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The Monomoy Disaster

© Neal West

A heavy sea was running that Tuesday, March 11, 1902. The tug “Sweepstakes” was pulling two coal-laden barges, the “Wadena” and “John C. Fitzpatrick,” from Newport News, Virginia to Boston, Massachusetts when both ran aground on Shovelful Shoal off the southern end on Monomoy Island, Cape Cod. Though not in any danger at the moment, the nearby Monomoy Life-Saving Station launched a surfboat to assist the 10 men (5 on each barge) attempting to refloat their ships. After several hours of trying, the worsening weather forced operations to cease and the surfboat removed the barge crews back to the Station for safekeeping. Over the next 5 days the barge crews, assisted by the “Sweepstakes” and the tug “Peter Smith” engaged in offloading the coal in order to lighten the barges enough to float them off the shoals. As the sun set on March 16th, the weather became so bad that the “Peter Smith” took all but the five man crew of the “Wadena” back to Hyannis Port to wait out the storm.

At 8 a.m. the next morning, the south patrol of the Monomoy Station reported that the barges were in no danger (stations sent men to patrol the beaches at intervals to look for small vessels in distress). A few minutes later, the Station Keeper Eldridge received a call from the captain of the “Peter Smith” asking if the men on board the “Wadena” were all right. This was the first that the crew of the Life-Saving station knew that any men were on board the barges. Alarmed, Eldridge started for the end of the point to take a look at the barges for himself. The “Wadena” lay about a half-mile off the south end of the point in a heavy sea created by a southeast wind blowing against an ebbing tide. Scanning the situation, Eldridge did not believe the “Wadena” was any danger, but she was flying a distress signal. It was a summons he could not ignore. Contacting the Station, he directed Number 1 Surfman, Seth Ellis, to launch the surfboat and follow the shoreline south to the point and pick him (Eldridge) up. After a hard pull of 2 ½ miles in the open boat, the rescue boat took Eldridge aboard and headed for the “Wadena.” The shallow waters around the shoals made for some very heavy seas and made controlling the boat difficult, but the surfboat made the lee of the barge around noon and gained a small lagoon of calm in the raging surf. A rope was passed to the barge and one-by-one the five men of the “Wadena” lowered themselves over the side.

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