On the afternoon of March 9th, 1928, a northeast wind pushed in from the sea and by five P. M. it had developed into a howling gale with blinding snow. Out from her home dock at India Wharf in Boston the big passenger and freight boat Robert E. Lee pulled out for her trip to New York, via the Cape Cod Canal. The storm instead of diminishing grew constantly worse, but she ploughed her way through the wildly rushing sea, and though only two miles from the beach along the Manomet and Sandwich shores not a glimpse could be had of the land through the snow filled air, and navigation became a matter of dead reckoning and a hope to pick up the lighthouse at the Cape Cod Bay entrance of the Canal.
When the ship had reached a point about two miles from the Canal entrance she crashed with terrific force upon the rocks of a projecting ledge and was there held fast on the “Mary Ann Rocks,” a short distance south of the Manomet Coast Guard station. This found the Robert Lee in a most dangerous position, where the great seas driving straight across Cape Cod Bay swept the ship from stem to stern. The ship carried 150 passengers and a crew of 110.
S. O. S. calls were quickly sent out and Coast Guard and Naval boats hurried to the scene.
The Coast Guard boats from Gurnet, Manomet, Sandwich and Provincetown were promptly brought into service, but as the conditions of wind and sea were so dangerous it was not deemed advisable to attempt the transfer of the passengers from the stranded ship just then.
Towards morning the fury of the gale having subsided the work of taking off the passengers began, and was successfully accomplished a few hours later with no serious mishap to the passengers and the ship’s crew remained on board. But the affair was not to escape without the tragedy of the loss of human lives.
The Coast Guard boat of the Manomet Station in trying to make connection with the stranded steamer, was caught under the bow by a huge sea that swept fiercely around the counter of the Lee, turned the boat completely over and sent her crew of eight men helplessly into the sea, four of them clung desperately to the overturned boat, the other four struck out in an attempt to reach the shore, but those clinging to the boat and those fighting for the shore were finally rescued. But those from the overturned boat were so thoroughly chilled and exhausted that they were immediately hurried to Chelsea Hospital where three of them died.
If there are people who think that the men who man the stations along our storm swept coasts have a sinecure, would they like to have been in the Manomet surf boat that day?
Many names of heroes are emblazoned upon the scroll of human endeavor the world over but there are deeds equally as deserving of record that pass unnoticed and unsung.
The recent disaster on the rocks at Manomet brought prominently before us several instances of unselfish heroism, not on bloody fields of battle, but in the freezing waters of the cruel sea.
Not detracting in the least from the brave efforts of the Coast Guardsmen, three of whom gave up their lives in the struggle, or the men and boy who pushed out in small and leaking boats to help, there was one case of glorious heroism that stands out preeminently, and whose name should stand high up on the roll of honor, and that is Ernest Douglas, a man unskilled in the use of boats, but he stripped from his clothing his money and watch, handed them to a friend, and as he sprang into the surf boat to take the place of an absent member of the Surf Boat crew, called back to his friend on shore, “If I do not come back give them to my wife.”