The Green Forest tribune., 1912-05-10

final restlng-places of countless craft and crews
 To protect the lives of seafaring men from the treachery of this coast the United States govern ment has built and manned thirtythree life-sav- ing stations along its length. The crews of these number two hundred and sixty-four men, seven men and a keeper, or captain, to each station.
 On the eighth day of February, 1895, the ther- mometer at the weather bureau in New York city stood at zero. In Florida the temperature was the lowest ever recorded there. It was the coldest day Of the year from the Gulf to Maine, and a screaming hurricane raging along the entire Atlantic seaboard.
 The Louis V. Place. a three-masted schooner, sailed from Baltimore for New York on January 2Sth. On board Captain William Squires and men.
 The Place left the mouth of Chesapeake Bay Monday, February 4th. The wind was strong from the southwest and heavy swell was run ming. An hour after reaching the open sea the gale hauled to the northward and freshened alarmingly, while the sky became overcast and all signs of storm were evident. At daybreak the storm had become reality, and the sails of the Place were close reefed, with the exception of the foresail, which so stiff with ice that 1t could not be handled by the sailors
 As the heavy drenched over the forward part of the schooner they froze to everything they touched
 Through the day and night all hands were kept watch ready for emergency while the vessel labored nearly helpless in the bitter tenn pest On the morning of the sixth she was dis covered to be leaking and Captain Squres real ized that the situation grave. He held the craft as well possible to her course and on the next day she met the full fury of the hurricane which added the last touches to her desperate condition.
 By this time her crew were in a helpless con- diton, tottering about the decks, worn out from sleepless watching and dulled by the fearful cold
 There was but one thing left to do Captain Squires believed his ship to be near Sandy Hook If the water not too deep he could anchor and chance riding out the storm. He cast the lead and found eight fathoms. Then he called the crew aft, told them his intention gave each a double portion of grog, and sent them forward to the cables.
 But the ice had bound the anchors so deep that try as they might in their weakened condition, the men could not chop them out and after fu- tile attempts the captain called them aft again. Realizing that the prospect was hopeless, he told them to shift for themselves.
 They had not long to wait. Lifting above the rush of the gale, the crash of breakers soon came from ahead, and the sound told all that their fate was at hand. moment later the Place lay ham, mering across the bar just east of the Lone Hill life-saving station on Great South Beach, Long Island coast. Gigantic waves combed her decks from stem to stern and her crew fled to the shrouds for their lives
 The lifesavers of the Lone Hill station had gone eastward earlier in the morning to assist the
 
 from another schooner which had stranded dur ing the night. Consequently there was no one at Lone Hill save one man, Surfman Saunders, who had been left on guard Hardly had the Place struck, when she was discovered by Saunders. He teephoned the Blue Point station imme- diately, then called the Point O Woods station to the west
 In five minutes the Lone Hill and Blue Point crews, having finished with the wreck of the first schooner, were fighting their way back westward in the face of the hurricane
 The Place lay three hundred yards from the beach on the outer bar, giant gray sweeping half way up her masts they broke astern of her. At times she was invisible iHl he scud and the leaden rush of the Through lulls in the storm the life-savers the beach occasion ally caught glimpses of her in the port mig zen rigging where they clinging for their lives. There appeared to be eight in all Two stood on the crosstrees, six in the shrouds.
 The three life-saving at once grasped this desperate chance. A surf gun was placed in position, but before it could be fired cry of horror went up from those on shore. Through a rift in the whirling storm the two men lowest in the shrouds of the doomed vessel were seen to have vanished in a mountainous sea that swept her fore and aft
 An instant later the gun fred carrying line across the foretopmast stay out of reach of Other lines at once fired, falling almost with in arms reach of the shipwrecked sailors but they made no effort to secure them Evidently they stiffened from the intense cold that they were unable to move from their positions.
 Noon came. The snow flung along the beach in blinding sheets So heavy was the wind that the crews of the life-saving stations were forced to crouch down at times to keep from being blown from their feet.
 At one o'clock in the afternoon another shot was fired, but the line did not fall aboard the vessel Almost immediately the storm shut in closely, concealing the Place from view until late afternoon. When the next Hull came it was seen