The Life Savers of Cape Cod
Cape Cod’s life savers are known the world over for their intrepid, enduring bravery, gallant deeds, and the success in rescuing life that they have achieved in their hazardous duties along the most dangerous winter coast of the world.
Every night, along the shores of Cape Cod, from Wood End at Provincetown to Monomoy at Chatham, in moonlight, starlight, thick darkness, driving tempest, wind, rain, snow or hail, an endless line of life savers steadily march along the exposed beaches on the outlook for endangered vessels.
The life saver’s work is always arduous, often terrible. Quicksands, the blinding snow and cutting sand storms, the fearful blasts of winter gales, are more often than not to be encountered on their journeys; storm tides, flooding the beaches, drive them to the tops or back of the sand dunes, where they plod along their solitary patrol with great peril.
When a ship is in distress, whatever way the crew is rescued by the life savers, the task involves great hazard of their lives, hours of racking labor, protracted exposure to the roughest weather conditions, and a mental and bodily strain under the spur of exigency and the curb of discipline that exhaust even these hardy fearless coast guardians. In cases of boat service tremendous additional peril and hardships are added.
Death has often claimed the life saver at his work. Or as a result of his gallant, unselfish toil for the safety of others in the rigors of winter, one life saver after another is compelled to retire from the service on account of shattered health.
Beyond their wages of sixty-five dollars per month the surfmen receive no allowances or emoluments of any kind except the quarters and fuel provided at the stations.
No person belonging to the service is allowed to hold an interest in or to be connected with any wrecking company, nor is he entitled to salvage upon any property he may save or assist to save. A surfman cannot be discharged from the service without good and sufficient reason. For well proven neglect of patrol duty or for disobedience or insubordination at a wreck the keeper may instantly discharge him; in all other cases special authority must be first obtained from the general superintendent.
The keeper lives at his station throughout the year, thus being on hand during the two summer months to summon the crew and volunteers in case of shipwreck or accident.
In “The Life Savers of Cape Cod” it has been the aim of the author to pen-picture some of the heroic deeds performed by these guardians of the “ocean graveyard,” as the shores of Cape Cod are known, the terrible hardships they are called upon to endure, and the peril they constantly face in the work of saving life and property, together with illustrations of the life-saving stations on Cape Cod, the boats, beach apparatus, breeches-buoy, etc., used in saving lives, photographs of the crews of the different stations, a historical sketch of the life-saving service, and stories of historic disasters, with biographies of the life savers of Cape Cod, their duties, manner of living, and their achievements.
Cape Cod extends directly out into the Atlantic, like a gigantic arm with clutched hand, bidding defiance to the mighty ocean, for a distance of forty miles. Shifting sand bars parallel its eastern shores, which are an unbroken line of sandy beaches from Monomoy Point at Chatham to Wood End at Provincetown, a distance of about fifty miles. Myriads of shoals lie along the coast, and unnumbered vessels have met their doom along its shores, which rightly bear the name “Ocean Graveyard.”
The shores of Cape Cod from Monomoy to Wood End are literally strewn with the bones of once staunch crafts, while unmarked graves in the burial-places in the villages along the coast mutely relate the sad tale of the sacrifice of human life.
Scenes of awful terror and heroic rescues have taken place at the time of shipwreck along these shifting sand bars, and here, too, the life savers have given up their lives in devotion to their duty.