Sails & Sailing Ships

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Schooner Ario Pardee ~ 29 December 1884

Annual Report of the Operations of the United States Life-Saving Service for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1885:

Just before midnight of the 28th the south patrol of the Wash Woods Station (6th District), North Carolina saw a schooner close in, about a quarter of a mile south of the station. The sea was running high, and the weather was thick and foggy. He hurried to the station and reported his discovery to the keeper, who at once turned out the crew and had the beach apparatus hauled down the shore to a point abreast of the vessel and placed in position. Several shots were fired, but they failed to effect communication. Her red and white running lights were burning, but no signals of distress were seen. The sea was so bad that it was deemed hazardous to launch the surf boat before morning. After daylight it was seen the vessel was anchored just outside of the breakers and badly crippled. The keeper tried to communicate with her by means of the International Code, but no answer came, for the reason, as was afterwards ascertained, that she had no signals on board. She, however, set her ensign union down, as a signal of distress. By this time the crews of the False Cape and the Currituck Beach Stations arrived on the ground to render assistance. The surf boat was soon successfully launched and the vessel boarded. The keeper provided each of the vessel’s crew with a cork life preserver and placed them and their baggage in the boat, and at 9 o’clock had them all safely landed. The schooner proved to be the Ario Pardee, of Perth Amboy, NJ, from Rondout, NY, bound to Chester, PA, with a cargo of cement and a crew of four men. An hour later she parted her chains and drove upon the bar, where she soon began to break up. The crew were sheltered and fed at the station 12 days. The captain, having lost his shoes, was provided with a pair from the stock donated by the Women’s National Relieve Association. The vessel and cargo were a total loss. The following statement was handed to Keeper Corbel by the captain of the schooner:

WASH WOODS, NORTH CAROLINA, December 31, 1884

I sailed December 8, 1884, from Perth Amboy, with a crew of five men, all told, on the schooner A. Pardee, of Perth Amboy, bound from the port of Rondout, New York, to Chester, Pennsylvania, with a cargo of cement. Sailed at 7 a.m. Wind northwest. Passed Sandy Hook 11 a.m. When abreast of Long Branch, the wind shifted to north, and commenced to snow. At 6 p.m., wind blowing a gale from the north, took in sail, and run the vessel before the wind under a reefed mainsail and jib. Gale lasted fifty-six hours, in which we had continuous high seas, washing everything movable from deck; stove water casks and split sails. Afterwards took a gale from south, lasting about twenty-four hours, and run before that. Then took a gale northwest, and run that out. Then, wind shifting to northeast, made what sail we could and run for land. Made lightship off Five-Fathom Bank. When about five miles off took westerly gale, lasting twelve hours. Hove vessel to. When wind abated, made sail again and stood for land. Made Indian River Inlet, Delaware. Wind hauled to north. We tried to beat to Delaware Breakwater. When about five miles southeast of Cape Henlopen, blew away jib. Hove the vessel to again, wind blowing a gale and snowing. The next day, our boat being stove and the vessel leaking badly, spoke to steam Chattahoochie and asked to be taken off. The steamer made two attempts to take us off. They got one man by life buoy and line. The sea running very high and night coming on, she left us. We lay hove-to about sixty hours, when gale abated. Made what sail we could and steered west for land. Weather very foggy. At midnight December 28 we sighted a bright red light ahead [probably Currituck Beach light] and saw breakers. Let go both anchors. In a short time saw lights on shore and heard guns fired at intervals during the night. Heard two shots pass over the vessel, but could not find any line. At daylight 2th we discovered that we were near a life saving station and saw signals by flags. We had no code to answer signals. Set our ensign in distress. Soon life boat was launched and we were rescued, (about 9 a.m.) Vessel still afloat, but sea running very high. At 10 a.m. vessel parted chains and came ashore, and soon began breaking up. Vessel was about a quarter of a mile from shore, in two and a half fathoms of water, when we were rescued by Captain Corbel and his brave crew, and only for their aid we would most likely have all been lost. We, the master and crew of the schooner Ario Pardee, desire to return our most sincere thanks to Captain Corbel and his men for their timely rescue of us from our perilous position and their kind treatment of us since. HENRY A. SMITH, Master ; JOHN W. COMER ; OLE JENSEN ; JOHN FORCE

Newspaper Article:
New York Times, December 28, 1884

Trawler Anna May ~ 9 December 1931

The Anna May headed out of Hatteras Inlet at 2:30 a.m. the morning of December 9, 1931. She was loaded with fish and headed for Hampton, VA. Captain of the 70-foot trawler was 22 year old Ralph Carmine. His crew consisted of his father, J.E. Carmine, Sr.; a brother, J.E. Carmine, Jr.; his brother-in-law, Rideout Lewis; and a man named M.R. Johnson.

     Long before they passed out of Hatteras Bight the trawler’s gasoline engine stopped and for the next hour and a half the crewmen took turns at trying to remedy the problem, while the Anna May drifted slowly toward Diamond Shoals. Captain Carmine recalled that all 5 men were bent over the engine box when the vessel lurched to a stop and they looked up to find themselves in the midst of towering breakers. Their vessel swamped, filled with water and settled on the shoal, leaving only her single mast above the breakers. All five crewmen—thinly clad and without distress signals and life jackets—clung to the swaying mast in the darkness above the wild surf of Diamond Shoals.

     Soon after dawn the next morning, the Cape Hatteras lookout station sighted the trawler’s mast and the men hanging to it. Repeated attempts were made to launch a surfboat from the beach, but it was thrown back each time. At two o’clock that afternoon a mist settled over the shoals, completely obscuring what remained of the craft. By then the power lifeboat from the Hatteras station had finally managed to pass through the inshore breakers but on reaching the shoals found no trace of the trawler. Newspaper headlines the following day reported: “Fishing Trawler Is Believed Lost In Hatteras Quicksands, Entire Crew Going to Deaths.”

     As the sky brightened the next morning, Coast Guard binoculars were trained on the spot where the wreck had last been seen. A vague shape slowly came into view of a tall thin pole sticking up out of the breakers. The mast still stood and men still clung to it.

     A picked crew under Keeper B.R. Balance of Cape Hatteras launched a surfboat from the beach there at the point. The crew of Hatteras Inlet Station, under Keeper Levene Midgett, boarded their power boat once more and moved out through the inlet. Meanwhile, after 30 hours on the constantly swaying mast, Captain Carmine and his four crewmen had about given up hope. Soaked to the skin, nearly frozen by the December cold, they began that second day with little thought of being saved when suddenly two boats appeared nearby. As they shouted and waved in an attempt to attract attention the mast swayed far over to one side and dipped lower and lower until it toppled into the surf. Without hesitation both Balance and Midgett turned their boats toward the breakers and pressed on into the midst of the tumultuous sea.

     “We came down once between two giant waves, striking the bare sand,” Midgett said. But this did not deter the surfmen: Midgett’s boat, larger and faster, swept in, picked up one man, then a second, finally a third; Balance’s surfboat was right beside, reached the other two, turned about even as they were dragged aboard; and all five crewmen were saved.

Schooner Anne Comber ~ 17 January 1908

On January 17 the 32-year-old schooner Anne Comber sprung a leak while offshore. She was en route from Norfolk, VA to New Bern with a load of coal. The captain intentionally grounded the vessel on Standard Point Shoal, 6-3/4 miles from the beach and 7 miles NNW of the Portsmouth Station. She was discovered shortly after 8 a.m. by both Portsmouth and Ocracoke crews and both stations dispatch lifesaving crews.

There was a strong NE blowing and the cargo and vessel could not be saved. However, the Portsmouth crew brought the four crewmen to their station where they were cared for for four days. The vessel was stripped of rigging, sails and stores and all was taken to the station. The crew of the Comber were Captain J.H. Hunter and G. Baker of North Carolina; J.F. Frost; and J.K. Buck of Virginia. The vessel was completely lost.

Schooner Aurora ~ June 1837

The schooner Aurora came ashore in moderate weather in June 1837, her crew having been saved through their own efforts and with little difficulty as there was little excuse for losing a vessel under sailing conditions as they existed at the time.

     The real story behind her loss came to light when the New York Courier published the following brief news item:

     “On Thursday last United States Marshal, Mr. Waddell, arrested Richard Sheridan, late master of the schooner Aurora of New York, John Crocker, mate, and James Norton, seaman, on the charge of the most serious nature, and which, if proved, will place the lives of the offenders in jeopardy. The prisoners are charged with willfully wrecking and losing on Ocracoke Bar, the schooner Aurora, bound from Havana to New York, in June last, and they are also charged with stealing from the vessel after she was wrecked $4000 in doubloons, which had been sent on board in Havana, consigned to Don Francis Stoughton, Spanish Consul in New York.”

     The Marshal specifically charged that Captain Sheridan had enlisted the aid of the two crewmen, and together they had carefully planned the shipwreck and stolen the 264 doubloons, which had then been entrusted to the Captain by his henchmen for transfer to the north where they could be converted into American money. About the time this charge was made public it may have become obvious to Crocker and Norton that they joined forces with the wrong man, as on meeting him in New York they were told that he had been robbed of the doubloons and there was no loot to divide.

     When the Captain was brought to trial in New York in February he was found guilty—the doubloons had been discovered in the hands of yet another accomplice—and he was ordered to pay costs and to repay the Spanish Consul, $4,919 in all. Captain Sheridan was kept in jail for an undetermined period as further punishment.

Read more about the schooner Aurora at the Ocracoke Island Journal.

Barkentine Angela ~ 5 March 1883

Annual Report of the Operations of the United States Life-Saving Service for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1883:

The barkentine Angela, of Genoa, Italy, bound with a cargo of iron ore from Cartagena, Spain, to Baltimore, MD, and having a crew of 10 men, stranded at midnight 300 yards from shore, and a quarter of a mile south of the Paul Gamiel's Hill Station (6th District), North Carolina. The vessel had sprung a leak, and, being in a sinking condition, was run aground to save the lives of her crew. At the time the sea was high, the surf raging, and the wind blowing freshly from the north. The wreck was immediately seen by the two patrolmen then starting away from the station on their respective beats, and one of them promptly fired the red Coston light as a signal to those on board, and gave the alarm. The keeper, William H. O'Neal, at once roused all hands, and they turned out with the surf boat and beach apparatus, and speedily got abreast of the wreck, with which from that time until morning they were engaged in efforts to effect communications. The steepness of the beach at this particular locality, which lets the sea break almost without intervention directly on the shore, causes, in any roused condition of the waters, a surf of great fury; and on this occasion the incessant torrents flung upon the sands made boat service impossible. Operations were therefore confined to the wreck gun. Two shots fired in succession fell short of the wreck, and a third parted the line; a fourth reached the vessel, and the life saving crew waited, wondering why the sailors did not haul the line on board. The solution came at daybreak, when the barkentine's men were discovered out at sea in the ship's boat, beyond the line of breakers, having abandoned the vessel under the conviction that sh was going to pieces. In a little while, seeing the group of station men upon the beach, they proceeded to make a series of attempts to land, but were warned off in each instance by the life saving crew waving before them a red flag. It was still impossible to launch a boat, but the sea was beginning to fall very fast, and the keeper was sure that if he could only keep the sailors away from the surf, entering which they would certainly be drowned, he would be able by 10 o'clock to pass the breakers in the surf boat and save them. At 9 o'clock, however, the sailors rowed away up the beach, outside the breakers, toward the Caffey's Inlet Station, several miles north of the station at Paul Gamiels Hill. Keeper Austin, of this station, was on the beach with Keeper O'Neal and his men, watching the sailors, and instantly telephoned to his crew to be on the lookout for them, and then hurried away to his post. Upon arriving he found his crew beside the surf boat, ready for a launch. The beach at this station, unlike that at Paul Gamiels Hill, is flat, so that the surf was much less violent, and, besides, the sea had now fallen considerably. The surf boat crew, therefore, were enabled to fight their way successfully through the mob of breakers, shipping in the passage about a barrel of water, and after rowing half a mile to the southward, met the wrecked sailors, too off five of them, and put back for the shore, shipping another barrel of water in the return. After waiting a few minutes they again essayed the passage. This time they went through with the shipment of but little water, reached the boat from the wreck, took in the remaining five men, together with the captain's chest of books, papers, and instruments, and returned safely to the shore. It was then 11 o'clock in the forenoon.
     The men thus happily rescued were in a pitiable plight. The sea had drenched them, one might say, to their very hearts, and they were famished and half frozen. Some of them were nearly naked, and the remainder had not clothing enough to keep them warm under ordinary circumstances. No time was lost in making them comfortable with food and cordials, and dry clothing was procured for them from the Poyners Hill Station, next above, a supply being on hand there, donated by the Women's National Relief Association. The men thus succored poured forth gratitude in their profuse Italian way, and called down blessings on the life saving crew for rescuing and caring for them. 

Steamer Arroyo ~ 20 February 1910

The British steamer Arroyo (2,307 tons) ran aground on Core Banks about five miles south of the station during a dense fog. The vessel was on passage from Santiago de Cuba to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with a cargo of iron ore valued at $140,512.00 with a crew of 30.

Annual Report of the Operations of the United States Life-Saving Service for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1910:

Stranded during a dense fog at 11.10 p.m. on the 20th, 5 miles south of station. Discovered by patrolman on the morning of the 21st. Life saving crew went to her assistance with beach apparatus, and made 5 unsuccessful attempts to shoot a line on board. Seeing that they would not be able to effect a landing with the breeches buoy, the keeper sent the crew to the station for a surfboat. While thus engaged the steamer’s crew of 30 succeeded in making a safe landing in their own boats, the keeper directing them as to the best place to come ashore. Four of them were furnished dry clothing and 28 were sheltered from the 21st to the 27th. The master and mate were sheltered until Mar. 1. The master and part of the crew were carried on board 6 different times in surfboat to save the crew’s personal effects. The underwriter’s agent was also taken out twice. The vessel became a total loss.