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Westport’s “old
salts” spice up shipwreck talk.
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Westport’s “old salts”
spice up shipwreck talk. Three local raconteurs regale audience with offshore shipwreck
tales of devastating storms, war wrecks and embarrassing salvage attempts
gone wrong! EverythingWestport.com Wednesday, August 2, 2017 Photos |
EverythingWestport.com
Special Correspondent to EverythingWestport.com Three veteran skippers took turns talking about the numerous
shipwrecks off the coast of Westport, and their own maritime misadventures,
at an August 17th lecture sponsored by the Westport Fishermen’s Association
(WFA) at the Horseneck Point Lifesaving Station. Who knew that a World I era destroyer lays buried beneath the waves
off the Westport coastline, and a World War II German U-boat was also sunk in
local waters? Or knows that more than a dozen other submerged wrecks sit on
the bottom of the sea close to Westport’s shores? A few of the more senior Westport boat owners that know the stories
about where the steel skeletons lay offshore took part in the Thursday night
talk, part of a kick-off reception for the opening of a new exhibit,
“Notorious Shipwrecks off Westport”, on display at the information center for
the former life-saving station on East Beach Road. More than 50 history
lovers filled the lifesaving station to hear the salty lecturers, and check
out photos of the ships lost in local waters.
Above: Westport Fishermen’s Association Director Tanja Ryden introduces the three guest speakers to a overflowing audience. From the left: Howie Gifford, Jack
Reynolds and Cukie Macomber. This was the first
time the Life Saving Station hosted a WFA presentation. Fisherman, mechanic, and longtime maritime engineer Cukie Macomber started off with the story of the loss of
the Vineyard Sound Lightship during the ’38 Hurricane, when he was serving on
beach patrol with the Coast Guard Reserve at Horseneck Beach. The reservists
saw distant flares from the beach, clearly from “a ship in trouble,” he
recalled. “What could we do? The wind was blowing 125 miles per hour... we couldn’t
go out in that,” Macomber related. “The next day, the boat was gone” and 11
crewmen on the lightship had perished, he said. Years later, veteran salvage diver Brad Luther asked Macomber to help
him find the sunken vessel. A survey ship with side-scanning sonar found the
wreck, and the puncture in the hull that caused the sinking, Macomber
recalled.
He also shared his personal shipwreck story, recalling the day aboard
a friend’s salvaged boat, being sailed from New Bedford to Westport for more
restoration work. The boat ran into a storm, got in trouble when the engine
quit, and ran into some rocks off Barney’s Joy in Dartmouth. The sinking ship lacked life jackets or other safety gear, and he
couldn’t swim, Macomber said. A crewmate gave him an empty five gallon can,
and he jumped overboard while hanging on to it for dear life, and was safely
washed ashore, he remembered. “That five-gallon can is still in my possession,” decades later, the
90-something retiree told his audience with a smile. Later, during a question-and-answer session, Macomber brought up the fact
that “there’s a German U-boat out there” off the coast, sunk during World War
II. Such enemy activity in local waters was kept out of the media during
wartime, he noted. From the audience, Luther noted that he and other local divers tend to
stay away from U-boat wrecks out of fear that they had been booby-trapped
with explosives by the Germans before they abandoned ship. It was unclear which U-boat sinking the old salts were
referring to. In 2012, a search team rediscovered the site of a German submarine
sunk in April 1944 off Nantucket; another U-boat was sunk by depth charges
from Navy ships off Point Judith, RI, in May 1945, just before the war ended.
One of the boats floated off made it as far as Gooseberry Island
before sinking, Gifford said, and still sits off the southern end of the
island, known as Point Peril to colonial settlers. “It’s still there,” he said, one of the sunken ships pinpointed on the
new exhibit’s map of all the local shipwrecks in local waters. Current WFA president Jack Reynolds (pictured below), noting he has
been “a fisherman all my life,” detailed the wreck of a big container barge
on Old Cock Rock, just off the Westport shoreline, in the late 1970s, after its tow line broke. He brought television
station camera crews out to film the wreck, and later saw armed men come out
to guard the grounded barge.
His own misadventures at sea included several rescues by the Coast
Guard, including an emergency helicopter drop of a pump to his fishing boat
in Nantucket Sound. “I’ve been towed in more than once,” he told listeners,
relating “a good relationship with the Coast Guard” over the years. At the end of his talk, Reynolds offered a bit of free advice to the
many boat owners in audience, based on his years of nautical experience.
“Avoid shipwrecks,” he said simply. The Horseneck Point Lifesaving Station and adjoining information
center, located at 241 East Beach Road, Westport, is open during the summer
months on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays from 12 to 4 p.m. For more
information, email the WFA atwfa@westportriver.org
or call 774.264.9200.
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