Copyright USGenNet Inc., 2014 All Rights Reserved USGenNet Data Repository Please read USGenNet Copyright Statement on this page: Transcribed and submitted by Linda Talbott for the USGenNet Data Repository http://www.us-data.org/ =========================================================================== Formatted by USGenNet Data Repository Chief Archivist, Linda Talbott All of the above information must remain when copied or downloaded. =========================================================================== (Extracted records pertaining to the Great Lakes region) ANNUAL REPORT OF THE OPERATIONS OF the UNITED STATES LIFE-SAVING SERVICE for the FISCAL YEAR ENDING JUNE 30, 1883 WASHINGTON: GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 1884 - 6 - DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENTS: Ninth District. - David P. Dobbins, Buffalo, New York Tenth District. - Jerome G. Kiah, Sand Beach, Michigan Eleventh District. - Nathaniel Robbins, Benton Harbor, Michigan --------------------------------------------------------------------------- - 19 - LOSS OF LIFE During the year there were ten disasters involving loss of life within the scope of the service. A detailed relation of the circumstances of each case, and of the action of the life-saving crews, is given below. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- - 21 - WRECK OF THE GEORGE D. SANDFORD The next wreck of the year at which life was lost within the scope of the service took place on the 4th of October, 1882, and was that of the steamer GEORGE D. SANDFORD, of Grand Haven, Michigan, bound without cargo from Frankfort, Michigan, to Manistee, Michigan, and having on board a crew of five, and eight passengers. At about half past 9 o'clock at night, the weather being calm, and the sea running smooth under a dense fog, the light at Manistee, which is built on the south pier, about two hundred feet from the end of it, appeared through the thick atmosphere apparently at a long distance, and the steamer was headed directly for it. The light, owing to a deception of the fog, still seemed a long way off, when suddenly the men on the lookout forward saw the pier loom up, like a wall, close aboard, and shouted to the captain to back the vessel. The bell was at once rung to stop and back her strong, and the engineer promptly reversed the engines and pulled the throttle-valve wide open, thus putting on all steam for the receding movement. A few powerful backward revolutions were made by the engine, and the steamer's speed was slackened to four miles an hour, but the effort was too late, and presently she struck the pierhead, bow on, with a tremendous concussion, which burst the steam-pipe a little above the starboard door of the engine-room and threw the boiler about seven inches forward. The shock instantly stopped the engines, and the steamer fell away and drifted slowly from the pier. Amidst the confusion and uproar which follows such disasters a voice was heard three times from the sea, calling, "George," and those on board, peering through the thick fog, had a momentary sight of a man weltering in the sleek water, but at such a distance that help was im- possible. It was at first supposed that the captain was overboard, but it proved to be the engineer, a colored man named Albert Hicks. Prob- ably the unfortunate man, after reversing the engines, had gone to the door of the engine-room to look out, and been thrown over the side by the shock when the steamer struck the pier. The engine-room, it will ---------------------------------------------------------------------- - 22 - be understood, was flush with the deck, and the door only a short dis- tance from the rail over which, under the circumstances, his precipita- tion would therefore be easy. The name he was heard calling from the water was thought to be that of one of the deck-hands, George Rosco. Immediately upon the collision the steamer's whistle had been vigor- ously sounded by the captain for assistance, and a tug promptly came out and towed her inside, making her fast to the north pier. About the same time, or fifteen minutes after the steamer had struck, the keeper and crew of the Manistee Life-Boat Station, half a mile distant, arrived upon the scene in the surf-boat, having been roused by the station patrolman, who was on duty on the north pier, and had heard the crash of the collision and the hissing of escaping steam beyond the south pier when the accident occurred. Upon learning the loss of the engineer, the keeper took the captain of the vessel into the surf-boat with him and entered upon a search for the missing man, rowing about in the fog for over an hour, but finding no trace of him. At one time, the surf- boat crew were quite lost in the fog, and had to be guided only by sound in making their way. The next day they dragged the mouth of the river a long time for the body of the engineer, and finally, about 10 o'clock in the forenoon, recovered it, quite uninjured, and turned it over to the coroner. It is evident that this fatality, like the case preceding, was beyond retrieval. WRECK OF THE J. O. MOSS A third wreck, involving loss of life, took place on the 24th of November, 1882, four miles north of the Grand Point au Sable Station, Lake Michigan. The vessel was the schooner J. O. MOSS, of Chicago, Illinois, bound to that place from East Frankfort, Michigan, with a cargo of shingles, and having a crew of six men. She had been struck by a sudden gale and snow-storm the afternoon of the day preceding (Novem- ber 23), and failing to weather Grand Point au Sable, and drifting rapidly to leeward, she was anchored during the night just outside of the breakers, three miles north of the light-house. One of the patrol- men from the station, a mile beyond the light house discovered her at about 3 o'clock in the morning, and returning to the station reported the fact to the keeper, who at once roused his men and hurried one of them forward to keep watch upon her. The remainder of the crew soon followed and arrived abreast of the vessel at daybreak. Just as they came up they saw her part her chain, swing around, and drift toward the beach. The spectacle was of the wildest. A northwest gale was rag- ing with a universal whirl of snow, the sea was a mass of crashing breakers, and through all came the schooner, broadside to the shore, rolling, the keeper said, worse than he had ever seen a vessel roll, the hull completely smothered in the surf, and the crew up in the rigging. She soon stranded, five hundred feet from the beach, and in her sta- tionary position continued her heavy swaying. The keeper, as soon ------------------------------------------------------------------------ - 23 - as her advance ceased, hurried with the crew back to the station for the wreck-gun and apparatus, sending forward one of the men to Hamlin, a mile beyond the station, to telephone to Ludington for a team, the conditions of the road and weather making hauling by hand impracticable. Surfman Stillson, the member of the crew who had been first dis- patched to keep watch upon the vessel, remained behind under orders to continuehis surveillance. Upon his arrival he had kindled a large fire upon the beach, which he kept well burning. As the morning deepened the tide fell, and although the schooner maintained her convulsive rolling, the sailors were enabled to descend from the rigging to the deck, where they stood clustered around the foremast under the lee of the fore-gaff and boom. At times, however, the sea would suddenly mount and break all over the vessel in a fury of foam, so that not a man on board could be seen. While the surfman stood watching this dismal and terrible show he suddenly saw one of the men on board preparing to leave for the shore in a yawl, carrying the end of a tow line with him, and at once by every possible gesture attempted to disuade him, signifying to him also that help was on the way. His efforts proved useless, for the sailor pre- sently set out in the boat, which came plunging in half buried in foam, and in a few moments was flung upside down in the breakers, leaving the man wildy struggling for his life. He would undoubtedly have been drowned, but the surfman, at the greatest personal peril, rushed into the seething water, and managed to clutch him and then drag him on shore. He was almost insensible, but his brave rescuer carried him to the fire, where he soon recovered. The boat drifting ashore, Surfman Stillson got hold of the line attached to it and secured it to a log, the sailors on board hauling it taut and fastening the other end to the wreck. Before long the surfman was horrified to see another of the ship's company, Barney McDonald, the mate, undertaking to make his way to the shore, hand over hand, on the suspended line, and signaled and gesticulated to him with all his might to forbear the ef- fort, letting him know, as he had done in the case of the other sailor, that assistance was coming. But despite his mute appeals the mate con- tinued to swing on, hand over hand, with the surf wallowing and leaping beneath him. He worked along in this way for about twenty-five yards, when he paused for a moment, then all at once let go his hold like one exhausted, and dropped into the sea. The surfman gazed with dread- ful solicitude at the place where he fell, but the disappearance was instant and final. In the mean time the station force was toiling heavily on its way through the storm. The team sent for had arrived a little before 10 o'clock in the forenoon; the wagon had been loaded up with all the ap- paratus, except the hawser and hauling-lines, which were in the mor- tar cart, and the cart hitched on behind; and the party had started in this order on their rough journey. The most direct road was along the ------------------------------------------------------------------------ - 24 - beach, but the way was perfectly strewn with logs and drift-stuff of all kinds thrown up by the surf, and the men and horses were forced to take their load along the inside sand-hills, some of the crew going on ahead to choose the best track and throw aside the obstructions which were even there. The most serious obstacle to progress was the soft and yielding sand, over which rapid passage was impossible, but by dint of the strenuous exertions of man and beast the party arrived abreast of the vessel by 11 o'clock, an hour after starting. The line already stretched from the schooner was at once utilized to haul aboard the whip-line, and the tail-block was made fast to the foremast close to the jaws of the boom - too low, but the unfortunate sailors were so cold and exhausted that they could not climb the rigging to fasten it higher. The hawser was next hauled on board by the life-saving crew, and attach- ed to the mast by the sailors. It could not be made taut, owing to the continued rolling of the vessel, and the first man brought in by the breeches-buoy, the captain, was alternately in and out of the water, as the lines rose and dipped with the swaying of the hull. Although speed- ily brought to land, he was insensible upon arrival - it was at first thought dead - but he soon revived under the warmth of the beach fire, and brandy from the station medicine-chest was given to restore him. The three men remaining on the wreck were successively brought to land, through and over the surf, arriving, like their captain, drenched and exhausted, and were similarly restored. When sufficiently revived they were all laid in the wagon, covered up with the horse blankets and con- veyed with all possible speed to the station, where they were supplied with dry clothes and food, and made comfortable. They remained under succor until the next day, when they left for their homes. The body of the unfortunate mate, McDonald, was searched for that day by members of the station crew, but without result. Three weeks later, or about the middle of December, it was found washed ashore, between Ludington and Pentwater. But for his rash and precipitate attempt to reach the shore, this man would undoubtedly have been saved with his fellows. WRECK OF THE ECLIPSE. At about the same time that the mate was lost, another sailor was dying in the surf at a wreck a few miles distant, hidden from the view of the Grand Point au Sable crew by a thickly wooded point of land projecting into the lake. The rescue of the sailors from the J. O. MOSS was accomplished by noon, and after conveying them to the station the crew returned with the team to look after the apparatus. Two of them went down the beach to search for the body of McDonald, and the remainder had nearly reached the station with the loaded wagon when they were intercepted by two hunters, showing signs of the speed with which they had come, who told them that there was a vessel ashore nine miles behind them, with one man already drowned, and the rest of the crew all in the rigging. The team was instantly put to the right ------------------------------------------------------------------------ - 25 - about and started for the wreck. One of the men ran to the station to notify the keeper, who immediately set out after the team, leaving the man with the charge to pick up the other two members of the crew then searching for the body of McDonald. The vessel to which the crew were now hurrying was the schooner ECLIPSE, of Chicago, laden, like the other, with shingles, and bound to the place above named, from Manistee, Michigan, with a crew of six men. She had left Manistee in the afternoon of the preceding day, un- der favoring winds, but at 5 o'clock a terrific gale, with a heavy snow- squall, blew out of the west-northwest, and before long the schooner was laboring in a tremendous sea. Her effort was to clear Grand Point au Sable, which lay under her lee, passing which she could have made better weather, and to this end she was forced along under a double- reefed mainsail and whole foresail and jib. This press of sail caused her to careen to leeward, so that her deck-load of shingles began to work, and some of them were swept overboard. She kept along, making more leeway than headway, the strain to which she was subjected open- ing her seams, so that she constantly took in water, until finally, about 9 o'clock in the evening, she heeled over so that the sea ran into her galley windows and forecastle, and she filled and lay perfectly helpless, on her side. Breakers were seen to leeward through the blind- ing snow-storm, and the captain, only hoping now that the vessel might be made to go ashore, head on, cut the main peak halyards, which brought down the mainsail, and caused her to pay off slowly under her head sails, assisted by two heavy seas which struck her bow in succession, and knocked her head around. She had nearly got before the sea, when she struck heavily on the outer bar, but gradually worked over it, and brought up on the inner bar, about four hundred feet from shore, where she partly righted. From the moment of striking, the sea made a clean sweep over her, the sailors clinging any way they could to the rigging, until she grounded finally, when they all got into the port ratlines, partly sheltered by the head of the mainsail, which had remained partly up. In this wretched situation they remained until the next day, drenched by the flying seas and nearly frozen. All night the snow con- tinued at intervals, adding to their misery. By the forenoon of the next day the clouds began to break, the wind and sea to moderate, and the snow came and went in squalls. The unfortunate sailors needed some mitigation of their suffering, for they were now completely exhausted and seeing no prospect of relief upon the lonely wooded coast, it was determined among them that one of their number should endeavor to get ashore with a line. Accordingly a sort of raft was improvised by lash- ing to each corner of the main hatch a bunch of shingles, and a young seaman named Anton Rasmusson started on it for the shore, shoving it along with a pole, and bearing the end of a line. A strong current was running to the southward to offset the force of which the seaman's ef- forts were made on the lee side, and when about sixty feet from shore ------------------------------------------------------------------------ - 26 - the raft set so strongly against the pole that it broke in the middle. Being now without the means of propulsion, the poor seaman, taking with him the end of the line, jumped overboard and attempted to swim ashore. His mates saw him struggle for a few minutes in the water, then disappear. He was lost. After this calamity the unhappy men on board resigned further effort. But at noon they suddenly saw the two hunters on the beach opposite the vessel, and the captain made energetic signs that he wanted the help of the life-saving station below the point, and had the satisfac- tion of seeing the men start off on the run. It was about half past 1 when the hunters came upon the remnant of the life-saving crew, then toiling back to the station from the wreck of the J. O. MOSS. As already stated, the team bearing the apparatus at once turned upon its tracks to the rescue. The second journey was more arduous and terrible than the first. As before, the way lay within the sand-hills, the beach being one ragged strew of logs and drift- stuff, and the team had to toil up and down the rough dunes, and around their bases when the acclivities were too formidable, tearing and plung- ing at the same time through undergrowths of brush and over fallen trees and drift-wood for an unintermitted stretch of nine miles. Two of the men acted as pioneers, going ahead to pick out the road and heave away the worst obstacles; the others hauled with the team. To add to their difficulties, one of the horses gave out on the way, and had to be help- ed along, as well as the wagon. The heroic drudgery ended at length by the party arriving abreast of the wreck, just before dark, or at 7 o'clock in the evening. The two hunters had preceded them. On their way they had found the body of the drowned sailor on the beach three quarters of a mile below the wreck. After securing it they had continued on and lit a good fire in front of the wreck, which was of great service in enabling the sailors to follow the operations of the life-saving crew in the suc- ceeding darkness. These operations began without delay. The gun was planted, and at the first fire threw the shot-line over the stays between the masts. The whip-line and hawser soon followed and were secured to the mainmast, and within an hour the men on board were brought ashore, one by one, in the breeches-buoy. As soon as each man was landed he was given a drink of brandy from the station medi- cine chest and taken to the fire for warmth. As the horses were completely tired out, and the teamster could not undertake to get back over such a road at night, the team was taken into the woods and kept there until morning. The apparatus was piled up safely upon the beach, the lines between the vessel and shore were hauled taut, two members of the life-saving crew were placed on guard, and the remainder, with the rescued sailors, started on their weary tramp for the station, where they arrived, exhausted, drenched, and half starved, at twenty minutes past midnight. The members of the station ------------------------------------------------------------------------ - 27 - crew had got thoroughly wet by rushing into the water to help the men out of the breeches-buoy at the wreck of the J. O. MOSS, and their clothes had frozen upon them, and afterwards thawed with their exer- tions. As for the sailors, besides being soaked through and through, they had been thirty hours without food, fifteen of which they had spent in the rigging. The first thing done upon arrival was to prepare them supper and get them thoroughly dry and warm. Two of them re- mained at the station until the afternoon of the next day; the other three staid for three days. The body of the unfortunate young sailor was given in charge to the coroner, and taken to Ludington. He was twenty five years of age, and belonged at Chicago, where he was to have been married on his return. It is, of course, obvious that his death under the circum- stances could not have been prevented. The labors of the life-saving crew upon this date seem particularly worthy of honorable comment. They performed the remarkable service of saving life from two wrecks in succession with the same appara- tus; working in the second instance with wet and frozen lines, which it required peculiar skill and judgment to handle effectively. To achieve this end involved a severe trudge to and from the station, of thirty-four miles, trundling, with the aid of half-blown horses, a heavy wagon load behind them, through a rough wilderness of brush and sand, and with the concomitants of a battering gale and blasts of snow. The heavy work of setting up hawsers and hauling lines, and dragging upon them in the drench of icy surf through the periods of the rescue, be- comes a mere incident to the savage toils of such a journey. WRECK OF THE JESSIE MARTIN Six days later, On November 30, 1882, another life was lost a mile from the Grand Haven Station, Lake Michigan, incidental to an attempt to get off the stranded schooner JESSIE MARTIN. The vessel belonged at Muskegon, Michigan, and on the night of November 23 she ran ashore in a heavy westerly gale on the south side of the piers at Grand Haven. The damage she sustained by this casualty was not serious, and her owner contracted with Mr. John Dibble, of Muskegon, to get her afloat and have her towed into harbor. She had two holes in her starboard bow - one, above water, which was easily stopped from the outside; the other below water, about eight inches in diameter, which could not be got at by the diver, and which was therefore plugged from the inside with a stuffing of gunny bags, held in place by wooden braces from the deck beams. The vessel was then pumped free, and on the morning of November 30, all preparations being completed, the tug W. BATCHELLER, made fast to her by a line about seven hundred feet long. The weather was cloudy and freezing cold, a southwest gale was blowing at the rate of thirty miles an hour, and a stormy sea was running in great waves, throwing showers of spray upon the schooner, which accumulated upon ---------------------------------------------------------------------- - 28 - her hull, spars, and rigging in rough sheaths of ice. On board was Mr. Dibble, the contractor, a one-armed man, heavily dressed against the weather, and wearing long boots, and there were also six men whom he had employed to prepare the vessel for being pulled off, and who were also well swathed up in storm-proof clothing. About 10 o'clock the tug, then lying abreast of the south pier, steamed away, the tow-line tautened, and the schooner came off the beach with a plunge, and seemed to stand on end between the seas, the water meanwhile bursting upward and madly sheeting all over her. The next instant she plunged downward, covered with foam and spray, then mounted again bow up, as though she were going to leave the sea, the breakers still scattering over her, and continued her progress in this way under the strain of the tow-line, striking the bottom so heavily with each descent as to jar all her timbers, and make the men on board afraid that her masts would be unstepped and thrown out of her. Be- fore long, as she got into deeper water, the pounding ceased, and she began to labor heavily, falling off sluggishly into the vast troughs of the sea, as though water-logged. Probably the violent pounding with which she began her course displaced the gunny-bag packing in the hole in her hull, letting the sea stream in, and it is also likely that with the torrents constantly bursting over her she took in water at her hatches, which were on but not fastened down as they should have been. She continued to move forward, wallowing more and more inertly, until the tug had gone about half a mile beyond the pier end and had swept around in a great circle to enter the piers. The schooner had now, fol- lowing the same curve, swung around broadside to the sea, and as the tug made for the entrance began to feel the tow-line pulling on her starboard bow to bring her head around. What ensued was as speedy as awful. The wretched vessel, lolling in the trough of the sea, so full of water as to be without buoyancy, pushed by the gale upon her port side and pulled up by the tow-line upon the other, instead of com- ing around under the strain, was simply dragged down and rolled over like a log to starboard, settling upon her bulwarks until her masts lay in the water. As she toppled, the sea burst all over her hull in a furious cascade, and her hatches fell off and floated away. The men on board as she capsized scattered out into her rigging in a wild scramble for their lives. Incumbered by their clothing, their struggles on an overturning ship, in the whirl of flying water, were of necessity terri- ble. Three reached the main shrouds, two got to the fore cross-trees, and one to the main. The remaining man, Mr. Dibble, had been in the pas- sageway alongside the cabin on the starboard side, and the men in the shrouds could see him, near the surface of the water in that region, vainly trying to climb on to the main boom. As he had but one arm, and was hampered by the abundance of his clothing, his efforts were ineffectual. For a short time he moaned and struggled in the water, but gradually the sounds and motions ceased, and he slowly drowned. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ - 29 - Meanwhile the prostrate wreck, with the men clinging to her shrouds and cross-trees, was leaping and floundering, still sluggishly advancing in the tow of the tug, which was endeavoring to get her inside the piers, where there was still water. Keeper John DeYoung was at the Grand Haven Station, some distance away, watching from the doorway the operations of the tug from the be- ginning. His crew were in the house, with the exception of one man out on patrol on the north pier. The moment the schooner capsized he sprang back shouting to the crew to launch the boat. The station is on the edge of the pier, and with one rush the men poured out, shoved the boat into the water, and tumbled in with alacrity. The tug JOHNSON was lying near the station, and at once took them in tow, giving them an opportu- nity to put on their cork jackets, which in their haste they had neglected to don. After towing them about half way down the piers the tug cast off, and the men seized the oars and pulled out, meeting the W. BATCHELLER outside of the ends of the piers, still towing the wreck in, her steam whistle meanwhile screeching an alarm. They rowed on and soon reached the capsized schooner. A more exciting spectacle could hardly have been encountered. The vessel lay on her side, jumping about like a living thing in the huge wash of the seas, with her masts submerged. Two drenched and streaming figures, waist-deep in the water, clung to the fore cross-trees, one horn of which bobbed around above the sur- face. Another similar figure was holding on at the main cross-trees. Three others, limp and inert, were hanging in the main shrouds, dipped and thrashed about continually, and most of the time under water. The body of the contractor was in the sea, beneath the mainsail, and not visible. The keeper speedily made up his mind that the two men on the fore cross-trees were in the most dangerous position, as a gaff or boom was flailing around them with every leap of the hull. Accordingly he steer- ed the boat's bow up to them, the crew cautiously oaring in. The rig- ging of the wreck was beneath them, and every time the seas fell they could feel it press and scrape against the boat's bottom. As soon as they got within reach the forward men seized the two sufferers, one by one, and dragged them on board. The boat fell away. The two men rescued, unmanned by fright and suffering, and fearful that the boat would be capsized in the raging sea, begged the keeper to put them on shore at once, but he told them that he would first save every one on the wreck or perish, and bidding them stow close and keep still, ordered the boat pulled around the schooner's bow, which was under water, as well as the tow-line, and dropping back on the wind- ward side, abreast of the main rigging, took a momentary survey of the situation. In a moment he sang out to the man in the main cross- trees that he was going to take off the three men in the main shrouds first, as they were in the most danger, to which the man assented. A scene of terrible gallantry now followed. The keeper ordered the man ------------------------------------------------------------------------ - 30 - in the bow to throw the boat's painter to the three men in the shrouds, but as the rope fell upon one man inert and the other two apparently dead, it was drawn back, and the effort to attach the boat to the wreck was renewed with the small grapnel. The grapnel, however, could not be made to hold, and the bold surfmen now tried to attach the boat to the rigging by the boat hooks. Despite the convulsive tumbling of the water, they succeeded for a minute in keeping alongside, and dragged one of the three men aboard over the bow. The next instant a huge sea swept them on top of the wreck, the boat-hooks scattering from the surfmen's hands and getting lost. Another big sea followed and swept them off, carrying them swiftly astern of the wreck a boat's length. In a second the oars were out and the men again pulled up along- side. The solitary man in the main cross-trees had meanwhile worked his way along the rigging, and was dragged aboard instantly. Then came a third enormous wave, which washed all over the wreck, and buried one of the two men clinging to the shrouds under water. The keeper could just see his head upon the surface, and fearful that he was going to lose him, shouted to his men to jump and save him. Surfman Paul Vandenburg at once sprang into the flood, but caught his foot in the wreck as he went and pitched over to leeward, coming up again quickly, floated by his cork jacket. Surfmen Van Toll and Fisher fol- lowed him in the jump for the wreck, clutched the submerged man and hauled him by main strength above water, themselves holding by the rigging. They then helped their comrade, Vandenberg, to regain his place in the boat, which he effected with the loss of one rubber boot, his foot having been tangled up in the sunken shrouds. The fearful excitement of the scene continued in the effort to get the two half-drowned and perishing men on board the surf-boat. Words can hardly describe the difficulties and perils involved in the task. Both of the men were unconscious, half sustained by being enmeshed in the rigging and half by Surfmen Van Toll and Fisher, who held by the shrouds, waist deep in the water, and buoyed up by their cork jackets, waiting their chance to heave the dead weight in their hands into the surf-boat. This chance depended on the boat getting fairly alongside between the seas - no safe nor easy matter, as she followed a vessel steadily receding under tow toward the harbor and bounding from side to side like a wounded whale with every wash of the furious waves. It was only wary maneuvering that kept her from being at any moment flung into the air by collision with the wreck or stove to flin- ders. Every other minute the torn waters yawned in troughs, into which she dropped to rise the next instant, quivering and leaping on the sum- mit of the curling ridges. The keeper and two surfmen worked her by the oars, while the two others on board were kept steadily bailing, the strong wind keeping her, nevertheless, half-full with the spray it showered over her. So great was the peril that the rescued men on board, expecting every moment to be capsized, thought they would be ------------------------------------------------------------------------ - 31 - safer on the wreck, and one man even wanted to get overboard and lash himself to the half-sunk rigging. It was under these conditions that the desperate toil of the rescue was conducted, and it was fully half an hour before the two drenched and inanimate figures were got into the boat. Surfmen Van Toll and Fisher then clambered in out of the water and the surf-boat shoved off and made for the harbor. Keeper De Young's greatest fear now was that the unconscious men might never revive, and the moment the station was reached they were taken up-stairs and stripped and put to bed, as were all the others. The man who had been longest under water the keeper at once laid down and practiced on him the method of resuscitating the apparently drowned. It was half an hour before he showed any signs of life and about an hour before he came to. "He was just like a chunk of ice, he was so cold," said the keeper in his deposition. As soon as he became conscious brandy was given him, and for three hours he was swathed in hot flannels and vigorously rubbed with them by the keeper and his men. Finally he was left between hot blankets, and in about five hours was himself again. Of the other men two were insensible, but were re- vived without great effort by the rubbing of the life-saving crew and the administration of cordials. There was not at the time any change of clothing at the station, and the six men were kept in bed until their clothes were dried. As for the life-saving crew, they were drenched, and performed their ministrations in the wettest of wet habiliments. The keeper did not learn of Mr. Dibble's death until after he had left the wreck, and as soon as he was assured of the revival of the man who had been so nearly drowned, or within an hour after the arrival at the station, he had an old metallic boat launched and rowed out with four men to the wreck, which was then lying in the still water abreast of the station. The body of the unfortunate man was found under water, beneath the mainsail, held by a turn of the peak-halyards around one leg. He had been thus submerged for over two hours, and was of course lifeless. It is plain that under the circumstances of the catastrophe nothing could have been done to save him. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ - 39 - WRECK OF THE JENNY LIND The eighth week of the year within the scope of life-saving opera- tions which was marked by fatality, occurred on May 21, 1883, the vessel being the schooner JENNY LIND, of Chicago, Illinois, bound to that place from Muskegon, Michigan, with a cargo of slabs, and having a crew of five men. She was thirty-five years old and was considered unseaworthy, an opinion which appears justified by the circumstances of her disaster on the date named. On the night of May 20, during a heavy north- northeast gale, she had anchored close inshore, over two miles south of the entrance to Chicago Harbor. At daybreak, or a little after 4 o'clock in the morning of May 21, the keeper of the Chicago Station, Telesford Saint Peter, saw her through his marine glass from the sta- tion lookout, she being one of four schooners anchored at varying dis- tances southward of the harbor. A little before 5 o'clock Keeper Saint Peter saw her stand out into the lake under a close-reefed fore- sail and jib and the peak of her mainsail, the intention being evident to work her off shore and run her for South Chicago Harbor, ten miles distant. The keeper was called away from the lookout for about ten minutes, and upon his return saw that she was making very slow prog- ress, being then only half a mile from shore, and realized by her heavy lounging motions that she was water-logged. The gale at this time was driving heavily under a cloudy sky, and there was a tremendous sea running, the force of which was hardly impaired by the breakwater and piers to windward. Presently, while the keeper watched the lum- bering, lurching vessel, he saw her heave up heavily on a wave and roll down upon her side, broadside to the sea, which at once mounted, white with foam, and burst all over her. In a little while she partial- ly righted, with her foremast gone, the other sticking out aslant toward the shore, and the water tumbling across her hull, sometimes leaping ------------------------------------------------------------------------ - 40 - halfway to the main cross-trees. She lay motionless in her half- prostrate position, evidently aground. Nothing could be seen of her men. The keeper at once left the lookout and called the crew. Although certain that those on board the schooner must have been lost as soon as she upset, with such a sea pouring over them, he decided to proceed overland to a point abreast of the capsized vessel on the chance that some of them might be washed toward the shore, and accordingly dis- patched Surfmen Nequette and Courchain for two teams. Only one, however, could by any possibilty be procured at that early hour, and hitching this to the surf-boat carriage, with the morter-cart loaded with the apparatus tailed on behind, the start was made for the wreck, which lay off the foot of Twenty-seventh street. The double load of course made it hard for the team, and it was with great toil on the part of men and horses that the arrival was accomplished by seven o'clock, nearly two hours after the vessel had capsized. The convictions of the keeper as to the almost immediate loss of those on board when the schooner went over were found to be sadly justi- fied. Very soon after her overthrow she began to break up under the shattering force of the seas flung upon her. The station crew found upon arrival pieces of her hull and spars, and a great strew of her car- go of slabs thrown upon the beach. One of her sailors had, by the merest accident, been washed in and jammed between two piles near the shore below Twenty-seventh street, whence he had been dragged in an ex- hausted condition by a policeman and conveyed to a hospital. The remaining four seamen had all perished with the breaking up of the old hull, and from the first moment of the catastrophe were beyond assistance. WRECK OF SCHOONER PETREL'S YAWL On the same date, May 21, 1883, three lives were lost by marine dis- aster in Lake Michigan, a short distance from the Milwaukee Station (Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Eleventh District.) The circumstances were as follows: The schooner PETREL, of Milwaukee, was on her way to that place from Charlevoix, Michigan, with a cargo of maple cord-wood, her crew consist- ing of a captain, mate, and four seamen, when, on the evening of May 20, the wind, which had been increasing through the day, swelled to a strong gale, accompanied by a raging sea, and the vessel began to leak. All night the captain kept her before the wind, under the peak of the fore- sail and the fore stay-sail, he steering and the crew working at the pumps. By daylight Milwaukee Bay was reached, but the captain did not dare to attempt an entrance to the harbor, as the schooner, being partly water-logged, did not steer well, and a wild sea was breaking over the piers, while a large fleet of vessels, through which he would have had to thread his way, lay at anchor outside. He accordingly stood in toward the land northeast of the piers, about a mile and a half from which he dropped anchor. It appears from his statements that the ------------------------------------------------------------------------ - 41 - mate about this time entered upon a singular course of conduct. This man had been shipwrecked on a former voyage and seems to have become completely demoralized through a present fear of losing his life, behaving so that the contagion of his apprehension extended to the crew. He objected at once to the captain bringing the vessel to anchor, declaring that her bow would be knocked out of her by the sea. Although the leak was steadily gaining on them the sailors, apparently unmanned by his terror, could not be kept at the pumps more than a few minutes at a time, going to the work under repeated orders and abandoning it each time after a brief effort. Finally, the mate got in- to the ship's yawl, which was in tow astern, and was soon followed by the crew, leaving the captain on board alone. The captain had had the yawl lowered and made fast by a long line astern, intending to use it as a means of escape in case the vessel should sink. Excepting before long the assistance of a tug to tow the schooner into harbor he had also got his chain duly buoyed and ready for slipping. At about 6 o'clock in the morning he saw a tug coming toward him from Milwau- kee, and called to the crew, telling them that the owner's boat was coming to tow the schooner in and that they had better come on board. The men made no response. Shortly after when the tug got nearer the captain repeated his summons, but got no answer. He then mo- tioned to the tug, which had now reached him, to come around on the starboard side, where he had a line ready for her. By some mistake the tug came around on the other side and did not get the line. The captain then slipped his chain and the schooner drifted to leeward, came into collision with a vessel anchored astern, and carried away her jib-boom. She soon swung clear, however, and meanwhile the tug got hold of the line, towed her in safely, and the captain steering ran her on a bank inside the harbor. She was subsequently repaired and made as good as new. The moment the captain had slipped his moorings the men in the yawl cut the line and pulled for the harbor. As they drew near they made a vigorous effort to put in at the entrance, but were swept away about eighty yards south of the south pier. Surfman Ahlswede, one of the station-men, had been watching them from the time they left the vessel, and seeing them fail to enter the harbor, ran down upon the pier with the object of casting a line to them with his heaving stick, but they were between two and three hundred yards distant and quite out of range. In a moment the surfman saw a monstrous breaker swell up from the sea and rush down upon them. They made an effort to meet it head on, but in a second it struck the boat and threw it end over end. The surfman at a glance saw four men out of the five strug- gling in the water and bounded away for the station. When he had run about a hundred feet he paused for an instant and saw but two, both clinging to the upset boat. The sight made him run on with all his speed. It denoted that three men out of the five had perished. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ - 42 - One of them had sunk immediately and never came to the surface; two had emerged to struggle for a moment, and then go down forever; the other two reached and clung to the capsized boat, tossed and flung about by the breakers and in momentary expectation of being torn from their hold and drowned. Five of the life-saving crew were at the station and saw the boat capsize as soon as the surfman on the pier. They at once sprang for the surf-boat, and dragged it across the beach, aided by several bystand- ers. At the same time Keeper Evenson, coming from his house, about twelve hundred yards from the station, saw the accident, and pulling off and throwing his overcoat to a neighbor, ran with all his might toward his crew, arriving just as they got to the water's edge. In a moment the boat was heading through the stormy surf, with the spray flying over her bows. The pull out was hard but brief, lasting not more than fifteen minutes. The boat with the men clinging to it was drifting shoreward all the time, being about half way the length of the pier from the beach and rapidly approaching the worst of the breakers. About six feet of the fourth plank from the keel on the starboard side aft, had been knocked out of her by the sea, and one of the men had his arm through the frame, while he gripped the planking with one hand. The other man lay across the keel, holding by the edge of the same break. Both of them showed livid through the incessant wash of the sea, and were evidently exhausted with cold and effort to the verge of letting go. A few minutes later, entering the more violent breakers, they would have been wrenched from their hold and destroyed. The surf-boat came swooping by them with powerful oar-strokes, and as she passed, the keeper stooped, clutched one man, and hauled him from his hold into the boat. The surf-boat then turned and bore down on the other side, the men forward seizing the other man, and dragging him in over the bows. The boat was then squared for the shore, reaching it without accident a quarter of a mile south of the station. On the way the keeper learned the fate of the three men lost. The men rescued were not insensible, although chilled through and ex- hausted. One was able to walk to the station. The other was carried by the surfmen, crying out all the way that he was going to die. Imme- diately upon arrival they were both stripped of their drenched cloth- ing, rubbed until warmth and animation were restored, given hot brandy and water, and put to bed, where they remained until evening, when one of them went to his boarding-house in the city, and the other, an old man sixty-seven years of age, betook himself to the marine hospital. The mate was one of the three men lost. His panic terror, communi- cated to the others, was obviously the cause of the disaster. He was named Charles J. Olson. The men who perished with him were Jacob Hanson, a Norwegian, who had been in this country a year, and Martin A. Matiason, also a Norwegian, just arrived in the United States. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ - 43 - Had they remained on the vessel they would have reached land in safety. The two men saved, Olla Owenson and Johannes Abenson, owed their lives to the prompt intervention of the life-saving crew, as they could not have kept their grip upon the broken yawl when it once got into the breakers near the shore. ===========================================================================