"That's precisely what they didn't know. It alters with every year; and on a dark night, with a driving sea and wind both against you, there's small chance of clearing it. However, I don't mean to say that all of them vessels were wracked fair and square. It got to be customary with owners of wornout coast-schooners to send them out with light cargoes and run them on the Jersey bar. The captain and crew would time it so's they could get ashore, and the sea would soon break up the vessel, and then up they goes to York for insurance on ship and cargo. There was a good deal of that sort of work went on when I was a boy, until the underwriters got wind of it and established the wracking system."
"This building?—"
"No, no! Don't confound the two things. This is government work altogether, and maintained solely for the saving of life. The crew of the lifeboat here are not allowed to touch a pound of freight or baggage on a wracked ship. The wracking-masters were appointed and paid by the board of underwriters in New York. Old Captain Brown was general agent on this beach. They took the coast in charge, as you might say, long before this government service was started. It was managed—like this," resorting again to his finger and the imaginary lines on the table. "A vessel came ashore on the bar. The first man who saw it gave warning to the wracking-master, who took command of the men ashore and the cargo in behalf of the insurance companies."
"Were there any signals then to rouse the coast in case of wreck?"
"Lord save you! no: every man warned his neighbor. There weren't but a few scattered folks along the coast then, but in time of a wrack you'd see them in the dead of night ready and waiting along the beach. No need of your signal-flags for them, I reckon. They knew there'd be dead men and plenty of wrack coming ashore before morning."
"And every man was ready to go out in his boat?" cried an enthusiastic townsman, "or to carry a line to the sinking ship?"
"Well—hardly," said the captain with a dry smile. "Folks that know the water don't go exactly that way to work. There was regular wracking-boats, built for the surf, and crews for each, you see: best man in the starn. The man in the starn, he generally owned the boat and chose his crew. Picked men. He kept them year after year. Then the wracking-masters hired him, his boat and his crew. Best crew chosen first, of course. Two dollars a day each was reckoned good pay. They got famous names, some of them surfboat crews," reflectively. "There was William Chadwick—Bill Shattuck he goes by—his crew was known from Sandy Hook to Hatteras. There's one of them now: he can tell you about it better than me.—Hello, Jake!"
We looked out of the window and saw the fisherman whom we had met in the afternoon lazily drawing his slow length along the beach, two or three blue mackerel dangling from his hand: he had not enough of energy, apparently, to hold them up. This was the fellow whom, an hour before, we had pitied as a dull soul to whom the wreck was "timber" and the life-saving station a "shed." We all had a vague ideal before us of a gallant sailor, with eyes of fire and nerves of steel, plunging into the cruel surf to rescue the sinking ship. We accepted the slouching Jacob instead with disrelish. He was not the stuff of which heroes in books are made.
"Jake," said the captain, "where is Shattuck's boat now? I was speaking of it to the gentlemen here."
"Take a cigar," interpolated one of the party.