Pea Island Lifesaving Crew Makes a Rescue by Roy la Grone

The all black Pea Island Lifesaving crew rescues passengers and crewmen off the schooner E. S. Newman during a hurricane on October 11, 1896. The Pea Island Lifesaving Station was established in 1878 near Cape Hatteras, North Carolina on one of the most dangerous stretches of the Atlantic Ocean. In 1880, Richard Etheridge became the first black keeper of the U. S. Lighthouse Service. Etheridge trained his crew well and soon earned the reputation as one of the best keepers on the coast. In October 1896, the three masted schooner E. S. Newman ran into a hurricane en route to Norfolk, Virginia. It lost all sails and drifted almost 100 miles before it ran aground off the coast of North Carolina, two miles south of Pea Island. The lifesaving crew spotted a faint distress signal and hurried to the scene, where they found the Captain and eight others, including his wife and his three-year-old child, clinging to the wreckage. When normal procedures proved impractical, Etheridge directed a daring rescue technique. Two surfmen tied a heavy line around their bodies, which bound them together. Grasping another line, the pair moved into the breakers while the remaining surfmen secured the shore end of the line. The two surfmen reached the wreck and tied a line securely around one of the crewmen. All three were then pulled back through the raging surf to safety by the crew on the beach. The remaining eight persons were carried to safety in this fashion and after each trip two different surfmen replaced those who had just returned. (Permission to reprint this work must be obtained from the artist. For information, contact Mary Ann Bader at [email protected].)