Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1906-02-17

erly part and Rose and Crown, Old Man
shoal, Davis South shoal, Fishing Rip and
score more have traps of sand where the
water in one place may be forty-five feet
deep, while in the next 1t may be only five
and even less.
A Great Thoroughfare.
Yet for all these dangers thousands of
vessels tread the place each year. for Nan
tucket and Vineyard sounds form a great
passage for coasting vessels bound east
ward of Cape Cod or returning south
bound
In all that passage there are only two
anchorages for vessels drawing more than
ten feet that afford shelter from all winds
from all quarters. This fact has led to a
petition by ship owners which has just
gone before Congress to investigate the ad-
Visibility of building a great stone break
water that shall run out into Nantucket
sound from a point little south of Great
Point on the Island of Nantucket
That harbor of refuge is needed along
that cruising ground Is best shown by the
great list of victims over which the merry
men of the Nantucket shoals and sound
can gloat when they dance to the tune
from the southwest that draws up through
the SueS and wakens them to green rollings
and SpoutingS.
OF all the shoals and rips famous and
dreaded Handkerchief shoal, lying south
by west from wicked Monomy Island, has
taken the most, for in the past ten years
twenty-three ships have stranded among
its smoky breakers The other shoals have
this record of stranded vessels:
Bishp and Clerks shoal .; Chatham
roads, 4: Common flats, 3; Dennisport and
beach, ]; Dogffsh bar, 3; Halves shoal, /;
Horseshoe shoal, 2; Long shoal, 3; Mus
keget Island, >; Mutton shoal. Norton shoal,
Osterville and Shovelful shoals ! each, and
Tuckernuck shoal 5.
Vineyard Haven. in Vineyard sound to
which the ships that are sore beset on
the shoals run for refuge, has a score of
thirtynine stranded ships In the last ten
years witness to its treachery, and Menem-
sha blight, not far away, has eaten eight.
Altogether the Martha's Vineyard waters
alone have caught seventy-six vessels in
their traps Add seven taken by Nantucket
shoals proper twenty-four stranded on
Nantucket bar, Great Neck, Great Point
Great Rip and other points of the oceanic
island, and the total record of STANDINGS
for all that area of Shoals and harbors of
refuge IS 167 IN ten years.
The Storm of 1898.
Most memorable of the great disasters Of
recent years IS the fierce cyclonic storm
that began on the evening of Saturday.
November %, 1898, and lasted twenty-four
hours, with violence that even the matter
of-fact official reports of the life saving
service and Of the lighthouse board describe
as almost unprecedented.
This great tempest expended the greatest
part of its rage in the area included in mis-
trict No. of the United States life saw
Ing service, within which lie Martha's Vine
yard. Nantucket and all the curIousIv
named shoals, rips, slues and deeps which
mar up the seatrap known loosely under
this general title. Nantucket shoals
In this District No. 2, more than two
hundred persons persisted at sea in that one
higHt. VI THESE, more than one hundred
ana hfty went down with the steamer Port
land, which foundered off the cane Most
of the others who were drowned went down
with vessels that were tossed on OUTLYING
Islands whore nobody saw them In the
darkness of the terrible night or on yes
sels that were driven across the shoals and
broken on the drowned bars far away from
land. as a stick might be broken across
a mans knee.
As Sumner l. Kimban, general superin
tendent of the life saving service said in
MS report, This overwhelming loss of life
on a coast long noted for frigbtruI disas~
tiers was the result of a single stroke in
flicted In the dark, which was so sudden
that II could not be PARTED and so power
full that its awful effects could not be nit
igated."
When the Portland. in spite Of varnfrss
steamed away from her pier in Boston har
Dor that night. at about I o'clock the saa
between Cape Ann and gorgeous GAY Head
on Martha's Vineyard, was white with sails
beating desperately to get the shelter of
harbors OF refuge.
Already, before the gale had really he
gun. the sea was monstrous and the wind
was blowing with what wol1d have -.
called hurricane velocity had If NOT r.,
for the real blow that began later in the
evening. >'''
Forty and more ships reached Vineyard
Haven that night. Before morning more
than half of them were wrecked
Bad as the evening looked, and alarmed
as tile coast"lSe mariners were by the APP
pearance of the sky, when that great
storm really began to blow il exceeded tba
approximations of even the mosttinfd and
the prophecies Of the most experienced
Transatlantic liners were besat ca bard
that even they had TO fight for their lives
With the great northeast wind came sIeet
and snow so thick that men on laboring
schooners could not see across the narrow
decks. BulkheadS, breakwaters piers ana
roads We're washed away. Whole beaches
were undermined and swept off Houses
near shore were blown down and beaten
down by waves.
A Terrible Night.
So huge was the force of the wind that
its exact speed can never be known for
the instruments were unable to record II
At Scituate Point life-savers' station
was swept away, while the wind picked
up the boat and carried It one way and
then blew the boat carriage in the oppo-
site direction scattering them far anort
though each weighed tons.
The pilot schooner Columbia with four
men dead in her. was thrown up on the
beach and into a cottage, which fell over
on her when she struck.
Life savers making their patrols had to
lie fat on the beaches at times to hold on
The life savers who tried to get out TO
two schooners that came ashore almost
alongside of each other in Menemsha Cove
on Martins Vineyard. had a new and
strange experience.
Although the surf would have seemed
fearful to a landsman, IL was not a seri-
Gus obstacle TO the life savers. But when
they put their boat into the sea they dis
covered that the wind was greater than
even their tough strength. Though they
waded into the water till 1t was up 70 their
armpits. they could not force the boat out
Every time IL was blown in on them. At
last II was actually blown bodily across
the beach into a pool at least seventy-fve
yards away.
They worked for twenty nine hours be-
fore they got out to the wrecks. They
saved six men at last. All the rest hsg
been drowned.
Everywhere. from Gay Head to Mono
moy, the coast was lined with wrecks