The United States Life-Saving Service established the first station on Ocracoke Island in 1883. The station was located on the north end of Ocracoke, on “Cedar Hammock,” near Hatteras Inlet. The original station crew consisted of six surfmen and the keeper, James W. Howard, who gave all orders, was in charge of training and discipline, commanded all rescue operations, and filed a thorough wreck report after every sea disaster. Many of the surfmen built modest homes near the station.
Hatteras Inlet Station1883
Keeper Howard retired after twenty years of faithful service. David Williams replaced him, and served as keeper from 1903 until 1905, when he was appointed keeper of the newly completed station in Ocracoke village. David Barnett assumed the position at Hatteras Inlet in 1905, and remained at the station until 1917 when the US Life-Saving Service was merged with the Revenue Cutter Service to create the United States Coast Guard.
Shipwreck Report
In 1917 the 1883 station was demolished, and a new Coast Guard Station was built at the inlet.
1917 Hatteras Inlet Station
By 1951, erosion at the north end of Ocracoke was so severe that the Coast Guard station was no longer considered safe during storms. On Wednesday, October 3, 1951, the entire crew of the station was evacuated to Hatteras Island. Rising sea tides had destroyed part of the station yard bulkhead, and the high-water mark was close to the building’s foundation.
Hatteras Inlet Station 1951(Photo from “The Story of Ocracoke,” 1976)
In 1953 the station was decommissioned.
Over the next few years attempts were made to save the station, and a new rehabilitation project was begun in July, 1955. Sand fences were erected around the station in hopes of rebuilding the eroding beach. Unfortunately, the first hurricane of 1955 destroyed the sand fences. A second storm followed in short order, and washed away more of the beach. Plans were made to move the station several miles westardly from the ocean, but the station collapsed into the surf during Hurricane Ione before it could be saved.
Hatteras Inlet Station 1955 (Photo from “The Story of Ocracoke,” 1976)
Eventually, all of the station and the outbuildings were completely destroyed and washed away. Nothing remained but the pilings. Over the years the shoreline periodically advanced and retreated. As late as the 1970s sand had built up around the pilings, and it was possible to walk, or even drive a vehicle, completely around them.
Over the next fifty years the shoreline steadily retreated. Today, the pilings are hundreds of feet from the shore, completely surrounded by water. They are visible in the lower center of this aerial photo taken in June, 2023.
Hatteras Inlet Pilings June 2023 (Photo by Kirsten Zapotek)
The United States Life Saving Service was established in 1871 to come to the aid of stricken and shipwrecked sailing vessels and mariners. The Service continued until 1915 when it was merged with the Revenue Cutter Service to become the United States Coast Guard. During the USLSS’s 44-year history, a network of more than 270 stations were established on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, the Gulf Coast, and the Great Lakes.
Seal of the USLSS
By the end of its tenure, the men of the United States Life Saving Service had come to the aid of more than 28,000 vessels in distress and saved the lives of more than 178,000 sailors and passengers.
In North Carolina the service began with the construction of seven stations in 1874: Jones Hill, Caffeys Inlet, Kitty Hawk, Nags Head, Bodie Island, Chicamacomico, and Little Kinnakeet.. Eventually, twenty-nine stations dotted the coast of the Tar Heel State.
The first station on Ocracoke Island was the Cedar Hammock (or Hatteras Inlet) Station, commissioned in 1883. The Cape Lookout Station, where one of the most remarkable and heroic rescues in the annals of the USLSS occurred in 1905, was established in 1888.
Cape Lookout Lifesaving Service Station H H Brimley Collection
In February of 1905 an influenza epidemic ravaged eastern North Carolina. Nearly all of the Cape Lookout station’s nine-man crew were either ill with the flu or recovering but still weak and incapacitated. In spite of the illness, Keeper William H. Gaskill insisted that normal watches be kept in the station’s cupola.
At noon on February 10, 1905, Keeper Gaskill mounted the ladder to the cupola to relieve the surfman who had been on duty for two hours. Keeper Gaskill’s initial view of the ocean was obscured by dense fog, but soon a rift in the fog allowed Gaskill a clear image of the topmost spars of a sailing vessel. His experienced eye convinced him that the vessel was aground on Cape Lookout shoals.
Keeper Gaskill immediately descended the ladder and alerted his ill and fatigued crew. He then ordered them to prepare to launch the rescue surfboat.
Once at the edge of the ocean, the surfmen pushed their heavy boat through the surf as waves broke over the bow. Eight lifesavers then clamored into the boat and began pulling at the oars, with Keeper Gaskill at the tiller.
Surfboat Launch
They knew it would be nine arduous miles from the station to the Cape. Finally, late in the afternoon, they arrived to see the Sarah D. J. Rawson, a 386-ton, three-masted schooner which had been carrying a full load of lumber from Georgetown, SC to New York, awash on the shoals. The vessel had wrecked the day before, on Thursday, February 9 at 5:30 pm.
In the twenty-fours since she had wrecked, powerful waves swept over the vessel, carrying away her cargo of lumber, her deck house, and one unfortunate sailor who disappeared in the raging surf. In the ensuing hours the Rawson continued to break apart as her masts split and the deck was reduced to splinters. The six remaining mariners clung desperately to the remains of the stricken schooner as it deteriorated.
When the lifesavers arrived at the wreck late in the afternoon, they discovered the Rawson lying in “a seething mass of breakers” surrounded by floating lumber, broken masts, rigging, sails, sections of the deck and hull, and other debris. Keeper Gaskill reported that his surfboat was in danger of pitching end over end in the choppy water.
The lifesavers attempted to reach the exhausted mariners, but were continually repulsed by the floating wreckage which threatened to punch holes in the side of their small craft. Finally, as night began to fall, Keeper Gaskill realized there was nothing more they could do, and ordered his surfboat to back away from the wreck. The lifesavers spent the night nearby in their open boat with nothing more than water for nourishment, and only their oilskins for protection from the frigid night air.
At daybreak the lifesavers returned to the wreck, only to discover the situation virtually identical to the day before. However, Keeper Gaskill, an eastern North Carolina native familiar with the ocean currents, expected the approaching change of tide to help moderate conditions. By late morning the waters laid down sufficiently for the lifesavers to maneuver their surfboat close enough to the Rawson so they could throw a heaving stick (a wooden stick about 12″ long attached to a lightweight hemp line, and with a monkey’s fist knot on the other end).
On catching the heaving stick, one of the Rawson’s mariners tied the line around his waist and jumped into the water; the surfmen pulled him to the safety of their boat. Five more times this procedure was repeated. Eventually all six soaked sailors were brought aboard the surfboat. Without regard to their own discomfort, the lifesavers removed their oilskins and wrapped them around the sailors’ shivering bodies. Now with about one thousand extra pounds of weight, the lifesavers began the long journey back to their station.
Finally, in late afternoon, Keeper Gaskill and his crew brought the Rawson’s six sailors safely to shore. The lifesavers, exhausted and still feeling the effects of the flu, had rowed eighteen miles and had spent twenty-eight hours, in February, in an open boat to save the lives of six people they had never met.
As recognition of their bravery and dedication to duty, Keeper William Gaskill and his surfmen, Kilby Guthrie, Walter M. Yeomans, Tyre Moore, John A. Guthrie, James W. Fulcher, John E. Kirkman, Calupt T. Jarvis, and Joseph L. Lewis, were awarded the Gold Life-Saving medals “for heroic daring” in the rescue of the crew of the Sarah D.J. Rawson.
Gold Life Saving Medal
This story is remarkable, but only one of more than 28,000 rescues performed by the men of the United States Life Saving Service.
