Schooner George N. Reed, January 20, 1915

New Berne Weekly Journal, NC, Jan. 26, 1915

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.

Schooner Josephine ~ 3 April 1915

Annual Report of the Operations of the United States Life-Saving Service for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1915:

Wreck of the Schooner Josephine Near the Kill Devil Hills Station, NC

The Josephine was a four-masted schooner of 639 tons, of Baltimore, MD. She sailed from Savannah, GA, for New York City March 26 with a cargo of lumber. On March 31, when off Cape Lookout, she ran into a storm of exceptional severity. Buffeted by wind and sea for three days or more, she lost practically all her sails and also became water-logged, and to keep her from sinking her master headed her for the beach. She struck the shoals off Kill Devil Hills, NC, about noon of April 3, at a point nearly 2 miles south of the Coast Guard station of the same name. In less than an hour after she stranded the terrific hammering of the breakers broke her in two. Of her crew of 7 persons, three—the master and two seaman—were lost. The four others were taken from the surf and wreckage bodily by members of the Kill Devil Hills station crew.

     Notwithstanding the prevailing thick weather, the Josephine was sighted when a mile or more offshore by the station lookout. She was then scudding for the beach, but making no distress signals. She disappeared in the mist and for some time later—just before she struck—the fog patrol discovered her in the breakers.

     Well knowing that nothing could save the vessel from stranding, the keeper took the crew and breeches buoy gear and followed her down the beach. They came abreast of the schooner shortly after she went on the reef and found her entire crew in the rigging. She had worked over the reef and was foundering, broadside to the beach, with her bow pointing northward. Huge seas were breaking over her settling hull, working devastation to her deck load of lumber, and the water to leeward of her was already filled with thrashing wreck stuff and big timbers.

     Four shots were fired in endeavoring to put a line over her. The first line parted midway between the vessel and the beach. The second was carried by the wind—blowing at a 74-mile rate—just clear f the after topmast. The third line fell in the mizzen rigging, but was parted by floating wreckage before any of the sailors could get hold of it.

     While the men on the beach were working with this last line a sea broke the hold of one of the men who had taken refuge in the rigging and carried him off. This man, the first of the ship’s crew to be drowned, proved to be the master. A succeeding wave swept another of the men from the rigging. He had scarcely disappeared over the side when still another man was swept away, and as he disappeared one of his shipmates jumped overboard with the evident intention of affording him assistance. Both succeeded in getting hold of a floating timber. A surfman kept pace with them as the southerly current bore them swiftly along, watching for a chance to attempt their rescue. When they had drifted fully a mile from their vessel the opportunity came, and the Coast Guard man plunged into the surf and hauled the two men ashore.

    About the time the sailor jumped overboard a shot line was laid across the vessel between the mainmast and the mizzenmast. Two of the three remaining men succeeded in getting hold of the line, despite the fact that the vessel was breaking up, and began to haul away. The line became hopelessly entangled in the wreckage, thrashing about to leeward of the wreck, and, finding themselves unable to free it, the two sailors looked about them for another avenue of escape, and crawled out on the mainmast, which pointed almost horizontally shoreward. The lone man in the after rigging was also moving around. About this time he was seen to make his way to the crosstrees of the aftermast, there to remain for a time undecided, apparently, whether to hang on or take the risk of attempting to swim to land.

     The two men still on board—one in the crosstrees of the mainmast, the other in the crosstrees of the spankermast—now scrambled back to the upturned hull. The one first referred to climbed over the hull and down upon the wreckage floating alongside. The Coast Guard crew watching from the beach tried to throw a line to him, but it fell short at every heave and ultimately became so entangled in floating wreck stuff that it could not be recovered.

     Perceiving that the men on shore could do nothing to help him, this sailor went back over the hull and worked his way along it to the forward end, now nearest the land. It was at this time that the keeper entered the water, fought his way through and over the intervening wreckage to the broken hull, and laid hold of the man. Following his example, other Coast Guard men made their way out to the vessel with joined hands and dragged both keeper and sailor to safety.

     One man still remained on the wreck. It seems that in moving about seeking a place of safety he had in some way been caught and held by a wire stay. One of the surfmen undertook to rescue him and made several attempts to get out to the wreck. Repeatedly forced back, he at last reached his goal, climbed upon the lee wreckage as his comrades had done in the case of the earlier rescue, and with almost superhuman strength released the sailor from the stay and lifted him over it. Then, with the aid of his fellow surfmen afforded in the manner already described, he brought the man ashore. Shortly after this the larger piece of the schooner broke up entirely.

     While working on this wreck the wind was blowing with hurricane force, accompanied by rain and snow, and tide and surf wee extremely high—higher, indeed, than ever before within the memory of residents of the locality. Beyond a doubt it would have been suicidal to launch a boat. Moreover, the vessel’s hull opened up and her masts toppled over so quickly that there would not have been time for her crew to haul out the whipline or secure the hawser, even had they succeeded in getting hold of any of the lines shot out from the beach.

Steamer Prins Maurits ~ 3 April 1915

What has been described as “the worst storm in the history of central and eastern North Carolina,” hit the state on April 3, 1915 with N.E winds reaching a velocity of 70 mph as far inland as Raleigh. The winds were accompanied by heavy snow—nearly two feet in the capital city—and exceptionally high tides which inundated most of the seacoast. A number of sailing craft—the schooners Hugh Kelly, Alice Murphy, M.E. Cresser, Rob Roy, Clintonia, John B. Manning and Robert Graham Dunn, and the bark Edna M. Smith—were disabled off Hatteras, and the Diamond Shoals Lightship was torn from its moorings and drifted four miles off station.

     The schooner-barge William H. Macy stranded and became a total loss at Wash Woods after breaking loose from the tug Edward Luckenback (which subsequently went to pieces in the surf just north of the Virginia-North Carolina line with the loss of 15 lives.) At Kill Devil Hills the schooner The Josephine came ashore one and three-quarters miles south of the station and broke in two, with four crewmen reaching safety on pieces of wreckage and three others drowning. And at Gull Shoal the coast guardsmen rescued all 7 crewmen from the schooner Loring C. Ballard, which was lost one-half mile south of the station.

Photo: as PRINS MAURITS at Lock 22 of the old St. Lawrence canal on
July 10, 1956, by Dan McCormick

     But the big news in that spring storm was the loss of the Royal Dutch West Indies Line steamer Prins Maurits, which last reported from a point approximately 90 miles east of Kitty Hawk that she was sinking fast. A number of vessels, including two British warships that were blockading Hampton Roads to keep the German sea raider Prinz Eitel Friedrich from escaping, went to the assistance of the Dutch steamer, but when they reached the scene the following morning there was no sign of her.

     The Prins Maurits, 285’ in length, was registered at 1,329 tons and carrying a crew of 45 and four passengers, all 49 of whom were presumed lost, making the sinking of the Prins Maurits one of the half dozen more disastrous ship losses off the North Carolina coast up to that time.

Schooner Sylvia C. Hall ~ 17 March 1915

The first instance of a ship loss in North Carolina within the domain of the new Coast Guard was the wreck of the 384-ton schooner Sylvia C. Hall on Lookout Shoals, March 17, 1915. Loaded with lumber, the Hall was bound from Jacksonville to New York with a crew of five. Buffeted by a strong gale during the night she struck the shoals just before dawn and was sighted from the Cape Lookout station soon after.

     Keeper F.G. Gillikin launched his powerboat at 6:45 a.m. and ran into exceptionally rough seas en route to the Hall. Upon arriving at the vessel he couldn't get close enough to make a rescue. While waiting for the tide to change and the wind to moderate the powerboat was struck by a huge wave, completely burying the small craft and seriously injuring one of the crew.

     Gillikin decided to return to shore for a self-bailing surfboat, in which he could stand a better chance of getting alongside. He didn't reach shore until late that afternoon which delayed a second rescue attempt until early the next morning. The surfboat was towed to the scene with the powerboat and maneuvered in close enough to rescue the 5 men who had taken to the the jib boom.

CAPE LOOKOUT, March 20, 1915

Dear Sir: I wish to sincerely thank you and your sturdy crew for the valuable services which you rendered me and my crew of the Schooner Sylvia C. Hall which stranded on the shoals March 17, 1915, also for the treatment shown me while at your station. You deserve great praise and I shall not fail to do my part in making it know. Yours, very truly, C.W. Sprague, Master

STORM OF 3 APRIL 1915

What has been described as “the worst storm in the history of central and eastern North Carolina,” hit the state on April 3, 1915 with N.E winds reaching a velocity of 70 mph as far inland as Raleigh. The winds were accompanied by heavy snow—nearly two feet in the capital city—and exceptionally high tides which inundated most of the seacoast. A number of sailing craft—the schooners Hugh Kelly, Alice Murphy, M.E. Cresser, Rob Roy, Clintonia, John B. Manning and Robert Graham Dunn, and the bark Edna M. Smith—were disabled off Hatteras, and the Diamond Shoals Lightship was torn from its moorings and drifted four miles off station.

     The schooner-barge William H. Macy stranded and became a total loss at Wash Woods after breaking loose from the tug Edward Luckenback (which subsequently went to pieces in the surf just north of the Virginia-North Carolina line with the loss of 15 lives.) At Kill Devil Hills the schooner the Josephine came ashore one and three-quarters miles south of the station and broke in two, with four crewmen reaching safety on pieces of wreckage and three others drowning. And at Gull Shoal the coastguards men rescued all 7 crewmen from the schooner Loring C. Ballard, which was lost one-half mile south of the station. 
     But the big news in that spring storm was the loss of the Royal Dutch West Indies Line steamer Prins Maurits, which last reported from a point approximately 90 miles east of Kitty Hawk that she was sinking fast. A number of vessels, including two British warships that were blockading Hampton Roads to keep the German sea raider Prinz Eitel Friedrich from escaping, went to the assistance of the Dutch steamer, but when they reached the scene the following morning there was no sign of her.

     The Prins Maurits, 285’ in length, was registered at 1,329 tons and carrying a crew of 45 and four passengers, all 49 of whom were presumed lost, making the sinking of the Prins Maurits one of the half dozen more disastrous ship losses off the North Carolina coast up to that time.