Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 57, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 March 1916 — The COAST GUARD LIFE-SAVERS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The COAST GUARD LIFE-SAVERS

TIOW Hardu Men ©Patrol Our Shores and Take Heroism and Peril as Their Dailu Fare

HE best time to read this story would be a night of storm. For with the howl of the wind in his ears and Bthe spatter of the sleet upon his windows it would seem good to the reader to reflect that the men of the coast-guard patrol, in relays that interlock from sunset to sunrise on clear nights and through *ll the hours of the twenty-four on days and nights of darkness and danger, are tramping the beaches of the whole United States in an almost unbroken succession from Qpoddy Head to Gape Fear, from Oswego to Duluth, and from Peterson’s Point to the Golden Gate. Nightly the members of this hardy and heroic band of men patrol a thousand miles of the coast of this country. They oscillate like a big pendulum. Away at the far North a man swathed in oil skins starts south and at the same time a guard at the far South starts north, and between these two end links of the long chain there are hundreds of other watchers, each tramping his beat to the midway point where he meets the patrol from the adjoining station, and then tramping back to his quarters, alert every minute, peering through darkness and fog, blinding rack and flying spray, ready any instant to burn a Coston light, to hurry to the wire with a report of a ship in trouble, or to leap into the lifeboat for a race through the surf to a vessel in distress.

A Hard Life. * The coastguardsman’s life is a hard one. It abounds in peril. But it has the fascination of the lure of danger, and no enlisted man of the army or navy surpasses the beach patrol in fidelity to duty or ingenuity in devising ways to help the helpless. It is no unusual thing for a guard to be blown off his feet by a gale, and sometimes he is washed out to sea. No wonder his face is hard as leather, for he has to make his way through rain, sleet and sand many nights every winter, and through the driving blast he must see all that a keen and trained pair of good eyes can see in the midst of a storm that would leave the landlubber helpless. Many a time in the teeth of a stiff northeaster he pulls his tired legs through sodden sand into which he sinks to his boot tops at every step, stumbling over half-buried casks and timbers that have been thrown up by the sea. On clear and cold nights the beach may he hard and smooth, but such nights often enough are of freezing temperature. But the guard never falters. He bucks the gale and endures the cold, his eyes always watchful and all his senses quick to catch the tokens of human need and possible rescue. '" A Visit to the Station. It is an illuminating experience to visit one of these stations. It matters bat little which one you may choose to see. Every station has its history and its traditions, but all. are similar in their methods of work and In general equipment. Probably you would appreciate a visit to the Peaked Hill Bars station. It is a brown wooden building which a stranger unaided might have hard work in finding. It is but a few hundreds of feet from the shore line, and yet is invisible both from the beach and from off shore. Big hummocks of sand have been piled about it by the shifting winds, and on every side these make the entire view which the eye of the undiscerning would perceive. There is no beaten track to the door; the winds and the sands obliterate trails very quickly. You tramp several miles of desolate dunes before you reach the door, but when the door is reached and you look into the faces of the husky guardsmen you

know you are in good hands and welcome. At Race Point. Or you may choose. Race Point for your visit. You find the road a mile and a half from Provincetown lifting slowly, and at the top you stop to look beyond upon the long reach of sand, heaped into curious mounds, with the curving shore and the heaving sea beyond. Amid theße. sand mounds the road winds along, then climbs abruptly to the summit of a cliff, and there at the top are the three gray buildings of the Race Point station.^ It may be your good fortune —or ill fortune, as you choose —to be at Peaked Hill when a storm rages. The sand is beating like ocean spray on the windows of the station house and the rain is coming down in sheets. Your experience is likely to be that of a man who a few years ago Bpent several days at one of these stations. He thus told of the temerity with which he went out into the storm and of his rather speedy return. "We ate our breakfast by lamplight, as the windows were battened up for safety against the fury of the storm. I noticed the morning patrol washing at the kitchen sink. ‘lt’s a howler,’ he said; ‘sand in mouth, throat, everywhere, coming up in bucketfuls; eyes near knocked off me.’ __... Peaked Hill in a Storm. “All this was just what I had hoped for. I wanted to see the real thing, and no half measures; so after breakfast I put on my thickest clothes, supplemented with a borrowed sou’wester, and started out. Started, however, hardly described my exit from the station, for on opening the door I was literally hurled into space. The rain I could stand; it was the sand, the ever-shifting sands, that needed a stronger physique than mine to keep time to their war dance. This sand can pile up outside your door three feet of a night, can in one day take all the paint off your house and make it white and clean as bleached bones, can so cut the glass of all your windows that in a few hours they are useless, all transparency gone out of

them.’ “Up the beach I forced myself, enveloped in this dazzling drift. Blinded and bewildered by It, buffeted yet supported by the on-rushing torrent of air. - I was obliged to own myself beaten this time: mv face was suffering as if cut by knives. I forced my way back with even greater difficulty, for the wind was off shore. , I entered the house once more with gratitude. The men said nothing about my speedy return; one merely muttered to another: “No need for the lad to punish himself.’ ” The Men and Their Lives. If you can ingratiate* yourself with these men and stay at a station for several days, you will get a rather complete notion of the life they lead and the kind of men they are, and of the rescues they have accomplished. The guardsmen are as a class weatherbeaten and strapping fellows, recruited largely from the Grand Banks and. Cape Cod fishermen. Many of them commanded vessels on the Banks before entering the service. Most of them also have been local pilots. Therefore they are very familiar with the waters and coasts to which they are assigned, and in case of war they would be likely to be very valuable because of their local knowledge and their general all-round ability. Theirs is a military service. The guardsmen are actually enlisted, for a year at a time in every case, with the privilege of re-enlisting within a few days after the expiration of their time, when the service would be regarded as continuous. Many of the

men thus come to consider theirs a life service. Their training is acquired before their enlistment for the first time, largely from their previous callings. At the first enlistment they must qualify as expert boatmen, they must be physically sound and not more than thirty-five years of age. The service now has an arrangement by which the men may retire at threefourths pay when they have served thirty years or have reached the age of sixty-four. But in the former case they must hold themselves in readiness for any duty for which they may be called by the secretary of the treasury, In time of war this service would be transferred from the department of the treasury to that of the navy. On Duty Ten Months. The stations, really the homes of the men for many months each year, are frame buildings, all of the same general pattern, housing four or five boats and the keepers and crews. The men are on duty from August 1 to June 1, ten months each year, and in that period they are allowed, in turn, twenty-four hours of liberty. Each crew consists of seven men and a keeper. Thus the men divide into watcheß for the night, two and two, with one extra, and one off duty. During June and July only- the keeper is at the station. The beats over which these men tramp measure all the way from two miles to five in length, and when making their rounds they cover the distance twice, in each case of course, once out and once back. The beats are regulated somewhat by the distances between stations. If they are more than ten miles apart the patrols would not be able to make a round in two hours. However, not every mile of coast is patroled. And now —What happens if a ship is seen in danger? If a patrolman sees a vessel in trouble, which is not yet actually a wreck, he burns a red signal, light. The Coston light is a tube-like affair; a little tap on a spring and a percussion cap explodes and that sets the light aflare; it burns four minutes, with a brilliant red flame; seeing it. a crew knows that their need has been noted and that all assistance possible will be rendered them. If the vessel already is a wreck when she is seen, so that the service of the station crew will be -required, . two Coston lights are burned Power Life Boats. More and more the stations now are being equipped with power life boats. All depends upon the possibility of using them. A power boat cannot be .aunehed from the beach itself like a surf boat; it requires a harbor of some kind. The oar boats may be launched anywhere; the power boats are preferred, however, whenever facilities make them available.

In the half-way houses as well as in the stations telephones are always located.. The patrolmen make use of the wires in sending out their alarms. If a wreck is accessible to more than one station, or if the need is greater than one crew may be able to render, the telephone call is sent out. From the half-way houses also full details will be sent by the patrol to his own station, and from thence the notice may be sent on to the general headquarters: at times thus the service of the wireless may be requisitioned, the Charlestown navy sending out the S. O. S. to the revenue cutter cruisers which may be off shore searching through the fog or the storm for ships in distress. The guardsmen also make considerable use of the international code of Bignals, using the ordinary signal flag, and of the international wig-wag system, using theMoraecode,