Each month, an interesting aspect of the world’s oldest continuous maritime service will be highlighted. The men and women of the United States Coast Guard follow in the fine tradition of the brave mariners who have served before them. As sentinels and saviors of the seas, the United States Coast Guard proudly continues its commitment to honor, respect & devotion to duty to maintain their vigil – Semper Paratus.
The Puritan’s Dilemma
Captain Frank W. Chapman watched as the hawser strained under the tremendous stress of the heaving seas. The bowsprit of his charge plunged deeply into the swell and sent a frigid spray of the salty winter water of the Atlantic across the decks. Captain Chapman, a veteran of the absolute worst that Mother Nature could send his way, wiped his eyes as he trudged along the main deck to his cabin. As he entered into his cabin, he found his wife huddled with his two children in one of the bunks. Their eyes collectively scanned his face offering a look of fear blended with resiliency. “All will be fine Mother,” he offered gently as the bark creaked amidst the gale-force swept seas. “She is a staunch vessel,” he continued as he watched his brood nestled on the bunk, “and we shall weather the storm.” Captain Chapman offered a small smile and then, rubbing his beard, he returned to the main deck to keep an eye on the hawser, the seas, and the looming outline of the Long Island southern coastline. The Puritan was in a bit of a dilemma.
The Puritan, a steel hulled bark, had been built in Glasgow, Scotland and launched into service in 1889. At roughly twenty-two hundred tons, she had been lightened of her cargo in New York City only days prior from her inbound voyage from Buenos Aires. In the early morning hours of February 1, 1908, she was strung out on a hawser from the tugboat Teaser, bound for Boston, Massachusetts, when the gale had whipped up the Atlantic Ocean into a maelstrom. With eighteen souls aboard, the bark was being tossed wildly in the wind and wave whipped wintry waters off the south shore of Long Island. To weather the storm, she would have to part ways from her tug and try her luck under sail. Captain Chapman briefed his crew on the plan and then passed orders to signal his intentions to the crew of the tugboat. The Puritan would untether from her tow, quickly raise enough canvas to capture the wind, and navigate into deeper water. In short order, the tugboat slackened the hawser, and the crewmen aboard the bark worked feverishly to part ways. The timing would need to be perfect. Every minute free from the pull of the Teaser meant a minute closer to the lurking shallows of the shoreline. As the hawser snaked into the churning waters of the abyss, the crew began unfurling canvas to try and capture the wind. The wicked and howling winds were too powerful to harness as the sails unfurled and became untenable. Realizing that the conditions limited his options, Captain Chapman ordered the sails furled and secured and a last ditch effort to lower their heavy anchors to try and stay their unplanned arrival into the shallows. The crew, all aware that their actions and resolve were critical to the plan, fought bravely through the weather as they lowered the heavy anchors into the depths to grapple the bottom. The Puritan slid, with each passing wind-swept swell, closer to the coastline.
As the anchors dug into the bottom, the bark slowed her creep toward the shoreline. The anchors, Captain Chapman and his crew believed, would hold her fast amidst the gale. Only time though, Captain Chapman knew, would affirm his beliefs and his hopes. As the bark continued to brave the worst of the wintery gale, his crew and his family, weathered the possibilities of their dangerous plight. Meanwhile, the looming outline of the bark had stirred action along the wind-swept shoreline. Lifesavers from the United States Lifesaving Service Station at Bellport had been alerted to the presence of the bark and had begun a vigil for her status. Word had spread along the southern shoreline of Long Island of several vessels in an equal position of plight. Only time would tell if the anchors would hold the bark outside of the shallows and the deadly breakers of the bar off Bellport.
The anchors, though solidly wedged into the sandy bottom, could offer little respite for the bark. It quickly became apparent that they were not holding and the bark slowly lurched in the rollicking seas toward the shallows. Captain Chapman passed orders to his men and informed his family to remain calm in the cabin. He would keep them apprised of developments. On deck, Captain Chapman braved the elements and watched as the shoreline of Long Island appeared closer and closer. The Puritan would run aground and his only hope was that he could safely land his family and crew ashore amidst the gale.
As Captain Chapman watched the shoreline, the lifesavers of the Bellport Station had already passed word to the Blue Point and Smith Point Stations requesting their assistance. They had also utilized their wireless to inform the United States Revenue Cutter Mohawk of the bark’s plight. The U.S.R.C. Mohawk, which had already put out from the Delaware breakwater on the outset of the gale conditions, steamed northward to potentially render aid if the lifesavers had difficulty in affecting a rescue. The lifesavers, dragging their rescue cart and equipment toward the anticipated location of the Puritan’s track toward the bar, readied for the heavy work ahead. As the lifesavers scanned through the whipping winds, they could see the bark lurch from port to starboard as she careened with each passing swell broadside to the breaking surf. The crashing of the waves along the sand echoed as the heavy steel hull shuddered against the bottom. The Puritan was hard against the bar. The frigid February waves slammed into her hull and sent salty showers of icy spray across her decks from starboard to port. As the lifesavers began setting up their gear, they spotted one of the lifeboats from the bark being lowered in the heavy seas. The faint outline of five men could be ascertained entering into the small boat and frantically scampering clear of her steel hull. With oars struggling amidst the raging surf, the small yawl appeared to be swamped on several occasions. Despite the conditions, the small boat of refuge neared the frozen sands of the shoreline. The yawl capsized and the five souls spilled into the shallows. The lifesavers trudged into the water and began pulling the crewmen from the frigid waters. Having pulled the five men to the sand, the identity of the bark was learned as was the number of souls still aboard. The lifesavers had their work cut out for them.
Though a lifeboat had been successful, albeit capsized in the end, in making the small trip from the stranded bark to the shoreline, the lifesavers questioned whether or not they could or should utilize their surfboat to broach the breakers and the wind-swept seas to affect the rescue of the remaining souls aboard. After consultation, the lifesavers deferred to utilizing their breeches buoy equipment to pull the remaining crew and passengers over the surf instead of through it aboard the surfboat. Once the Lyle gun was set up, the next step was to fire a line to the stricken bark. The howling wind had different plans for the straightforward plan. The first shot of the line landed short of the bark. The second shot had the needed distance but fell astern of the stricken vessel. The third shot was perfectly placed, and it landed amidships. The crewmen aboard quickly secured it to the mast and the gear was readied to transfer the remaining souls ashore over the raging breakers. One by one, Captain Chapman’s wife, children, and nurse, and then the remaining crew, were one by one pulled ashore via the breeches buoy equipment. The lifesavers, joined by men, women, and children from the neighboring community, quickly pulled the passengers and crew to the shoreline and then assisted them with warm blankets and transport to the nearby lifesaving station at Bellport. Captain Chapman remained aboard the bark, to await a high tide and a chance of saving his charge. The lifesavers, the bulk of the crew and his family safe and being provided succor at the lifesaving station, maintained a vigil along the shoreline in case Captain Chapman needed assistance should the conditions worsen.
The sturdy steel vessel, her four skeletal masts towering high above her main deck, appeared no worse by the following morning. The only thing truly missing from the scene was water around her sand-bound hull and keel. Though the famous salvage firm of Merritt & Chapman had been summoned to the strand to affect a tow into deeper water, the owners of the Puritan were initially steadfast against paying the seventy-thousand dollar estimated cost of the operation. Spring tides, skilled seamanship with utilization of the bark’s own steam windlass, cables, and anchors, mixed with some luck, the owners decided, would be the course of action to salvage their investment from her sandy entombment. Despite their hopes that Mother Nature might assist with her salvage in a manner of repayment for her sand-bound predicament, the J.F. Whitney & Company eventually had to pay salvage fees to save the Puritan from the strand. The bark had spent roughly three weeks on the beach before she had been successfully towed to deeper water where she returned to her active commercial service.
Captain Chapman and the owners of the J.F. Whitney & Company offered their sincere thanks to the life-savers of the Bellport, Blue Point, and Smith Point stations for not only saving them from the stricken decks of the Puritan but also for their hospitality at the Bellport Life-Saving Station. In a letter from Captain Chapman, sent to Superintendent Kimball of the United States Life-Saving Service in Washington, D.C., he remarked of the “prompt service” and the hospitality extended to himself, his wife, his children, and his crew by Captain Kremer and his wife. The owners of the J.F. Whitney & Company, in a separate letter, also thanked Lieutenant Edmonds for his assistance in transportation costs and logistics to ensure that the crew was safely and timely returned to New York via railroad. The men of the Life-Saving Service, and in some instances their family members, had ensured that the Puritan dilemma was addressed in a timely, safe, and welcoming manner.
The timeless commitment to the salvation of others by the United States Life-Saving Service, which eventually was morphed into the modern United States Coast Guard seven years later in 1915, remains a cornerstone for the service to this day. Whether assistance is rendered from the pitching deck of a cutter on the high seas, from a swirling stokes-litter basket lowered from the cabin of a rescue helicopter, or from the bitter end of a lifeline thrown from a crewman aboard a surfboat in the breaking combers, the men and women of the United States Coast Guard continue to provide succor to those in need on the seas, as sentinels and saviors of the seas.