Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 53, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 March 1914 — BRAVE DEEDS OF LIFE SAVERS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

BRAVE DEEDS OF LIFE SAVERS

FEW people know the wide range and systematic organization of the United States life-saving service in its work of saving lives alongshore. Superintendent Sumner I. Kimball has been its father and friend, has made it his religion for 40 years. And he has so far succeeded as to have placed upon 10,600 miles of our coast nearly 300 life-saving stations, fitted up with the most modern rescuing apparatus, and taken care of by 2,000 men, under semi-military discipline. Twenty-five thousand vessels have been given aid in this time and property valued at $240,000,000 saved, with far less loss of life than in the single case of the Titanic, which was sunk in midocean. Crews ordinarily number eight or nine, with the keeper of the station included. Though under civil service, reading and writing are about all that is required, educationally; physical endurance and experience of the life alongshore properly being the main requirement. Day watch is from sunrise to sunset and the night patrol is divided into four watches. Strict system, constant drilling, simple food and simple living make men upon whom it Is a pleasure to look. Only fishermen horn andbred to the loneliness of the life can stand it, however, and along the Pacific, where stations are far apart, they are mostly Norwegians and Swedes, of those old Viking races whose hardihood and primal manner of living have never died in the blood of their sons. Not Always Peaceful. That it has but 19 life-saving stations, to the Atlantic's 185, is evident of the fact that the Pacific coast is not generally considered more dangerous than it was when Balboa, gazing first upon the clear blue world of its waters, named it the Sea of Peace. The wreck of the Rosecrans, about a year ago, stands oiit, in consequence, as though the ocean mocked the memory of Its discovery as a pacific body. The Rosecrans started from Monterey, Cal., a 2,976-ton ship, bound for Portland, Ore., with 19,000 barrels of crude oil. On the third night out the steamer drew near the mouth of the Columbia river. A. southerly gale sprang up and there was a heavy falling sea. It began to rain, and the lighthouse beacons could scarcely be seen. < The Columbia river lightship did its best to warn the men of their danger. It never had burned more, brightly; but the somber rain shut it out, and the ship, unaware, kept nearing the Peacock spit, one of the terrors of the Pacific coast. The river light, wrapped in the rain, stood like a dumb Cyclops, whose single eye was of no avail. Suddenly, the Rosecrans grounded in the breakers. Flashed “8. O. 8.” The crew sprang to the deck as one man, and there flashed up the coast the dread “S. O. S." Three times the cry was repeated. Then darted through the captain’s mind the fear of fire from flying sparks of the wireless. Fire, with 19,000 barrels of oil on board! Better to perish in the jaws of the ocean. ... But the Astoria. Ore.; operator had got the call and he flashed back now the mercy of a promise of help, The Rosecrans dared replying: “The water is now in the cabins. We can’t stay—” but the message was never finished. The wireless operator at Asteria had •ent out a general distress call. There was no response front ship or station. He begged the Puget Sound Tugboat company at Astoria to notify by some

A means the life-saving stations at Cape Disappointment and Point Adams. The operator at North Head v.as ; aiso beseeched to notify the Cape Disappointment people. The telephone wires were out of order. The agent of the tugboat company finally got a message to Point Adams, but could offer no information as to the scene of the wreck. Since the ship had not been able to see the beacon through the storm the surfmen, of course, could not hear a shout from the breakers of Peacock spit. It was nine o'clock, nearly four hours after the stranding of the steamer, that the surfman keeping the watch from Cape Disappointment lookout tower telephoned his chief at the main station, a quarter of a mile away, that there was a ship in the breakers oft McKenzie head. A furious gale had risen. The crew, rounding the cape, had to fight both storm and rising tide, so they turned back toward a cut-off on a near-by island. Here, too, the tide met them. Then the keeper spied a tug being' towed over the bar and asked to be taken to the wreck. There was a sharp refusal. So the crew renewed its efforts singly. It was man _ and man’s humanity that gave them strength to struggle to reach the wreck. It was useless. The crew grew exhausted. And It was more fighting to get back to the station to wait for low tide. Noon had come when they arrived, disheartened only as men who spend their lives in the business of saving other men's lives can be when they fail. Keeper Wicklund at Point Adams, after receiving the word early in the morning, had commanded all his men to get ready for sea. With the tug Tatoosh a thorough search over the bar was made, but the vessel was hidden from their view and not the trace of a mast could be seen. •Upon their return Fort Stevens telephoned that the Rosecrans had grounded bn Peacock spit. Keeper Wicklund left for Cape Disappointment station, where he tried again to reach the ship whose three survivors could now be seen hanging to the rigging, but found it impossible. Captain Rimer met him as he pulled in shore. Desperate now and determined to save those three men clinging to the mast that swayed like a willow in the wind, the two chief* manned their boats and started back, the gale tearing like a fury. The Cape Disappointment boat Tenacious reached the wreck first, but got herself into trouble by it, and It was the Point Adams crew that signaled to the half-dead men aloft to jump. By continued circling the boat got pretty close to the ruined Rosecrans. The men on the mast were afraid to leave it. The rescuers kept circling closer, when, without warning, a sea piled over their boat, it was overturned and four of the crew and the keeper shot into the water, where they clung to the wreckage until the others, who had sat tight while the boat made the <Uve, managed to get all but one back in. The crews of the tugs which did so much to help in the disaster that claimed the lives of 33 men were deeply appreciated by the department, and letters of thanks were written them by the secretary of the treasury. livery member of the two life-sav-ing crews has beeb awarded the highest sign of praise withta the province of the service—a gold medal that is only given in exceptional eases ot heroism in saving life along ths shore. .. .

Launching a life Scat