Gasoline Yacht Idler ~ 24 January 1915

Annual Report of the Operations of the United States Life-Saving Service for the fiscal year ending June 20 1915:

A schooner yacht, supposed to be the Idler, struck on Diamond Shoals, off Hatteras, on January 24th. The win revenue cutter could approach the wreck. She broke up rapidly and all on board were lost. Wind was northeast and the seas were so heavy that neither life-savers nor revenue cutter could approach the wreck. She broke up rapidly and all on board were lost.

The Idler was a composite schooner, 85 ft. L.W.L., 117 ft. 6 in. L.O.A., 22 ft. 6 in. beam, and 13 ft. 9 in. draught. She was designed by Tams, Lemoine and Crane and build by Lawley in 1901. She was commanded by Capt. Robert II. Harding of No. 77.

Extract from Report on the Idler

“A small vessel, schooner rigged and having the general appearance of a yacht, was sighted at 9.30 a.m., January 24th, by the surf man on day watch in the lookout tower of the Cape Hatteras Station, in the breakers on the Inner Diamond Shoals, about four or five miles off shore. The vessel was under reduced sail, reefed foresail, mainsail close reefer and one headsail. There was no sign of life on board, nor was any signal of distress discernible. She was rolling deeply and laboring heavily, and the seas breaking completely over her. The vessel was at once reported to the keeper, who immediately went to the lookout and verified the condition mentioned, then had notice given by telephone to the crews of the two adjacent stations, and proceeded with his crew to launch the power surf-boat in the bight of Hatteras cove as the only available means of rendering any possible assistance to the vessel so far off shore. The launching of the boat was found impossible after repeated trials, even with the assistance of the crew from the Creeds Hill station, which had arrived to assist in the attempts.

“This condition, it was found, prevailed for three days following, similar attempts to launch being made each day. The place selected for launching the boat afforded the only lee, though slight, from the northerly sea and wind.

“With the wind during the night before blowing strong from the southeast and shifting during the early morning of the 24th to the northeast, both winds making up a high sea, it is evident that the vessel encountered on Diamond Shoals a turbulent mass of huge, smothering breakers, extending for miles, the heavy, breaking, old sea opposing the new. Also these conditions produced surf too high to permit the slightest chance of launching a boat of any description from the beach on either side of the Cape. There is little wonder that the yacht broke up and sank a few hours after it was sighted.

“Had it been possible to launch a boat from the beach, the great extent of heavy breakers, opposing seas, and well-known treacherous cross currents of great velocity in the vicinity of the shoals would have rendered it quite impossible to have approached within several miles of where the vessel was first seen or foundered.

“In my opinion, a vessel of such small size, of yacht design, swept by such irresistible breakers must have swamped very soon and all hands drowned forthwith. Taking to the rigging would afford little safety, and any person on deck must soon have been swept off and immediately beaten under and drowned. A small boat or life raft would have been of no avail.”

Some days after the vessel broke up, blankets and articles were washed ashore from the wreck identifying the vessel as the Idler. 12 people were killed. Later an unidentified body came ashore.