CAPT. SETH L. ELLIS.
Capt. Seth L. Ellis, keeper of the Monomoy Station and sole survivor of the Monomoy disaster, was born in Harwich Port, Oct. 12, 1858, and has been in the life-saving service seven years, all of which have been at this station.
Captain Ellis came from a family of seafaring people. His father, Capt. Seth N. Ellis, was an old West Indies tradesman.
Captain Ellis went to sea with his father when but nine years of age. When fifteen years of age Captain Ellis joined the fleet of mackerel fishermen, remaining with the fleet until he went coasting. While a member of the crew of the three-masted schooner Enos B. Phillips, of Boston, Capt. T. Reuben Allen, of Harwich Port, master, the vessel was struck by a blizzard that made her a helpless wreck. With her jibboom, bowsprit, foremast, and maintop masts gone, all her head sails lost, and the cabin and forecastle wrecked, the schooner was blown across the gulf stream and out of the track of all shipping. After many days, during which the crew suffered terribly, Captain Allen finally triumphed and brought the vessel into port.
Captain Ellis has been master of sailing and steam vessels, and now carries a captain’s first-class steamboat license for the Atlantic coast. Captain Ellis was also a well-known mackerel fisherman, being a member of the crew of the first steam fishing vessel employed in mackerel fishery, the Novelty, of Boston. Later Captain Ellis engaged in boat fishing along the shores of the Cape near Chatham, continuing in that work until he joined the Monomoy crew of life savers.