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Live saving operations on Lake Superior s Shipwreck Coast next Academy Lecture topic
Compiled by Colin Merry , Cmerry@pioneergroup.com
April 3, 2021
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The lighthouse at Whitefish Point is the longest working lighthouse on Lake Superior. Braving the Waves: The U.S. Life-Saving Service on Lake Superior s Shipwreck Coast will be presented by Bruce Lynn as the next installment in the Benzie Historical Society s Academy Lecture Series. (Courtesy photo)
BENZONIA Braving the Waves: The U.S. Life-Saving Service on Lake Superior s Shipwreck Coast will be presented by Bruce Lynn as the next installment in the Benzie Historical Society s Academy Lecture Series.
The lecture will be held at 4 p.m. on Thursday as a virtual presentation on Zoom. To learn more about the Zoom lecture, visit the Benzie Area Historical Society s Facebook page, benziemuseum.org or call the Benzie Area Historical Museum at (231) 882-5539.
KITTERY, Maine Men fought deadly seas in small wooden boats from the Wood Island Life Saving Station to rescue mariners in distress starting in 1908. Their whispered motto? “We have to go out, but we don’t have to come back.”
“It’s where wooden boats met service,” said Sam Reid, president of the Wood Island Life Saving Station Association.
Hear the history of these Portsmouth Harbor “surfmen,” who were part of the U.S. Life Saving Service a forerunner of the U.S. Coast Guard. Learn how the Life Saving Station is being brought back to life. Reid will speak to island’s past and future at 1:30 p.m., Tuesday, March 16 in a free webinar sponsored by the Active Retirement Association. Advanced sign up is required at Wood Island Registration or by emailing araseacoast@gmail.com for the registration link. Guests receive a confirmation email with information on how to attend.
Don Wilding
When the steamer Portland was lost off the coast of the Outer Cape during Thanksgiving weekend of 1898, it was the greatest maritime disaster that New England had ever seen.
The disaster also proved to be the inspiration behind a poem, “The Loss of Steamer Portland,” which was written by Captain Frederick R. Eldredge and Hydrographer George Eldredge of Chatham.
The 326-word poem opened with the lines:
“On the twenty-seventh of November, In the year of ninety-eight,
A northeast blizzard swept the sea, Death following in its wake.”
Nearly 450 people perished at sea during the storm, named for the steamship S.S. Portland. The vessel left Boston on the night of Nov. 26, heading for her namesake city in Maine, but never made it.
Don Wilding
When it came to the 1907 wreck of the Alice T. Boardman near Handkerchief Shoal, tragedy was unavoidable, no matter what the crew did.
The two-masted schooner out of Calais, Maine, was enroute to Hyannisport on Jan. 3, when she ran into trouble off Monomoy. When the crew opted to try to row to shore in the Boardman’s dory, Thomas Henry was knocked overboard and lost, causing his shipmates to give their effort a second thought.
“The shipwreck would doubtless been unattended by fatality had the hapless sailor remained on board,” the U.S. Lifesaving Service summarized in its 1907 annual report. “On the other hand, the outcome of the attempt to launch the small boat, deterring the sailors, as it did, from further attempts to leave ship, in all probability prevented the loss of the entire crew, for had they succeeded, even in getting away from the vessel they would not have had one chance in a hundred of weathering the heavy seas and getting ashore through the surf.