Legends of Fire Island Beach and the South Side

by Edward R. Shaw

“Stern all,” was the order quickly uttered. A short distance back, they whirled the boat around, and then pulled at the order. [Whale-boats], I suppose you know, are sharp at both ends.

Before they were in position, however, to row straight on to the whale and keep clear of his flukes, he started. Quebax, the harpooneer, fastened his oar, grasped the harpoon, rose up in the bow and threw it. It was a long throw, fifteen feet, but it was the only chance. The harpoon entered the side of the whale and must have held securely. But the whale turned suddenly and struck the boat with his head. The crew sprang overboard just in time, for the next moment the whale stove the boat into flinders. The wind, so it happened, favored them, as it was blowing directly on shore. All the crew reached the Beach except Quebax. He was missing, nor was his body ever found. The bow of the boat, to which the line was fastened never came ashore, so it was thought that Quebax got entangled in the line. It was toward the end of the season—this whale would have made their sixth—and the disaster broke up their whaling for that year.

No man of that crew felt the great sense of relief at leaving the Beach that Jonas did, and never after would he go on there to remain overnight. He said nothing at the time about his weird experience among those Beach hills the night before Quebax was lost, but in later years he told it all.

And then, again, I have heard it said that for several nights before that awful catastrophe at Old Inlet, at the time of the War of 1812, the same strange calling and shouting was heard among the hills.

Old Uncle Payne, whose gunning house stood east of Molasses Island Point near Quanch, declared that twice in his life he heard at midnight the moaning in the hills, and each time thereafter had found bodies washed ashore.

But at [Fiddleton], at Watch Hill, and through all the hollows there, down around Pickety Rough, even on Flat Beach, the eerie holloing, the shouting and calling, unlike any human voice, that was heard on different nights, suddenly changing, too, from one spot of the beach to another, foreboded the drowning of those fifteen buccaneers from the Money Ship and the burying in the sea for all time of their blood spent treasure. Yet having heard all this, though years before, I joined the first life-saving crew of Station No. —. The season then was a short one. Regular patrols of the Beach with exchange of checks for tally was then a thing undreamt of. Only in thick, foggy, or stormy weather did we walk the Beach. I can’t see any use of patrolling that Beach in good weather and wearing the crew out. To my thinking all that is necessary on bright days or on clear starlight and moonlight nights is to keep a man on the lookout with a good glass beside him, and so save the crew; for there come times when the rescuing of life depends upon the reserve strength of the men. Yes, there come emergencies on that coast when power of endurance is the important, the decisive thing. The way to meet such unexpected demands and emergencies is to give the crew a chance to store up reserve force, power to hold on, to make a great effort for a night and a day, perhaps. This is what counts when a vessel is ashore far more than any regular patrolling, with the men on the go bright weather as well as bad weather.

We had pretty good weather that year till after the holidays had passed. Then there came a spell of thick weather. I remember distinctly how it set in. The day had been a very bright one, with a tinge of warmth in it. But at nightfall an ominous murky drift of cloud gathered in the southwest, a lee set for a northeaster.

The order was given for patrol that night, and the eastern beat fell to me. When the tide began to rise the wind hauled northeast by east and blew lightly down the coast. It didn’t seem to portend snow, but the weather began to thicken. I faced the wind and walked briskly, but it bit my face and searched under my clothing as only a northeast wind will do. When within a quarter of a mile of the end of my beat, I struck a match and held it between my two hands as a sort of a shield, and let it burn. If you have never tried this, you have no idea how far such a light may be seen in the darkness or how large a spot of light it appears to make. Lanterns are of no account on that Beach. No lantern will burn when a high wind is blowing sand before it. They choke up and go out. And as about the only time when they would be of use is when they won’t burn, they’re not carried. Then, after all, it’s no place for them. They’ll do round the barnyard, but the coast is no place for a light, down almost on the surf’s edge, bobbing and moving along in the darkness.

I lit another match and still another, but got no answer, so I concluded that the patrol up from the next station was returning. I reached the end of my beat, and waited some time under the lee of a hill, and near midnight began my patrol back. Passing a deep opening between the hills, my attention was attracted by a low moaning. At first I gave little heed to it. Then later I walked up to the top of one of the hills that flank the strand all along and listened. I faced the wind; then I stood back to it. I turned my ear in every direction, even bent my head down to render my hearing more acute. I could not distinguish any strange sound. No sooner, however, had I descended to the strand and resumed my walk than the moaning began again, seeming as before to be just over behind the hills. It was continuous but uneven, like the wind. It moved down the Beach as I walked, just abreast of me apparently, but over behind the hills, considerably farther, however, toward the bayside when I passed any low spot of beach. When within half a mile of the station, it was gone. I noticed instantly when it ceased.

An experience of this kind disturbs a man’s soul, and the more he fights it the greater trouble it becomes and the more uneasiness it gives him. But I said nothing about it at the station.