THE CLARA BELL
On the afternoon of March 6th, 1872, a moderate wind was blowing from the land across the sea, the sun shone full and clear, a great fleet of sailing vessels, urged forward by the favoring breeze, made rapid progress over the smooth sea towards their destination. In the late afternoon, as the sun approached the western horizon, it settled behind a dark and ominous cloud that was rising towards the zenith and casting a dark shadow over all the sea.
WRECK OF THE CLARA BELL
The two masted schooner Clara Bell, Captain Amesbury, with a cargo of coal for Boston, had that morning sailed out of the harbor of Vineyard Haven and passed across the shoals of Vineyard Sound, moved rapidly up the coast, and by ten o’clock that night was nearly opposite Highland Light. The wind, which had been only fairly strong up to this time, rapidly increased in velocity, and snow began falling thick and fast.
The wind rapidly increased to a gale, when the vessel had reached a point two miles north of Highland Light the wind suddenly changed to north and in a short time became a howling gale; the fast falling snow hid all the lights and the surrounding sea from view, and the temperature dropped to zero. In trying to make an off shore tack the vessel was struck by a huge wave, forced shoreward and with an awful plunge the schooner struck a bar a fourth of a mile from shore. It was now nearly midnight; the sea, though running fierce and wild, had not at this time reached monstrous size, and Captain Amesbury, thinking that his only hope for life depended upon getting away from the schooner, decided to make an attempt to launch the ship’s boat. After great exertion upon the part of himself and crew they succeeded in getting the boat over the vessel’s side, and the crew of six men and himself jumped in and cast off the line that held them to the vessel, but not two strokes of the oars had been taken when the cockleshell, borne like a chip on the top of an onrushing wave, was thrown bottom up and her crew were struggling in the icy waters. Captain Amesbury and one of his men were carried on a towering wave rapidly towards the shore, but before they could gain a foothold the remorseless undertow had drawn them back into the swirling waters. With the next oncoming wave the sailor was thrown shoreward again and succeeded in grasping a piece of wreckage and by its aid managed to crawl away from the jaws of death; not so fortunate the captain, who with the other members of his crew were swept away in the freezing sea and seen no more. The sailor, finding himself safe beyond the reach of the mad sea on the sand-swept and desolate shore, started to find shelter. In his struggles to reach the shore one of his boots had been torn off and lost, he was coatless, without covering on his head, thoroughly drenched, his clothes freezing to his benumbed body and limbs. In the blinding snow storm which had now set in in dead earnest with a cold so intense that it nearly took his breath away, this poor fellow started out to find if possible some human habitation; he could make no progress against the freezing gale so was obliged to turn towards the south and follow the direction of the wind. Over frozen fields, through brush and brambles that tore his bare foot at every step, over the ever increasing snow drifts, through bogs and meadows and hills and hollows, he struggled until the coming of daylight; then a farmer going out to his stable in the early morning found this unfortunate, frozen and exhausted sailor standing in the highway a short distance from the Highland House, so dazed by his terrible night of torture that he could not speak or move. He was carried into the farm house and the writer was one of those who helped to revive him. We were finally made to understand that he had come from a shipwreck on the coast and that all of his shipmates were drowned. Leaving him to the care of the women of the household I hurried with others to the beach, believing it possible that even yet there might be some other unfortunate still alive on the wreck.
After a somewhat exhausting trip over the drifted snow and the frozen beach, we reached the stranded vessel, which had in the meantime been driven by the huge seas completely over the sand bar upon which she struck and the constant pounding of the waves had driven her high and dry upon the main beach. We walked on board dry footed and passed down the cabin stairs. There in the cabin stove burned a nice cheerful fire and all was dry and warm. The haste of Captain Amesbury and his crew to leave the strong vessel for a little frail skiff had cost them their lives, and this has been so often the case, it would seem that sailors so often exposed to the dangers of the sea would realize when brought suddenly into positions of extreme danger by the stranding of their ship, that their only chance for life lay in staying by their vessel, rather than taking the chances afforded by a small boat in the wild sea; if their large and strong vessel cannot stand the shock certainly the little boat cannot. Many men have gone down to their death in the sea because of too great a faith in the ship’s boat.
The sailor who escaped with his life from this wreck finally recovered after the amputation of three toes and a finger.
People have sometimes said, “Are there no romances connected with shipwrecks?” Fiction writers have often distorted the facts sufficiently to be able to weave about the incidents of a shipwreck some romantic story, but most of the disasters which overtake those who go down to the sea in ships to do work on the great waters, partake so much of the elements of tragedy that there is little room for the entrance of romance into the situation. In almost every instance where ships are overwhelmed by the storms and the seas the cold hard facts are so distressing that every other feature, except the one of suffering, is lost sight of and only the thought of drowning men takes possession of the senses. The following story, though bearing the color of romance, had a sad and heartbreaking ending.