Lighthouses and Lifesaving
A major step in aiding shipwreck victims was taken in 1872 when Congress established the U.S. Life Saving Service, a predecessor to today’s Coast Guard. Nine stations were initially built at Monomoy, Chatham, Orleans, Nauset, Cahoon Hollow, Pamet River, Peaked Hill Bars, Highland, and Race Point. Eventually others joined them at Monomoy Point, Old Harbor, High Head, and Wood End. All were manned almost entirely by local men. From 1872 to 1915, station crews patrolled the beaches day and night in rain, fog, and blizzard, meeting at halfway stations to exchange tokens and return to their stations. If a wreck or a ship in trouble was sighted, a red Coston flare was ignited to alert the ship that it had been seen. Then the station crew brought the 18-foot surfboat op a cart drawn by horse or by hand to the site. If the surf proved too rough to launch the boat, the crew attempted to shoot a life line from a small cannon to the stricken vessel, from which a “breeches buoy” could be suspended and the victims taken off one by one. In these pictures, a Life Saving Service crew poses at one of the Chatham stations and in a drill another crew gets ready to haul its surfboat by horse to the water. In the 43 years of its existence, the Cape’s Life Saving Service performed hundreds of sea rescues, some of truly heroic proportions. Despite their motto—“You have to go, but you don’t have to come back”—there was very little loss of life among the crews, a tribute to their skill and training. After the Cape Cod Canal was built in 1914, the number of shipwrecks declined greatly. In 1915 the Life Saving stations were made a part of the newly-created U.S. Coast Guard. Today the Coast Guard staffs stations only at Provincetown, Chatham, Sandwich, and Woods Hole; the old Nauset station (shown in color) is now a part of the National Seashore. The recent advent of ship radar, radio beacons, LORAN, and other sophisticated navigational equipment has even further reduced the risks of offshore travel. Despite all these improvements, the sandbars and storms of the Outer Cape have not claimed their last victims.