John J. Galluzzo

The Massachusetts coast was a dark place two centuries ago. Boston Lighthouse had been lit for the first time in 1716, but it did not survive the American Revolution. The governing body that emerged from the war, that new nation formed on the strength of its belief in every man's right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, rebuilt it in 1783. Just before the war, a new light station at the end of Duxbury Beach, on a headland called the Gurnet (named for a fish known by the Pilgrims back home in England), was erected in 1768 to guard Plymouth Harbor to the south.

Darius Weekes had seen a Cuttyhunk winter before. He joined the Life-Saving Service at Monomoy, at that time the station standing at the extreme southern end of Cape Cod, off Chatham, on December 1, 1883. A decade later, on February 3, 1894, he made the leap from surfman to keeper, taking over the station at Cuttyhunk, at yet another extreme end. The Elizabeth Islands, curling southwestward off Woods Hole on the Upper Cape, ended at Cuttyhunk, a small, rock of an island known for its Anglers Club more than anything else.

The Gurnet in Massachusetts gained its name from one of the Pilgrims, Edward Winslow, who described the headland as looking like the nose of the fish of the same name. The 27 acres of the Gurnet had been described as early as 1605 by Samuel de Champlain as being covered with a dense forest of pine trees. By 1638, although not physically attached to the community, the Gurnet became a part of Plymouth. Its position at the mouth of Plymouth Harbor would prove to be of major value for military protection in years to come.

By the time that the North Scituate Life-Saving Station opened in 1886, the Life-Saving Service had established itself as one of the foremost organizations of its kind in the country. The level of organization and efficiency that the Life-Saving Service brought to the community, when coupled with nearly a century's worth of local expertise in coastal lifesaving, made the service's arrival on the rocky northern coastline of the town practically seamless.

If Joshua James took time to reminisce when he arose the morning of Saturday, November 26, 1898, he would have realized that that day marked the tenth anniversary of his finest moment, the Great Storm of 1888, in which he and the volunteer Massachusetts Humane Society lifesavers of Hull, Massachusetts, rescued 29 men from six vessels within the span of about 36 hours. The crews that day committed the surfboat Nantasket to its first test,  and she performed admirably enough to silence the experts who said she would never succeed as a lifesaving craft.

The Fourth Cliff Life-Saving Station knew only two keepers during the Life-Saving Service era, John Smith and Fred Stanley. John Smith took the position on September 3, 1879, and left the service on September 22, 1880. That day, Frederick Stanley, who had joined the service as a surfman on January 18, took over as the head of the station. He held the position until March 22, 1915, for 35 years, retiring at the age of 70. Along the way, he saw a lot of shipwrecks, and he saved a lot of lives.

A vacant lot stands today where the Brant Rock Life-Saving Station once overlooked the sea, and from whence heroes once set out to patrol the Marshfield shore. That fate did not have to be the case for a building with such indelible history. Outright and blatant federal governmental inefficiency doomed the Brant Rock station from a future that may have included use as extra classroom space for the growing town, community meeting space, or even the first lifesaving museum in the region.

Composer George Gershwin sailed for Europe on March 9, 1928, to perform his "Rhapsody in Blue" for that continent's classical music devotees for the first time. That same day, boxer George "The Saginaw Kid" Lavigne, the world's second lightweight champion under the Marques of Queensbury rules, heard the ring bell toll for the last time, dying at the age of fifty-nine. And in a landmark decision, a US. Circuit Court judge ruled that Native Americans should not be held accountable to US.

The average temperature for the month of October in Honolulu, Hawaii, is 79.6 degrees Fahrenheit. The average temperature for the town of Westport, Washington in November is about 45 degrees Fahrenheit. The crew of seven of the schooner C.A. Thayer, of course, had no say in where they were headed in mid-October 1903. 

In 1902, writer J. W. Dalton set out to visit each of the thirteen U. S Life-Saving Service stations on Cape Cod, from Wood End in the north to Monomoy Point in the south. His book, The Life Savers of Cape Cod, published late that year, remains the most minutely detailed account of station life at the high point of the Service's existence. Dalton's book covers not only the history of the Service and descriptions of each station, but also provides paragraph on each and every keeper and surfman then serving along the Cape's seashore.