The Sea Rovers

by Rufus Rockwell Wilson

With each recurring autumn at nearly 300 points on our 8,000 miles of seacoast, careful preparations begin for the winter campaign of the life-saving service. Conducted in the face of constant peril and hardship, this annual battle with disaster, storm and death is a peaceful, yet always glorious one. During the year 1905 alone it resulted in the saving of more than 4,000 lives and the rescue of nearly $8,000,000 worth of property, imperilled by wreck and storm, all of which would otherwise have been lost. The United States Life-saving Service is now the most complete and effective organization of its kind in the world, furnishing a model and pattern for those of other countries. The story of its rapid development during the last thirty-five years is also the inspiring record of the life work of one of our most sagacious and devoted public servants, Sumner I. Kimball, a modest, blue-eyed, kindly-faced man of middle age, whose untiring labors in this field long since gave him a foremost place among the great benefactors of his time.

When in 1871, Mr. Kimball was made Chief of the Revenue Marine Bureau of the Treasury Department, the life-saving service had slender existence, save on paper. He found the station-houses sadly neglected and dilapidated, the apparatus rusty or broken, and many of the salaried keepers disabled by age or incompetent and neglectful of their duties. The outlook would have discouraged a man less resolute and determined than the new chief, but he had conceived the splendid idea of guarding the entire coast of the nation with a chain of fortresses garrisoned by disciplined conquerors of the sea, and he set about the accomplishment of his self-imposed task with patience, sagacity and skill.

He reorganized the service and prepared a code of regulations for its control, in which the duties of every member were carefully defined. Politics, the bane of the service in former years, was rigidly eliminated. Lazy, careless and incompetent employees were promptly dismissed, and their places filled with capable and faithful surfmen. The station-houses were repaired and increased, and equipped with the best life-saving devices human skill and ingenuity had thus far brought forth. Last and most important of all, a thorough and effective system of inspection and patrol was inaugurated, and so successful did it prove that during the first year's operation of the new system every person imperilled by shipwreck was saved. The service has been wisely extended from year to year, until now it has 270 stations, three-fourths of which are along the Atlantic coast, while others are on the lakes; a board of life-saving appliances; telephone lines for prompt operations and a splendid corps of assistant superintendents, experts, inspectors, station-keepers and mariners. The yearly cost of the service at the present time is slightly less than $1,800,000, a sum ridiculously small when the saving of life and property is taken into consideration.

Life at a life-saving station is never an idle one. The routine followed at the Avalon, New Jersey station, as I have observed it, in essential details, is the same as that practiced at all of the stations of the service. Four days of every week are devoted to drill. On Tuesdays the keeper orders out the surfboat and drills the crew in riding breakers and landing through heavy surf. On Wednesday he gives the men practical instruction in the working of the international signal code. On Thursday the Lyle gun is ordered out, and one of the crew, taking up a position some distance down the shore near a post stuck in the sand, personates a seaman on a stranded vessel. The other members of the crew plant the gun and fire a line which the watcher pulls in and rigs to the post. Then the men at the other end of the line dispatch the breeches-buoy and gallantly effect the rescue of their comrade. On Friday the recovery drill is carefully gone through. One of the crew assumes the role of a half-drowned sailor, and his comrades resuscitate him by rolling him on the sand and producing artificial breathing, according to the rules laid down for the purpose. Saturday is general cleaning day. The discipline of the crew is never relaxed and none of its members can go out of sight of the station save by special permission or when off duty.

The night hours at a life-saving station afford a much more thrilling story than the one I have just been relating. Each crew is divided into three night watches. The first watch goes on duty at sundown and patrols the beach until eight o'clock, at which hour the second watch relieves it and patrols until midnight, when the third watch sallies out and does duty until four o'clock in the morning. Then the first watch again goes on patrol and keeps watch until sunrise. During the day a surfman is constantly on the lookout in the watch-tower of the station. If the weather be clear, this precaution suffices, but if it is cloudy and storms threaten, the beach patrols are continued through the day. Each watch consists of two men, who, upon leaving the station, separate and follow their beats to the right and left until they meet the patrolmen from the neighboring stations on either side, with whom they exchange checks—this to show the keeper they have covered their respective beats. On the Atlantic seaboard, stations are now within an average distance of five miles of each other, but often the beats of the surfmen are six and seven miles long. It is a part of the surfman's duties to keep a constant watch of the sea and to note the vessels by the lights displayed, and, if they approach too close to the shore or outlying sandbars, give them timely warning. For this purpose he always carries a Coston signal, which, when exploded by percussion, emits a red flame that flashes far out over the water and warns the unwary ship of its peril. Last year more than two hundred vessels, warned in this way, at once changed course and ran out of danger. If the surfman observes a vessel that is stationary, he must determine whether she is at anchor or in distress, and if the latter proves to be the case, he displays his Coston signal, to assure the shipwrecked that aid is close at hand, and then hastens to the station to give the alarm to the keeper.

The work of the patrolmen involves frequent danger and almost constant hardship. Imagine, if you can, and that is impossible, the lot of a surfman on the Jersey coast during one of the great storms sure to occur once or twice in every winter. A fearful night has followed a stormy and lowering day. Inky darkness shrouds sea and land, and the wind, blowing at the rate of fifty miles an hour, pipes and roars defiance to the patrolmen as they struggle along their lonely beats. The driving snow freezes on their cheeks and chins; wet sand is flung into their faces and cuts with the keenness of a razor, while great masses of icy foam beat fiercely on the head and face and body at every dozen steps. Huge waves break at the foot of the sand dunes along which they painfully labor, and drench them again and again, often felling them to the ground. Every twenty or thirty yards they pause, and, baring their faces to the pelting snow and foam, search the ocean for lights. In this way hours pass before the prescribed beat is traversed, and the surfmen, wet, half-frozen, bruised and exhausted, seek for a brief season the warmth and shelter of the station-house. Sometimes weakness overcomes them and they are unable to reach this refuge.

When the patrolman descries a vessel among the breakers, he displays his Coston signal, to give assurance that aid is at hand, and then hurries to the station and arouses his comrades. From the report of the patrolman the keeper makes quick decision as to the best methods to be employed in effecting a rescue. If the surfboat is to be used, the doors of the boat-room are instantly thrown open and the boat-carriage drawn out and hauled by the crew to a point opposite the wreck. Then the boat is launched and the surfmen depart upon their errand of mercy. The surfboat is usually of cedar, with white oak frame, without keel, and provided with air cases, which render it insubmergible. Comparatively light, it can be hauled long distances, and is the only boat that has been found suitable for launching from flat beaches through the shoaling waters of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. Handled by expert oarsmen, its action is often marvelous, and, although easily capsized, there are few recorded instances of its having been upset with fatal results while passing through the surf. Often repeated attempts have to be made before a wreck can be reached, and even then the greatest care must be exercised to avoid collision with the plunging hull or injury from floating wreckage and falling spars. When the benumbed and exhausted crew and passengers, who have usually sought refuge in the rigging from the overwhelming seas, have been taken off, the difficult return to shore yet remains. Sometimes the boat is run in behind a roller, and by quick and clever work kept out of the way of the following one, and the shore is gained in safety. At other times the boat is backed in, the oars being used now and then to keep it upon its course, and again, when the sea is unusually high, a drag is employed to check the force of the incoming breakers and prevent the boat from being capsized. In the manner described, boat and crew make repeated trips through the breakers until all have been taken off the stranded vessel, and the work of rescue is at last completed.

When the condition of the sea prevents the use of the surfboat the mortar cart, equipped with a small bronze, smooth-bore gun, named for the inventor, Captain Lyle, of the army, is ordered out. Its destination reached, the gun is placed in position and loaded by members of the crew trained to the work, while others adjust the shot-line box, arrange the hauling lines and hawser, connect the breeches-buoy, prepare the tackles for hauling, and with pick and spade dig a trench for the sand-anchor. With these preparations completed, comes the firing of the gun. The shot speeds over the wreck and into the sea beyond, while the crew of the imperilled vessel seize and make fast the line attached. The surfmen next attach to the short-line the whip (an endless line), the tail-block and tallyboard, and these are in turn hauled in by the sailors. And then by means of the whip, the surfmen dispatch the hawser and a second tallyboard, which directs how and where the end of the hawser shall be fastened to the wreck. When the tackle connecting the sand anchor and the shore end of the hawser is straight and taut, it is lifted several feet in the air and further tightened by the erection of a wooden crotch, which does duty as a temporary pier, while the wreck answers for another. Finally the breeches-buoy is drawn back and forth on the hawser, and the shipwrecked brought safely to shore. On this occasion there have been no delays, but at other times there are numerous obstacles to be overcome. The ropes may snarl or tangle or be snapped asunder by the rolling of the vessel, and again, the imperilled crew may perform their share of the work in a bungling manner, or unexpected accidents befall, which tax to the utmost the patience, resources and courage of the surfmen. In many cases people held suspended in the breakers or ensnarled in the floating cordage and debris of the vessel, have only been rescued by the most daring exploits of the surfmen, who, at the greatest risk of life and limb, have worked their way through the surf, released the helpless victims of the wreck, and brought them to shore.