, a slow boat, due to pass some time in the night. Steamers passing at night display no signals by which I can tell
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their names, but simply burn a signal indicating the line to which they belong. At midnight a steamer passed and showed the signal of the line to which the expected boat belonged, and I naturally inferred it was she, and so reported, but as it turned out the com- pany had sent a second boat immediately after the first, and she was the one that displayed the signal."
"Are mistakes attended with serious results ?"
"They would cause great confusion and expense," is the reply. "For instance, La Bretagne, which you see just coming into view out there, and which I have just reported, has, say, 300 cabin passengers on board That means that 200 messages announcing her arrival are now being sent out to friends of persons on board, and of course if the wrong vessel is reported, no end of annoyance and loss would be caused."
"You must have had some thrilling and exciting experiences while keeping your lonely vigils."
"In the matter of shipwrecks and loss of life," he replied, "yes; I suppose I saw the last signal of the gallant fellows on the pilot boat Columbia, which dis- appeared so mysteriously off Fire Island one dark night, leaving not a trace. That night I sighted the Alaska and reported her; a few minutes later I saw a pilot boat setting her signal; then suddenly the latter's lights went out, and I saw the steamer lying to and cruising about as if searching for something. She did not leave until daylight, and reported being in collision
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with some vessel. The most singular part of it was that not a trace of the Columbia or of her crew was ever discovered .. That famous disaster, the sinking of the Oregon, was first reported by me. It was the morning of March 14, 1887 - Sunday; I had scheduled her to pass about sunrise, and at 5.30, sweeping the horizon with my glass, I saw a trail of smoke rising above the sea. 'It is the Oregon coming up,' I said, and waited for her to come nearer. As her smoke-stacks came into view I saw that something was wrong, but what, I could not make out, as she showed no signals of distress. At once I sent the main office this tele- gram:
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