Two of the crew were fortunate enough to get hold of a bit of floating wreckage and were swept clear of the tangled mass of laths and thrown to the shore where rescuers succeeded in pulling them from the surf. Not so with the other five members of the crew. The onrushing current swept them from the deck of the fast breaking up craft and threw them directly into the surging mass of broken and piled up laths, practically cutting off nearly every possible chance of escape. Had the lumber been of boards and timbers the chance for the sailors to reach shore would have been much better.
The Coast Guard from Nauset and Chatham reached the scene as promptly as they could, but they were a long distance from the wreck, and the nature of the cargo made it practically impossible to send a line over the vessel, and the distance from the shore where the craft lay still further operated against the rescue of the unfortunate crew.
Sometimes the Government has fits of economy, but the Coast Guard service is a poor place to begin the practice of it. Some time before the Coast Guard Station at Orleans had been abandoned, that is, the crews had been withdrawn and the station locked up.
Another case of the irony of fate that under these conditions this schooner should be thrown at the very doors of the station that had been abandoned.
Had this station been manned it is quite probable that every man of the crew of this craft would have been saved.
After this experience the Government made haste to reopen the Orleans station and a full crew went on duty December 1st, 1927. This seems to be another case of locking the stable door after the horse has been stolen.
LOSS OF THE REINHART AT RACE POINT
A short time previous to the seventh day of December, 1926, a storm of considerable violence had prevailed all over the North Atlantic and in and around the waters of Massachusetts Bay and along the shores of Cape Cod.
The temperature had been low for several days, and high easterly winds with frequent flurries of snow and sleet, and the sea was running riot all over the ocean from Maine to Nantucket Shoals. Under these conditions, late in the afternoon of the 7th, the three masted schooner W. H. Reinhart, Capt. Barton, from Bangor for Philadelphia, with a load of lumber, was driven hard and fast upon the outlying sand bars at Race Point, about half way between Race Point Coast Guard Station and the Light.