WRECKS AT THE CHATHAM STATION.
Since Keeper Eldredge has had charge of this station he has made twenty-six trips to disabled or wrecked vessels in the station surf-boat. On board the vessels assisted by Keeper Eldredge and his crew there were seventy-four persons. Of this number eight were taken ashore in the surf-boat. Six of these comprised the crew of the schooner Electa Bailey, which was a total loss, one was from a crippled cat-boat, and the other was a sick sailor taken ashore from a schooner. Most of the work done by the crew of the Chatham Station was on two and three masted schooners that became stranded on the Chatham bars.
CAPT. HERBERT E. ELDREDGE.
CAPT. HERBERT ELDREDGE, KEEPER OF CHATHAM STATION.
Capt. Herbert E. Eldredge, keeper of the Chatham Station, was born in Chatham in 1863, and has been in the life-saving service for thirteen years, eight as a surfman and five as keeper, all of which have been spent at this station. Captain Eldredge began his career on the water along the Chatham shore when a boy of thirteen years, and was an expert boatman, fisherman, and wrecker before he was twenty years of age. For six years he went fishing on the rips off Chatham, one of the most perilous occupations along the coast. As a member of Capt. Joseph Bloomer’s wrecking crew, Captain Eldredge had a wide experience working on wrecked vessels along the coast, and was especially fitted for the responsible position that he now holds. He has a crew of brave and hardy life savers for whom the rips and shoals that abound along the Chatham shore have no terrors. Not a life has been lost within the province of the Chatham Station during the time that Captain Eldredge has been keeper.
He married Mary A. Nye, and is the father of two daughters and a son.
CHATHAM STATION CREW.
The No. 1 surfman is Bradford N. Bloomer. He was born in Chatham in 1871, and has been in the life-saving service for six years, all of which have been spent at this station. Before entering the service Surfman Bloomer was a Monomoy fisherman, so called. In this work he became skilled in the art of handling boats in the surf, and obtained a knowledge of the shoals that lie hidden along the coast off Chatham that especially fitted him for the work of a surfman. He married Julia Pitts, and is the father of two daughters.
