The Watertown weekly leader. [volume] (Watertown, Jefferson County, Wis.) 1912-1917, 1912-08-02

grasp the gunwale several times, disappeared
in the maelstrom of water. That left Ellis ana
Rogers, big and very strong man.
In this desperate moment Rogers threw MS
around the other surfmans neck in a death
grip. For moments while the battered and
the foam strangled them, they fought the last
grim fight for life Ellis to break the grip of his
frenzied comrade, Rogers to retain it. Suddenly
when it seemed that both must drown, Rogers
strength left him. His arms relaxed; his eyes
glazed. I'm going!" he gasped and sank.
A moment later the boat drifted nshore of the
outer breakers and for brief space was in
smoother water. Ellis once more crawled out on
the bottom and succeeded in pulling the center
board out that he could hold on to 1t and bet
ter maintain his position.
Now you will remember that at the time of
the stranding of the Wadena, the John c. FitZ-
patrick, her sister barge had also gone aground.
She had gone over the outer bar and was lying
between it and the inner breakers. On board her
was Capt. Elmer F. Mayo, Of Chatham, who was
in charge of tightening her. The Fitzpatrick was
far away from the Wadena that Captain Mayo.
and two other who were with him, did not
see the lfe-saving boat go out nor did they have
any knowledge of the grim tragedy that was being
enacted, until, glancing over the rail, Captain
Mayo saw an overturned life-boat with single
clinging to it.
The capsized boat was some distance from the
barge, but Mayo did not hesitate. "I'll get that
fellow" he announced coolly
On the deck of the Fitzpatrick lay a small
twelve-foot dory, the only boat aboard, totally
unfit craft for the furious that was laundering
across the shoals. Kicking off his boots, Mayo
and the other men, who begged him not to go
it would be certain death, the dory oversize.
How the captain of the wrecking crew kept his
fragile craft af1oat, those who watched him from
the Fitzpatrick could understand. But he
did keep her afoat, and the set of the tide and
the gale carried him down toward the capsized
nfe-boat to which Ellis chung with the last
of his ebbing strength
The life-saver said afterward that he
dory thrown over the side of the Fitzpatrick
he drifted her, but that moment later the
scud and the spindrift driven thick and
ceaseessly before his eyes that he nothing,
until suddenly out of the mist a tiny, bobbing
boat doomed dozen feet away Then the occu-
pant of this boat shot her skilfully alongside the
swamped nfe-boat and the exhausted surfman top
pied into her
Mayo with the half-conscious lfe-saver lying
limp in the bottom of the dory, had kept his word
to his mates the Fitzpatrick.
Necessarily, the most thrilling stories of the
coast-watchers those in which loss of life is
entailed and therefore, in a measure. they are
accounts of the failures of the of the serv-
ice But they are stories of noble failures and
behind some of them lie tragedies other than
those of death.
Perhaps one of the greatest of these is woven
about the career of Captain David H Atkins,
til November 80, 1880 keeper of the Peaked Hill
Bar station, Cape Cod.
This man had followed the sea from y-hood,
whaling, fishing and coasting In 1872 he became
keeper of the Peaked Hill Bar station.
Then came wild day in April, 1879, and, as
it appears in the chronicles OF the department
at Washington, "a blot fell across the record Of
Keeper Atkins
On this April day the Schooner Sarah ! Fort
stranded near Peaked Hill Bar. A terrific sea,
coupled with an onshore hurricane and a tempera-
ture very low for the time of the year. faced At
kfns and his crew as they discovered the schooner
and took their apparatus to the beach
Without hesitation the keeper ordered the surf
boat launched, but the sea was SO heavy that it
was thrown back the beach Time and again
in the twenty hours of watching and battling with
the storm that followed the keeper led his men
into the breakers with the boat but each time
they were beaten back, drenched with the winter