The Sea Rovers

by Rufus Rockwell Wilson

PILOT SIGNALING A VESSEL

A peril, however, more feared by pilots than the one I have been describing, is the dreaded lee shore; and with reason, as a story told by a veteran ocean pathfinder will show. On a still afternoon in midsummer the crew of a pilot-boat sighted a ship off Fire Island, some five miles away. In the dead calm prevailing the only way to board her was to row over the distance. There would be little danger in doing this if the wind did not spring up and the ship sail away, so the yawl was lowered and headed for the distant merchantman. But as night was closing in, and ere the yawl had come within hailing distance of the ship, of a sudden the breeze sprang up, and the vessel making sail, glided slowly over the horizon line. The breeze grew into a gale, and in the gathering storm and gloom the men could no longer discern the whereabouts of the pilot-boat. Nor, there being no compass on board the yawl, could they determine the direction in which they were being blown. The nearest land was miles away and the only thing that could be done was to keep the boat's head to the wind and wait. Thus the minutes lengthened into hours. Toward dawn, when the night was darkest, they heard the thunder of surf on the reefs, and a little later felt the yawl lifted up on the crest of a mighty breaker rushing swiftly toward the land. There was a deafening roar, a crash, a whirl, and a torrent of foam. In a twinkling the boat was capsized and the poor fellows were struggling in the surf. One struck a rock and was killed. The others, freed from the receding wave, ran up the beach, and by digging their hands into the sand to escape the deadly undertow, finally got ashore, drenched and exhausted.

In the main, however, the system I have been describing has now become a thing of the past. Potent causes have contributed to this result. Formerly pilot-boats had no particular stations assigned to them, and boats have been known to cruise as far north as Sable Island, a distance of six hundred miles, in order to get steamers taking the northern courses. In the same way pilot-boats cruised long distances to the southward and straight out to sea to meet the incoming steamers and sailing vessels. Thus, unrestrained in its movements and left to seek out its own salvation, each boat sought to outdo the other in securing work, and all sorts of strategic devices were brought into play in order to first gain the side of an incoming vessel. Pilots took advantage of fog and night in order to slip by a rival, while jockeying for winds and position was indulged in to an extent that would be counted extraordinary in a yacht race.

Competition, however, cut down earnings to such an extent that there came a time when many of the boats were no longer able to pay expenses. Then it was that some of the long-headed among the pilots, casting about for a remedy for this evil, came to the conclusion that one steam pilot-boat would be able to do the work of three or four sailboats. It was accordingly decided some years ago that steamboats should gradually replace the existing fleet of sail. With this innovation came restrictions regulating the cruising grounds of the boats. Instead of cruising about indiscriminately as formerly, each boat is now assigned a certain beat. An imaginary arc has been described extending from Barnegat to Fire Island, a distance of seventy-five miles, and all pilot boats are expected to confine themselves within this line. Four pilot-boats patrol this line, each covering a beat of about nineteen miles. Inside of the circle are stationed two more pilot-boats, while still further in is a boat known as the inner pilot-boat. Just off the bar another boat is stationed to receive the pilots dropped by outward-bound vessels. When a boat in the outer circle becomes unmanned or disabled, a boat from the inner circle takes its place, while a reserve boat occupies the beat left vacant on the inner circle. In this way all the beats are constantly patrolled in an efficient and economical way. Each pilot takes his turn at the service, and is on board a boat cruising on the stations three days in seven, a moving contrast to the offshore service of other years, when a boat and crew were frequently compelled to remain at sea for weeks at a time.

Indeed, under the new system of pilotage, battles with cross-seas and gales and exposures to snow, cold and sleet, while cruising for vessels hundreds of miles off coast, are fast becoming things of the past, and for stories of collisions, wrecks, narrow escapes and strange mishaps, one must now hark back to the records of former days. Here, however, he is sure to encounter many a tale that quickens the pulse and stirs the blood. Take the case of the Columbia, run down by the steamship Alaska, off Fire Island. When the Alaska was sighted, the pilot-boat was head-reaching to the north on the port tack. The wind was blowing a gale from the northwest, and an ugly sea was running, with the weather clear, but cold. She plunged deeply into the heavy sea, and heeled to the force of the wind until her lee rail was awash. The wind whipped off the top of the waves and filled the air with spray. When the steamship sighted the boat off Fire Island, her course was changed to make a lee for the boat's yawl. She seemed to stop when the yawl was launched and two men and a pilot went over the side of the boat and dropped into her, but ere the yawl had fairly started on her way the liner, of a sudden, and without warning, forged ahead. The surge from the port bow of the Alaska, as she pitched into a big wave, capsized the boat, and threw the men into the water. Before anything could be done to save them the bows of the steamship rose and fell again, and, hitting the pilot-boat, cut it in two and crushed the decks and beams to bits, the broken timbers being swept under the bows and along the sides as the steamship again forged ahead and passed over the spot. Not a man on the Columbia was saved.

The Sandy Hook pilot, however, never quails in the face of danger or even death, as was proved at the stranding of the packet boat, John Minturn, almost within a stone's throw of the New Jersey beach during a frightful hurricane in February, 1846. There were fifty-one souls on board the Minturn, and of that number only thirteen escaped to tell the story of that fearful night. Its hero, according to the evidences of all, was Pilot Thomas Freeborn, who to the very last struggled manfully to succor the hapless women and children who clung to the deck around him. It was bitter cold, and every wave that washed over the stranded ship left its coating of ice on deck, rigging, passengers and crew. Freeborn and brave Captain Stark, who was forced to see his wife and children freeze to death without being able to render them assistance, gave up their own clothing in a vain attempt to protect the weaker sufferers, and when days afterward the pilot's body was found washed up on the beach it was almost naked, while that of a woman, which lay near-by, was carefully wrapped in his pea-jacket.

It has been three-score years since the wreck of the Minturn, but in every year since then there has been numbered among the members of the Sandy Hook Pilot's Association scores of hardy men, who, should need come to them, stood ready to risk their lives and die as bravely as did Thomas Freeborn. Pilot Henry Devere proved that he had the same heroic fiber in his makeup when he sailed in the James Funck, before the Civil War. A brig under shortened sails was sighted one day, and when the yawl of the pilot-boat drew alongside, Devere hailed a boy at the wheel. The boy seemed to be stupefied, and the pilot was obliged to hail him several times before he started up, leaned forward into the companionway, and called feebly to somebody below. Then a gaunt man came on deck and said that the crew had been stricken by fever. Most people in the face of a menace of this sort would have turned back, but Devere was not that kind of man. Instead, he went on board, and, with the help of the mate, headed the vessel toward Sandy Hook. The captain was ill in his stateroom. The body of a dead sailor found on deck was tied in mosquito netting and dropped overboard. The boy died in the lower bay, and the captain off the Battery, leaving the mate as the sole survivor of the crew. The pilot helped to furl the sails and make the lines fast, and only left the stricken vessel when she had reached her moorings.

The stranding of the Jesse Carll in 1889, illustrates another of the dangers with which pilots sometimes have to contend. The boat, having discharged one of her five pilots, was standing off shore near Fire Island, when she began to feel the force of an advancing southern cyclone, and early in the evening was in what sailors call "nasty weather." At midnight a violent thunder-storm burst overhead, and the increasing wind raised a furious sea, but Pilot Gideon Mapes, in charge of the vessel, had her under double-reefed sails, and standing up against the wind and waves in fine shape. Then came a deluge of rain, and the wind increased to hurricane force. Soon a thick mist covered the water and shut out everything in sight. The boat reached off and on, expecting to keep out of shoal water, but all efforts failed. Her signals of distress were seen by the life-saving crew on the beach, and before daylight the ten men on board were taken ashore in boats. When morning came an effort was made to pull the boat off, but as she shifted into deeper water she filled, a hole having been made in her bottom. Then the pilots abandoned her, but she was raised and repaired a few weeks later.