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About The Sunday Oregonian. (Portland, Ore.) 1881-current | View Entire Issue (March 22, 1908)
Life-Saving Service Likely ; to Be Pro vided, for. by - the Government A VM ' : X ) kV U 4 llV.''' i Vkk rf- - x WW fMI W 1 It (. Vi pi' - tJC2 V6v It P. .'.. ;, g , f ,HT JOHN" F.LPRETH WAT KINS. OUR army of storm fighters is in the tix of our army of man fighters, only in a worse one. Nearly all over four-fifths of those who filleil its ranks five years ago are now in other employments where wages are more pro portionate to he higher eost of living" and where work is less hazardous. Idealizing that continueil discontent ninong these coast guards must result in Increased death and destruction along: our shores, the commerce committees of ' both houses of Congress have just favor nhty reported bills granting increased pay of about 10 per cent to superinten dents, keepers and assistant keepers; giv ing a ration allowance of 30 cents a day to all crew members: allowing de pendents of a man dying from injuries received on duty to receive his pay in ll cases for two years after his death. Hud allowing mothers within the official raiegory of dependents. Mr. Sumner I. Kimball, general superintendent of the life-saving service, worked hard for pen !ons for his men, their widows, orphans and dependent mothers, such as was pranted lately to those of the revenue cutter service. But the leaders in Con grrgg are not et iu a humor to grant this recognition to our only plucky coast guards, who, of all our fighting men, are. year in and year out. the hardest worked and by far this worst exposed to suffering and danger Save 14 Lives Out if J 5. To learn Just what these brave fellows is to earn their salt I called yesterday upon Mr. Kimball. He is a Maine Yankee, wbo was graduated from Bowdoin five yrs ahead of Tom Heed, and left the Msina legislature ten years before the great Speaker entered upon his appren ticeship there. Mr. Kimball has been in his present position for 37 years, and connected 'with the Federal Government continuously since tAn interesting man to chat with on any topic one who could stock a Bancroft with personal reminiscences of a half century the Na tion's great, or a Stevenson, with plots of sea tales enough for a life work he has a tongue's end ever ready with the smallest detail of the great system, which ho has organized and extended along our four great coast lines. He showed me in the official records that since he organised his bureau In 1ST1 his boys have worked nt nearly 1S.000 wrecks, imperiling nearly lii.ftX) people and about SVt. 000.000 worth of property. Fourteen out of every 15 of these human beings and over two-thirds of this imperiled property have been savert. Most people have the idea that visiting and looking out for wrecks Is the only work of these storm flghtrs. Their chief told me that last year, in addition to saving five dozen of people who had gotten into the water from other causes than accidents to boats would-be suicides, lunatics, care less bathers, skaters, children who felt from docks, etc. they had rescued 17 'mm Dependents Ton Men' in trie ;v "yvn , 1 " Y;v JOT; -gj.-u iJS flood victims, carried 17 sick people to physicians, given direct medical aid to 10 recovered &I corpses from the water, cared for 13 others found on beaches, re covered 14 lost fish nets, saved 100,000 feet of drifting saw-logs, worked at 31 fires and rescued from the flames S5 horses and 110 vehicles. In addition to this they rescued a number of other persons en dangered in other ways fallen into sew ers, gotten caught upon breakwaters, lost In blizzards, stranded in automobiles, endangered by runaway horses and one woman victim of attempted assault. Thus the life-saving man cdmbines with his best-known duties those of fireman, po liceman, salvage man, ambulance sur geon, hospital steward and morgue master. Sufferings During Night Duty. Most of the men disabled in this peril ous service are victims of exposure dur ing the night patrol, at which each surf man must take his turn along the lonely beach. None of the four night watches is. ever omitted in a coast precinct, and wherever there is darkness on our shore, fair weather or foul, there stretches an endless chain of men, pacing up and down, with weather eyes skinned on the sea. The stormier the night and the harder the way the more important is this duty deemed, and failure to reach the signal box at the end of a patrol is punishable by dismissal, even when the way has to be gained by floundering over the slippery ice banks or the shingle, stumbling over the driftwood thrown up by the mad waves or wading waist deep through beach gullies dug by the storm. In degree of exposure, peril and exhaust ing toll there is no duty in any branch of the Government service comparable to that of the beach patrol. Besides the scores of men who have been disabled for life by this duty, Mr. Kimball could re call the cases of seven of his men who have been found dead on their beats. Two ot these died thus in 1903. He told me. also, that of his eight district super intendents who have died in office only two have passed away at home, and one of the latter was the victim of pneu monia, contracted on duty. , Officers W ho Hare Succumbed. Two of these officers were drowned. Superintendent Guthrie of the North Carolina district met this fate by the pitch-poling of his surfboat at the fa mous wreck of the Huron In 1577, while Superintendent Sawyer of the great lakes district was drowned during duty on Lake Huron in 1SS0. Perhaps no case Illustrates the ordeals of these super intendents better than that of the death of Superintendent Eldridge, who suc ceeded the ill-fated Captain Guthrie of the South Carolina district. Required by the regulations to go 46 miles along the coast, in February. 1893, he started by schooner, but getting1 stuck in the ice shipped a pony and cart across the near est, inlet and proceeded thus until the pony smashed the cart. With the animal now hitched to an oxcart, he walked half 7, THE SUNDAY OREGON IAX, PORTLAND, MARCII 22, 1908. , As. " if fV ir , Bs. - A A. of the time to keep from freezing, and caught by nightfall at a fisherman's de serted hut, he had to tear one side of the habitation away for firewood. Lying upon rushes, which he cut to protect him from the frozen earth, he was taken with the premonitary chills and fever of pneu monia, from which disease he succumbed after reaching his destination. Another such case was that of Superintendent Sparrow of the Massachusetts district, who, after walking to and from a wreck for 14 miles through one of New Eng land's severest snow storms, in Decem ber, 1S06, shattered his health, nearly lost his eyesight and entirely lost his mind. On this trip he waded kneedeep in snow covered marshes and scrambled on all fours over sand dunes while the snow was falling so thickly that it well-nigh smothered him. Kntire Crews Drowned. But the most terrible ordeals of ' our life savers are suffered while struggling with the waves in times of shipwreck. But when death is the wages of valor here it comes quick and fast, and does not inflict a lingering sting. The list of widows and - orphans and helpless mothers, heart-broken and left dependent by sudden death met in these heroic mo ments, is long. The first great tragedy of this kind occurred at the wreck of the Italian bark Nuova Ottavia off North Carolina in lS7ti. The life savers put .out at night through a heavy surf, beyond which the bark appeared as a mere mass of shadow. The progress of the lifeboat could be traced from shore only by the glimmer of its lantern. A sudden ex tinction of this flame, a scream from the sea and then corpses rolling in through the surf, followed by the empty boat tumbling in upside down, were the only evidences of the catastrophe which claimed the lives of an entire life-saving crew. From one of the surviving sailors of the bark it was afterward learned that his fellow Italians, becoming panic stricken when the lifeboat had come alongside, had all attempted to jump aboard at once and had swamped the little craft. All of the surf men were lost at the wreck of the J. H. Magruder on Lake Huron iu 1SS0.- This crew was from the Point Aux Barques station, Michigan. The wreck was three miles out, and for two hours the life boat tried to reach her through a treacherous surf, which turned the little craft over time and time again. Finally she capsized after the crew had become exhausted by repeated rightings and bailings. Finally they had only strength enough left to hold on to her sides: then they dropped, off. one by one, to death all save the keeper who managed to hold fast until washed into safe water. Screamed to Aid Heart Action. . "I was conscious only at brief inter vals. said the keeper, who was in the water three and one-half hours. "I was not suffering, had no pain, had no sense of feeling in my hands;feit tircti,slecpy and numb. At times I could scarcely see. 1 remember screeching several times, not to attract attention, but thought it would help the circulation of my blood." The same year the keeper and two surfmen of the Peaked Hill bar station. Cape Cod, were drowned while trying to rescue the crew of the sloop C. B. Trumbull. The life savers had landed part of the crew, and having gone back for the remainder, were alongside the wreck when the lat ter's boom came down into the water, then rose again and lifted the lifeboat bottom up. The life savers righted her, but before they could turn her bow-on a big sea capsized her once more, drowning the three men. Victims or Australian Wreck. The Barnegat crew. New Jersey, also lost three tried men in Winter of 1886 when the Austrian bark Kraljevica struck on Barnegat shoals .during a night of thick darkness and dense fog. The Austrians left the bark in their longboat and after drifting for hours capsized. Eight were drowned, but the captain and five others clung to the boat and gained the beach. Almost dead from exhaus tion, they dragged themselves to a gun ner's hut, well provisioned and supplied with fuel. The members of the Barnegat crew at dawn first espied the wreck, and not knowing that the Austrians had put off, went out through the ugliest surf seen in years. They were half way back when to their horror a towering wave, so hollow that the lifeboat could not rise in it, swamped them, killing; one man by a blow from the gunwale and drowning two others. The same year the keeper and two surfmen of the Grand Point Au Sable crew. Lake Michigan, were lost at a wreck by the capsizing of their boat, beneath which one of the men was smothered. The thermometer stood at zero, and the survivors of this cata strophe reached shore with their clothing frozen as stiff as boards. Raced to Death Through Snowdrift. The next year part of a picked crew from the two stations near Cape Hear;-, Va., met the same fate at the wreck of the German ship Elisabeth. Some of these men had dragged their apparatus for miles through snowdrifts, often waist deep. Arriving at the wreck, they found 22 Germans in a longboat alongside the sinking ship and had taken seven of these aboard when an immense wave suddenly swept around the rear of the wreck and turned the two small boats over and over, throw ing all of the 29 men. including the seven life savers, into the sea. Keeper Belanga. as he swam with the men to ward shore, helped a surfman remove his boots, and this man was saved, while the brave keeper himself was lost. Out of the 29 men only one other also a surfman escaped. The latter after reaching shore fell exhausted in the snow, where he was found by his wife, who. with - another woman, dragged him home and nursed him back to life. This keeper's brother 1 . n TT . 7 n Vv:'-- xzv WIT. and tw-o brothers-in-law died with him. The breaking of a defective oar caused a capsize which drowned four surfmen of the Cleveland, Ohio, station who were out at the wreck of a skiff in 1S93, the remainder of the crew being rescued by a tug. Panic among the men taken aboard the lifeboat caused the last sad catas trophe of this kind. In 1902, off Shovel ful shoal, Mass. Keeper Eldridge ana his men had rescued the crew of a wreck March 11, and on the 17th were returning to take oft the wreckers working thereon. The latter were safely in when a sea struck the surf boat. This would have caused no dam age, but the wreckers became so panic stricken by the sudden lurchlag of the craft that they obstructed, stood up, clung to the surfmen and crowded them from the thwarts. A second sta cap sized the party before the life savers could turn bow-on, and of the 13 in the little boat 12, including the keeper, were drowned. The water was cold and the men clung to. their craft until one by one they dropped oft exhausted, save one surfman, the sole survivor, who managed to bold fast until the up turned boat drifted into quiet water. And now let uS see the lif-saving man in the glory of success. Thua far essj' v ill . r vswj6;. kSliiA"'-::;L;:;::--H''- -T '"- v"-- W9 we have been dealing largely with failures failures unavoidable though they be. The night of December 14, 1902, the schooner John R. Ndyes struck three miles off Lakeside, on the New York shore of Lake Ontario, Keeper Gray, of the nearest life-saving station, at Charlotte, 23 miles away, tried to put off at once in the harbor tug, but it was frozen fast in the ice. Hasten ing to the nearest railroad station, in land, he ordered two flat cars on a sid ing shoveled clear, hauled his beach apparatus for two hours through the snow, lifted it into the cars, chartered a special locomotive, put out for Lake side, unloaded hi apparatus on sleds, and with his men thus hauled it four miles to the beach through the snow six" feet deep. When he launched hi boat he could not see 12 feet ahead in the blackness of the night which had fallen upon the wreck, and, although he and his crew groped about the win try sea for hours, they did not sight it till dawn. She had drifted 20 miles out, and here, after hours of toil at the oars, he found her, with all on board nearly dead from exposure. The wellnigh exhausted crew, while steady, ing their little craft against the storm waves, lifted all of th$ imperiled ones aboard ajid. rowed back over the 20 "V V miles of wintry sea. But on ncaring shore, after all of this ceaseless toil, kept up all night and all day, the crew found the ice barriers along the brink too high to let them beach their boat. Just as the second night of their ad venture was falling these nearly faint ing men, their backs bent and aching, their muscles chilled and knotted, steadied their little boat once more, picked up their human burdens, one by one, and now, wading waist deep in the chilly waters, now carefully feel ing their way over the slippery ice, laid them safely upon the soft snow. It is the women and children made dependent, the men themselves dis abled, by each ordeals as these that Congress is now asked to give a square deal. Four out of every five of the plucky chaps left in the service has a wife at home, and race suicide is not a crime to be laid at the doors of salt water folks. Nearly all of the bach elors in the service have dependent mothers. Are not the women and chil dren of men who slave like this for others, and for others alone, as worthy of a Nation's protection as the women and -children of the soldier and blue jackets, who fight once in a generation, or of the revenue cutter sailor, who seldom smells gunpowder in a lifetime? The life-saving man is engaged in ceaseless hand-to-hand combat with a foe far more relentless, far more hor rible than the most treacherous human monster that ever bore arms a foe which grants no armistice, respects no flag of truce, allows no quarter to the prisoner or the maimed. Washington. D. C, March 14. Following a Bad Example. Mr. Smith (after Ill-tempered speech by Brown) Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, following the example of Mr. Brown's luncheon, I shall venture to disagree with him. An Old Song In New Form Philadelphia Press. There was an old decan ter, and Its mouth -was gaolng wide; the rosy wine had ebbed a way and left ' its crys tal Ridn: nd the wind went humming humming. up and down the pmIs It flew, and through the reed-like hollow neck the wildest notes It blew. I placed it in the window where the " blast was blowing free, and fancied that Its pale mouth nan the queerest strains to me. "Tln-y tclt me puny conquerors! the Plague ha slain his ten, and War his hundred thou sands of the very beet of men; hut J." 'twas thus the bottle spake, "but I have conquered more than all your famous conquerors, so feared and famed of yore. Then come, ye youths and maidens all. come, drink from out my cup the beverage that dull th brain and burns the siirit up; that puts to shame conquerors that slay tholr scores below, for this has deluged millions with the lava tide of woe. Tho' in the paih of battle darkest waves oC blood may roll, yet while I killed the body I have damned the very snul. The cholera, the plague, the sword, such ruin never wrought as I, - In mirth or malic on the innocent have brought. And still I breath upon them, and they shrink before my breath, and year by yar my thou sands tread the duunal road, of .Death.
