STORY OF THE SLOOP TRUMBULL
Between Highland and Race Point Lighthouses, on Cape Cod, stretches a long line of treacherous, dangerous sand bars. Situated midway between these points on the shore is the Coast Guard Building known as the Peaked Hill Bars Station. From this station the surfmen have rescued many lives and have seen many sailors go down to death in the raging sea.
On November 30th, 1880, a cold northerly gale was sweeping down the coast from Massachusetts Bay and lashing into fury the waters that pounded over the sand bars from Race Point to Wellfleet.
On the afternoon of the previous day one of those ungainly stone carrying sloops, with a deck load of granite bound from Rockport for New York, sailed out of Rockport Harbor. She carried besides her captain a crew of four men.
When daylight broke on the morning of the 30th the patrol from Peaked Hill Bars Station discovered this sloop hard and fast on the outlying sand bar, a half mile south of the station. Capt. David H. Atkins of the Peaked Hill Station decided that the sea was not so severe but that the surf boat might be launched. This was done and the following members of the Coast Guard Station, Elisha Taylor, Stephen Mayo, Isaiah Young, Chas. P. Kelley, Samuel O. Fisher, with Capt. Atkins at the steering oar, pushed the boat through the surf and pulled away through the angry sea for the rescue. Surfman John Cole was left on the beach to assist the boat’s crew on its return. They reached the vicinity of the stranded vessel but the sea was so rough and the vessel rolled so in the troubled waters that a near approach to the craft was unsafe and in fact almost impossible.
The men on the sloop were told to jump and the Coast Guardsmen stood ready to pick them up. Three of the men did as requested and were pulled into the life boat, but the captain and mate refused to take the chance, thus making it necessary for Capt. Atkins and his men to return to the shore. This they did and landed the three sailors.
Capt. Atkins, fearing that the sloop would be destroyed and the two men drowned, again went out to try and induce them to leave the vessel. As the surf boat neared the vessel the rush of the tide and sea carried the boat towards the long projecting boom and the loosened main sheet carried over and back with every roll of the craft caught under the bow of the boat and turned it completely over, throwing the entire crew into the mad waters. The surfmen, finding it impossible to right the boat, clung desperately to her bottom. Soon Capt. Atkins, who was not a strong swimmer, dropped exhausted into the sea. He was soon followed by Elisha Taylor and Stephen Mayo. Young, Kelley and Fisher, who were good swimmers, seeing that if they clung much longer to the boat must soon go as had their mates before them, so kicking off rubber boots and as much clothing as they could, struck out boldly for the shore, which they reached exhausted and chilled, and were pulled from the surf by Cole who had been standing by.
The bodies of Capt. Atkins and surfmen Taylor and Mayo were recovered the same day many miles down the coast from where the disaster occurred.
One of the crew of the Highland Station who helped to recover Capt. Atkins’ body from the surf was his own son.
With the incoming tide and moderating wind the Trumbull floated away from the sand bar and sailed down the coast with the captain and mate on board.
This tragedy could have been averted had not the requirements of the service and the sense of duty urged the Coast Guardsmen to attempt the rescue.
WRECK OF THE SOMERSET
BRITISH MAN OF WAR
So far back as November 2nd, 1778, the British warship Somerset was wrecked on Peaked Hill Bars, two miles east of Race Point Lighthouse.
The Somerset was one of a fleet of British warships which had been throwing shot and shell at Bunker Hill Monument and terrorizing Boston and the surrounding coast towns for many weeks.
THE WRECK OF THE SOMERSET—BRITISH MAN OF WAR
She often anchored in Provincetown Harbor, and a few days before this November day on which she was lost, left the harbor for the purpose of intercepting some French merchant ships which were due in Boston. On the second day of the cruise, and while attempting to re-enter the harbor, she encountered thick weather and a fierce northeast gale. Losing her bearings she stranded on Peaked Hill Bars and everything movable was speedily swept from her decks. She carried a list of nearly 500 officers and men, more than 200 of whom were swept from her decks and drowned when the ship stranded.
Next day the ship was beaten over the bars by the rough sea which continued, and she was forced near enough to the beach to allow of the rescue of the remainder of the ship’s company.
Capt. Hallet of Yarmouth and Col. Doane of Wellfleet with a detachment of the Militia came down the Cape to the wreck, put Capt. Aurey of the frigate under arrest and marched them all up the Cape to Boston, where they were imprisoned.
For more than a hundred years the old ship lay buried in the sands of the beach; then the ever moving sands and the currents of the ocean tore away the sand bars and exposed the timbers and rust covered cannon of the once proud ship, but it was not for long that the remains of the hull lay exposed. Relic hunters carried away many of the old timbers as souvenirs; then the relentless sea drove back the ever shifting sands and completely covered ship and guns. That was more than fifty years ago and since that day no part of the old Man of War has shown on the surface.
She was supposed to have carried sixty guns, most of them 24-pounders; that is, they shot a solid ball that weighed twenty-four pounds.
