We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea…we are going back from whence we came.
-John F. Kennedy
Massachusetts residents are rightfully proud of their rich historical heritage; from the Pilgrims to Lexington and Concord, the state has been home to some of the country’s most significant figures and events. In the context of such a wealth of history, it is perhaps understandable that the Bay State’s unique and important maritime heritage is often overlooked. This is unfortunate, for that heritage is noteworthy indeed. The Massachusetts coast was the site of a remarkable number of significant events, developments, and people in U.S. maritime history, including the first lighthouse to be built in what is now the United States, the country’s first lifeboat and dedicated lifesaving organization, the construction and launch of the first U.S. Revenue Cutter, the greatest lifesaver in U.S. history, the first communication station that allowed wireless transmissions across the Atlantic and out to the ships plying its waters, and the first Coast Guard air station.
Ultimately, this history, with its stories of daring rescues and monumental projects, provides a window into how and why Massachusetts was able to build itself into the thriving state that it is today. It is a past to be treasured, a noble legacy of struggle and triumph, of economy and security, of lives in peril and the heroes who sacrificed to save them. But more than this, because the United States has been and always will be a maritime nation, the history of Massachusetts’ coast should be studied for the lessons it provides in how an intrepid people can struggle against and conquer the harsh elements of the sea, and the world, around them.
The foghorn of Boston Light moaned across the harbor, a sound Teddy had heard every night of his childhood in Hull….The loneliest sound he knew.
–Dennis Lehane, Shutter Island
America’s First Beacon—On the Sea
Boston Harbor, 1716
Approaching rocky shores in wooden sailing vessels proved a difficult and dangerous task from the earliest history of European settlement in North America. Immigrants and merchants arriving to New England particularly were beset by the harsh weather of the region and the rough seas of the North Atlantic. A map of all the shipwrecks from the Age of Sail that line the New England coast would show no shortage of deadly incidents. Citing the treacherousness of Boston Harbor itself as early as 1715, the General Court of Massachusetts resolved, in the Boston Light Bill, that “there be a lighthouse erected at the charge of the Province, on the southernmost part of the Great Brewster, called Beacon Island, to be kept lighted from sun setting to sun rising.” North America’s first lighthouse thus was completed and lit on 14 September of the following year. The first keeper of the light, and the man who lit it that day, was George Worthylake. He would drown, along with his wife and one of his daughters, in a boating accident off the light two years later. All three are buried together at Copp’s Hill Burying Ground in Boston’s North End. Not only has Boston Light, however, stood, in its various forms, to this day, but it remains the only officially-manned lighthouse in the country.
(The Mariners' Museum)
A Humane Society
Boston, 1786
In 1786, a group of concerned Bostonians decided that the frequent loss of lives at sea off the coast of Massachusetts demanded some type of response capability. They therefore created the Humane Society of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (or the Massachusetts Humane Society—MHS), an entity that, among other things, was the country’s first-ever organization with a mission of saving distressed mariners. The MHS established emergency huts along Massachusetts beaches for mariners who washed ashore (the first was placed in Scituate in 1787) and commissioned the country’s first-ever lifeboat (placed in Cohasset in 1807). The society eventually maintained a network of 78 MHS lifeboats and 92 huts and boathouses along the Massachusetts coast, and it continued its coastal presence and activities until the 1930s.
In time, the federal government started funding the MHS, and then used it as a model for its U.S. Lifesaving Service (USLSS), founded in 1871. The USLSS and Revenue Cutter service would be merged in 1915 to create the Coast Guard. One particular stretch of sand in Massachusetts neatly encapsulates this evolution: On the outer beach of the eastern-facing shore of Cape Cod, wrecks had become so common—3,000 were recorded from 1626 on—that the need for a lifesaving capability there was one of the inspirations for the creation of the MHS. By the time the USLSS was incorporated, there would be nine full rescue stations along this one length of beach. Eventually, that infrastructure would be replaced by a Coast Guard presence, and the shoreline there still bears the name that resulted from this legacy: Coast Guard Beach.
While that particular beach is named for the nation’s present-day professional lifesavers, it is important to remember that it was the MHS that oversaw coastal rescue operations there for nearly 100 years. And it is perhaps even more important to note that the crews of the MHS were entirely made up of volunteers. In the history of Massachusetts, for almost a century, it was the citizens of coastal communities that stepped forward to risk their lives in order to save others at sea. The legacy of the MHS, then, is not merely as a forerunner of the USLSS and the Coast Guard, but also that it tied the citizens and towns of Massachusetts to the work of lifesaving at sea. That is a story of American volunteerism and heroism whose legacy lasts to the current time.
A few armed vessels, judiciously stationed at the entrances of our ports, might at small expense be made useful sentinels of the laws.
–Alexander Hamilton
Laying the Keel
Newburyport, 1787
Alexander Hamilton, as he ordered the creation of the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service in 1787, noted the need for vessels to enforce laws at U.S. ports. The first such vessel to enter into service would be the U.S. Revenue cutter Massachusetts, built at Newburyport and launched in 1791. The Revenue Cutter Service’s importance cannot be overstated, as the fledgling United States relied heavily on the monies raised by tariffs and trade enforcement to fund its operations and very existence. Indeed, until the establishment of the Navy in the late 1790s, Revenue cutters were the only force the young country had to enforce and protect U.S. interests at sea.
The job of the Revenue Cutter Service would change significantly, but never go away. As it proved itself adept at maritime operations, it saw the addition of missions—such as, starting with the very first cutters, surveying navigable waters and serving as aids to navigation—and eventually it would combine with the U.S. Lifesaving Service to become the Coast Guard in 1915. This history, starting with the construction and launch of the Massachusetts, is the inspiration for Newburyport’s proud claim of being the birthplace of the Coast Guard.
To this day, the town is host to Coast Guard Station Merrimack River, one of the fewer than 20 designated “surf stations” in the country. So named because they possess the crews and boats (capable of righting themselves if they are flipped completely over by the seas) authorized to operate in high surf or breaking waves, these stations provide a key lifesaving capability in areas where waters are particularly rough. “Surfmen,” or those boat drivers trained and qualified to conduct such operations, are some of the most capable small-boat operators in the world, and they hold a special distinction in the Coast Guard—only some 500 of the thousands of boat drivers (called coxswains) in the service’s history have ever qualified for the role and earned their Surfman Pin. For both its unique past and its important present, Newburyport is a designated “Coast Guard City,” an honor bestowed on only 28 municipalities in the country that have provided special meaning and support to the service.
The Revenue Cutter Service’s story, then, is specially rooted in Newburyport, but also extends throughout Massachusetts and New England. Just a short drive from the town, at Boston’s Old Granary Burial Ground, one can visit the grave of the Massachusetts’ first commanding officer, John Foster Williams (1743–1814), who was commissioned by none other than George Washington himself. Another major Revenue Cutter Service figure commissioned by Washington was Hopley Yeaton (1739–1812), born in Somersworth, New Hampshire, and considered the service’s first officer (and, by extension, the first Coast Guard officer). Yeaton is revered to this day as a legend of the service, and his gravesite is the only one on the grounds of the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut. This final resting place sits immediately behind the Academy’s chapel, and just up a small hill from Yeaton Hall, where Coast Guard cadets study leadership and navigation.
Here and there may be found men in all walks of life who neither wonder or care how much or how little the world thinks of them. They pursue life's pathway, doing their appointed tasks without ostentation . . . Joshua James was one of these.
–Sumner Kimball
Men Against the Sea
Hull, 1826
No maritime history of Massachusetts, nor any history of lifesaving anywhere from now until the end of time, would be complete without the story of Joshua James (1826–1902). James, of Hull, was without question the greatest American lifesaver to have lived. Launching from the beach in small rowboats, James led crews in often daring attempts to save mariners from shipwrecks when storms hit the South Shore. Over the course of his life, James was responsible for the rescue of more than 600 people.
Starting in 1841, when he was 15, James would join volunteer crews responding to the many wrecks of merchant vessels transiting to and from the port of Boston. By 1876, his reputation as a lifesaver was such that he was appointed leader of the MHS boat crews operating in Hull, and when the USLSS established a station in the town in 1890, it waived their maximum age limit of 45 to appoint the 63-year-old James as its keeper.
That decision would be fortuitous, as the stalwart rescuer would serve in the role until his death in 1902. He was recognized for assisting 540 distressed mariners in his time with the USLSS alone (this was in addition to a citation he received in 1886, before the establishment of the USLSS, that credited him with saving more than 100 lives).
James was buried in one of the lifeboats that he used to save so many lives. One can still visit that gravesite in his hometown, just down the road from the Hull Lifesaving Museum, which is home to a remarkable number of artifacts and documents about James, the MHS, and the USLSS.
Joshua James’ legacy remains an important one to the lifesavers of today, and he is deeply revered by professional maritime rescue services the world over. As just one testament to this fact, the 420-foot USCGC James (WMSL-754) was commissioned into service at a ceremony in Boston in August 2015.
In taking advantage of the wonderful triumph of scientific research and ingenuity which has been achieved in perfecting a system of wireless telegraphy, I extend on behalf of the American people most cordial greetings and good wishes to you and to all the people of the British Empire.
-Theodore Roosevelt to King Edward VII
A Call Without Wires
Wellfleet, January 1903
Just a few minutes from Coast Guard Beach on Cape Cod sits Marconi Beach, yet another site of historical import in the history of maritime rescues in the United States. It was there, in January 1903, that the first substantive transatlantic wireless communications message was sent, from President Theodore Roosevelt to King Edward VII of England (an earlier test transmission from Canada to Europe had also succeeded).
The technology used to send and receive the messages was a marvel of the age, allowing not just real-time wireless communication between continents, but also between land stations and ships, and among ships. The system of long-distance wireless messaging was named after its innovator, Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian inventor who had come to North America to build transmission stations in order to test his technology for transatlantic communications. His selection of the Wellfleet site was unsurprising not just because of the way that Cape Cod juts out into the Atlantic, but also because the station sat on a high bluff, facing directly east. His technology and its strategic positioning at outposts on both sides of the ocean proved indispensible to both intercontinental communication and navigation. Soon, ships plying the waters of the North Atlantic began carrying Marconi equipment and operators on all of their voyages.
This fact would play a major role in one of the most prominent episodes in all of maritime history: the sinking of the Titanic in April of 1912. On the night of the disaster, the Marconi operator from a different ship, the Carpathia, setting out from New York to Europe, noticed that the Wellfleet station had been sending messages to the Titanic. In the words of Carpathia’s communications operator: “I returned to the cabin, and I sat down, and I asked the Titanic if he was aware there was a batch of messages coming through from Cape Cod for him, and his only answer was, ‘Struck a berg; come at once.’” The Carpathia responded immediately, arriving on scene in time to save some 700 of the more than 2,200 Titanic passengers. These would be the only people to survive the sinking of the famed vessel.
The Marconi station at Wellfleet lasted only until 1917; its remains and a visitor center that once stood on its site have been removed because of the erosion of the bluff. Nonetheless, as a testament to this important history, the inventor’s name still designates the beach, which remains open to the public today.
That “they who go down to the sea in ships” shall not perish.
- Coast Guard Aviation Plaque, Gloucester, MA
The Rescuers Take Wing
Ten Pound Island, Gloucester, 1926
Yet another milestone in the history of maritime rescue came in 1926, when the first continuously-manned Coast Guard Air Station opened. And again, Massachusetts was the place where this important advancement took place. Air Station Ten Pound Island, Gloucester, was a first-of its kind outpost, with seaplanes permanently assigned as Coast Guard assets dedicated to Coast Guard missions. The impetus for this advancement was to aid in the interdiction of liquor smugglers, with Coast Guard aircraft chasing the small boats making runs back and forth to “rum row”—the lineup of larger ships waiting just outside U.S. maritime jurisdiction for the opportunity to offload illicit liquor onto smaller craft that would take the cargo to shore. Once the government planes detected the smaller vessels bound for the shore, they could monitor them and direct Coast Guard boats to intercept.
In little time, however, the Coast Guard pilots found themselves flying search-and-rescue missions to aid and save mariners in distress. The Ten Pound Island pilots would be involved in a documented 212 such cases in their first four years alone. While the Gloucester station would close down in 1935, with its aircraft moving to Salem, Coast Guard aviation, and the service more broadly, would never be the same. Today, the service’s mix of planes and helicopters operate out of more than 15 permanent air stations all around the country, flying search-and-rescue missions every day. They can trace their history back to a small island, now abandoned, off the Massachusetts coast.
For all the rapid technological development revolutionizing various industries and the way people live, there is no reasonable end in sight to the human need to ply the oceans. Just as many Massachusetts citizens can trace their lineage to forebears who made a transoceanic journey to make a new life in the United States, so many others have and continue to rely on the bounties and trade routes of the sea for their livelihoods and sustenance. The fate of Massachusetts has always been intertwined with the ocean, and remains so to this day; but the state’s citizens would not and will not simply accept the loss of human life as the price of this fact. They will continue to fight to keep each other safe and to make the most of their coastal heritage. They have made lifesaving history repeatedly, and will likely do so again, ensuring that the Massachusetts shoreline can forever, and rightly, be called the Rescue Coast.
