B A C K T H E N
Casualties on the Coast
The Thomaston lime coaster Ella F. Crowell, stranded on Veasey’s Rocks, Quincy Bay, Boston Harbor
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December 1898, after the terrible “Portland Gale.”
The Crowell sailed with lime from Thomaston for New York on November 7, arriving four days later. After discharging, she went into a “North River tow” for Rondout to load 1,750 barrels of cement. Towing down to New York and out the East River, she then sailed to Vineyard Haven, where a fleet of about fifty anchored eastbound coasters awaited “a chance” around Cape Cod. The following evening a light southeast breeze quickly freshened into a strong easterly gale. In the dark, under the shortened sail, and in heavy seas and thick snow, the schooner successfully entered Boston Harbor and anchored. During the wild night the chains parted and the schooner drove on the rocks. In the morning the five men, with great difficulty, made it ashore in the yawl boat. They found shelter with a party of hunters in a cottage.¹ Many, including the 176 souls aboard the steamer Portland, were not so fortunate.
Sailors lost in ordinary winter gales we just as dead. Newspaper accounts of casualties on the coast were matter of fact:
A portion of the wreck which drifted ashore at Lambert’s Cove, Vineyard Haven, Mass., is doubtless what is left of the [lime] schooner T.P. Dixon of Rockland Me. The wreckage consists of only the vessel’s deck broken off just aft the foremast and the vessel’s cabin...The bodies of three men and a dog were on top of the cabin. The men were encased in ice, their legs hanging down the cabin skylight... – The Lewiston Evening Journal, Feb. 8, 1895.
The captain of this Yankee schooner was an Austrian, the mate a Norwegian, and the frozen sailor, a Nova Scotian.
Most wrecks occurred in the cold, dark months—indeed, Life-Saving Service Stations were not manned in the summer. Vessels coming on to the coast in winter from the tropics were especially vulnerable:
Nantucket, Jan. 12. The three-masted schooner T.B. Witherspoon, of Rockport, Me. Alfred A. Anderson master, from Surinam bound for Boston, loaded with molasses, sugar, and cocoa, struck on Miacomet Rip, south side of this island, at 5:00 yesterday morning and lays 300 yards from the shore. At the time of striking it was blowing a fearful gale of wind with a tremeandous sea running, making a complete breach over the vessel and rendering all efforts to reach her by a lifeboat ineffectual. After several attempts at throwing lines to the vessel the mates....were saved very much exhausted…The rest of the crew were lost... The bodies of the mate’s wife and child five years old, are in the vessel’s cabin, together with that of the steward... The lifesaving crew boarded the Witherspoon yesterday and recovered the body of Nicholas Smith, which was frozen in the rigging… – Bangor Daily Commercial. Jan. 12, 1886.
And some vessels were lost because they couldn’t make land. In December 1884 the bath three-master Nora Bailey left St. John, New Brunswick, for the short trip to Sydney, Cape Brenton. Driven off by fierce nor’west gales, the schooner was dismasted. Sixty-nine days later her starving crew, reduced to eating seaweed, was rescued by an English schooner. They were landed at Gibraltar. ²