Download or read book Shipwrecks Around Boston written by William P. Quinn and published by Parnassus Press (IL). This book was released on 1996 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Shipwrecks of Massachusetts Bay written by Thomas Hall and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2012-08-07 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Massachusetts Bay stretches along the rocky coast and dangerously sandy shoals from Cape Ann to Cape Cod and gives the Bay State its distinctive shape and the Atlantic Ocean one of its largest graveyards. Author and longtime diver Thomas Hall guides us through the history of eight dreadful wrecks as we navigate around Mass Bay. Learn the sorrowful fate of the Portland and its crew during the devastating Portland Gale of 1898, how the City of Salisbury went down with its load of exotic zoo animals in the shadow of Graves Light and how the Forest Queen lost its precious cargo in a nor'easter. Hall provides updated research for each shipwreck, as well as insights into the technology, ship design and weather conditions unique to each wreck.
Download or read book Storms and Shipwrecks in Boston written by Fitz-Henry Smith and published by . This book was released on 1918 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Shipwrecks North of Boston written by Raymond Bates and published by . This book was released on 2017-11-20 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Salem's historic role as a major world port, combined with treacherous geography and unpredictable weather, has made Salem Bay the site of hundreds of shipwrecks. In the first comprehensive book on the subject, diver, historian, and shipwreck enthusiast Raymond H. Bates Jr. writes vividly about everything from the loss of a British frigate in 1710 to the tragic fate of men on a rescue mission during the 20th century's most destructive storm. He has also compiled the most complete list to date of shipwrecks in the waters off Salem.
Download or read book Shipwrecks on Cape Cod written by Isaac M. Small and published by Library of Alexandria. This book was released on 2006-01-01 with total page 125 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I hardly know whether to call this a preface or part of the story, it seems rather too long for the former and too short for a chapter of the latter, but I may as well follow the general rule and call it a preface. Friends have often said to me, “Why don’t you write some stories concerning shipwrecks which have occurred on Cape Cod?” Perhaps one of the strongest reasons why I have not done so is because, to describe all of the sad disasters which have come under my observation during my more than half a century of service as Marine Reporting Agent, at Highland Light, Cape Cod, would make a book too bulky to be interesting, and a second reason has been the difficulty of selecting such instances as would be of the greatest interest to the general reader. But out of the hundreds of shipwrecks which have become a part of the folk lore and history of this storm beaten coast I have finally decided to tell something of the circumstances connected with the loss of life and property in a few of the more prominent cases. The descriptions herein written are only just “unvarnished tales,” couched in such language that even the children may understand, and in order that there may be a clear understanding of how I came to be in close touch with the events of which I write, it is perhaps necessary to state briefly a few facts concerning my life work here. So far back as 1853, the merchants of Boston, desiring to obtain rapid and frequent reports concerning the movements of their ships along the coast of Cape Cod, were instrumental in causing the construction of a telegraph line from Boston to the end of Cape Cod, and a station was established on the bluffs of the Cape at Highland Light, this station was equipped with signal flags, books and a powerful telescope, and an operator placed in charge, whose duty it was to watch the sea from daybreak until sunset, and so far as possible obtain the names of or a description of every passing ship. This information was immediately transmitted over the wires to the rooms of the Chamber of Commerce, where it was at once spread upon their books for the information of their subscribers. When the boys in blue were marching away to southern battlefields at the beginning of the Civil War, in 1861, I began the work of “Marine Reporting Agent,” and now on the threshold of 1928, I am still watching the ships. A fair sized volume might be written concerning the changes which have taken place in fifty years, as to class of vessels and methods of transportation, but that is not what I started to write about. My duties begin as soon as it is light enough to distinguish the rig of a vessel two miles distant from the land, and my day’s work is finished when the sun sinks below the western horizon. Every half hour through every day of the year we stand ready to answer the call at the Boston office, and report to them by telegraph every item of marine intelligence which has come under our observation during the previous half hour. With our telescope we can, in clear weather, make out the names of vessels when four miles away. When a shipwreck occurs, either at night or during the day, we are expected to forward promptly to the city office every detail of the disaster. If the few stories herein told serve to interest our friends who tarry with us for a while in the summer, then the object of the writer will have been attained.
Download or read book Shipwrecks and Nautical Lore of Boston Harbor written by Robert F. Sullivan and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Shipwrecks of Massachusetts written by Gary Gentile and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Storms and Shipwrecks of New England written by Edward Rowe Snow and published by Applewood Books. This book was released on 2005-08-15 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A classic by Edward Rowe Snow, first published in 1943 and updated in 1944 and again in 1946, Storms and Shipwrecks of New England relates what William P. Quinn calls ""stories of stormy adventure."" Jeremy D'Entremont has provided annotations to Snow's chapters, covering the pirate ship Whidah, the wreck of the City of Columbus, the Portland Gale, the 1938 hurricane, and more, bringing the information about the storms and shipwrecks up to date.
Download or read book The Palatine Wreck written by Jill Farinelli and published by University Press of New England. This book was released on 2017-09-05 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two days after Christmas in 1738, a British merchant ship traveling from Rotterdam to Philadelphia grounded in a blizzard on the northern tip of Block Island, twelve miles off the Rhode Island coast. The ship carried emigrants from the Palatinate and its neighboring territories in what is now southwest Germany. The 105 passengers and crew on board-sick, frozen, and starving-were all that remained of the 340 men, women, and children who had left their homeland the previous spring. They now found themselves castaways, on the verge of death, and at the mercy of a community of strangers whose language they did not speak. Shortly after the wreck, rumors began to circulate that the passengers had been mistreated by the ship's crew and by some of the islanders. The stories persisted, transforming over time as stories do and, in less than a hundred years, two terrifying versions of the event had emerged. In one account, the crew murdered the captain, extorted money from the passengers by prolonging the voyage and withholding food, then abandoned ship. In the other, the islanders lured the ship ashore with a false signal light, then murdered and robbed all on board. Some claimed the ship was set ablaze to hide evidence of these crimes, their stories fueled by reports of a fiery ghost ship first seen drifting in Block Island Sound on the one-year anniversary of the wreck. These tales became known as the legend of the Palatine, the name given to the ship in later years, when its original name had been long forgotten. The flaming apparition was nicknamed the Palatine Light. The eerie phenomenon has been witnessed by hundreds of people over the centuries, and numerous scientific theories have been offered as to its origin. Its continued reappearances, along with the attention of some of nineteenth-century America's most notable writers-among them Richard Henry Dana Sr., John Greenleaf Whittier, Edward Everett Hale, and Thomas Wentworth Higginson-has helped keep the legend alive. This despite evidence that the vessel, whose actual name was the Princess Augusta, was never abandoned, lured ashore, or destroyed by fire. So how did the rumors begin? What really happened to the Princess Augusta and the passengers she carried on her final, fatal voyage? Through years of painstaking research, Jill Farinelli reconstructs the origins of one of New England's most chilling maritime mysteries.
Download or read book Shipwrecks of Cape Cod Stories of Tragedy and Triumph written by Donald Wilding and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2021-05-24 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the wreck of the Sparrow-Hawk in 1626 to the grounding of the Eldia in 1984, Cape Cod's outer beach--often referred to as the "Graveyard of Ships"--saw the demise of more than three thousand vessels along forty miles of shifting shoals. The October Gale of 1841 claimed the lives of fifty-seven sailors from Truro, a devastating toll for a small seaside community. Survivors from the 1896 wreck of the Monte Tabor in Provincetown were arrested for a suspected mutiny. Aboard the Castagna, which stranded off Wellfleet in 1914, several sailors froze to death in the masts, while the crew's cat survived. Local author Don Wilding revisits these and many other maritime disasters, along with the heroic, and sometimes tragic, rescue efforts of the U.S. Life-Saving Service and Coast Guard.
Download or read book Historic Shipwrecks written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries. Subcommittee on Oceanography and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Shipwrecks North of Boston written by Raymond Bates and published by . This book was released on 2016-12-04 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shipwrecks North Of Boston Volume Two: Cape Ann is the second installment of Capt. Raymond H. Bates Jr.'s history of the maritime disasters that occurred along Boston's North Shore. Whereas volume one explored the shipwrecks between Winthrop and Magnolia, volume two continues north up the coast encompassing the waters from Magnolia around Cape Ann and ends at the mouth of the Essex River off Coffins Beach. Over 600 shipwrecks are documented at the listing section at the back of the book while fifty three chapters explore in detail wrecks dating from 1635-1977. Stories of the imperiled mariners fighting furiously against the elements to survive are related as well as the valiant efforts of the lifesaving crews ashore rushing to their relief. These tales of human endurance are relevant even to those in modern day society. While relief was often the goal of the rescuers, others at times sought to benefit from their misfortunes by looting the cargoes and personal effects that washed ashore. As this book relates the citizens of Cape Ann as a whole acted in the highest benevolence towards the endangered fellow mariners and brought relief to the shipwrecked survivors as well as the respectful internment to those who perished. Volume Two is richly illustrated with actual photos of the wrecks as well as artists renderings of earlier incidents. A brief history of Cape Ann is explored at the beginning of the book relating its maritime legacy in times of peace and war. Its three main industries; fishing, shipbuilding and stone quarrying defined the capes economic resurgence from the early colonial times to the present day. Surrounded by water, the Capes reliance on sturdy vessels for transport contributed to numerous shipwrecks right at its very own doorstep. Volume two brings the reader back to those days of struggle and delivers the stories of triumph and tragedy highlighting Cape Ann's glorious maritime past.
Download or read book Shipwrecks and Other Maritime Disasters of the Maine Coast written by Taryn Plumb and published by Down East Books. This book was released on 2021-03-01 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With its incessant fogs and infamously craggy coast, Maine has long been a bane of mariners. Scores of vessels and countless lives have been lost on its rocky shores. Taryn Plumb explores the tragic history of shipwrecks in Maine, focusing on a dozen or so of the most interesting and weaving in tales of pirates, lost treasure, violent storms, and other disasters. Maine’s role in shipbuilding is legendary, and the history of vessels meeting their demise here is equally compelling.
Download or read book A Narrative of the Shipwreck and Unparalleled Sufferings of Mrs Sarah Allen late of Boston written by Mrs. Sarah Allen and published by . This book was released on 1816 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Massachusetts Disasters written by Larry Pletcher and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2017-10-05 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Facing Unimaginable Events With Courage It's only human to be fascinated by disasters--and uplifted by reports of survival in the face of overwhelming circumstances. This book takes you back to Massachusetts' most catastrophic events, vividly re-creating the moments that changed the state forever. The twenty-five true stories presented here are a chilling reminder to expect the unexpected. From the 1874 Mill River flood and wreck of the City of Columbus, in 1884, to the Cocoanut Grove fire, in 1942, and the Amtrak derailment of 1990, Massachusetts has been the site of some of the nation's most dramatic moments. Each account in this book reveals not only the circumstances surrounding the disaster and the magnitude of the devastation, but also the courage and ingenuity displayed by those who survived and the heroism of those who helped others, often risking their own lives in rescue efforts.
Download or read book Encyclopedia of Civil War Shipwrecks written by W. Craig Gaines and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2008-04 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the evening of February 2, 1864, Confederate Commander John Taylor Wood led 250 sailors in two launches and twelve boats to capture the USS Underwriter, a side-wheel steam gunboat anchored on the Neuse River near New Bern, North Carolina. During the ensuing fifteen-minute battle, nine Union crewmen lost their lives, twenty were wounded, and twenty-six fell into enemy hands. Six Confederates were captured and several wounded as they stripped the vessel, set it ablaze, and blew it up while under fire from Union-held Fort Anderson. The thrilling story of USS Underwriter is one of many involving the numerous shipwrecks that occupy the waters of Civil War history. Many years in the making, W. Craig Gaines's Encyclopedia of Civil War Shipwrecks is the definitive account of more than 2,000 of these American Civil War--period sunken ships. From Alabama's USS Althea, a Union steam tug lost while removing a Confederate torpedo in the Blakely River, to Wisconsin's Berlin City, a Union side-wheel steamer stranded in Oshkosh, Gaines provides detailed information about each vessel, including its final location, type, dimensions, tonnage, crew size, armament, origin, registry (Union, Confederate, United States, or other country), casualties, circumstances of loss, salvage operations, and the sources of his findings. Organized alphabetically by geographical location (state, country, or body of water), the book also includes a number of maps providing the approximate locations of many of the wrecks -- ranging from the Americas to Europe, the Arctic Ocean, and the Indian Ocean. Also noted are more than forty shipwrecks whose locations are in question. Since the 1960s, the underwater access afforded by SCUBA gear has allowed divers, historians, treasure hunters, and archaeologists to discover and explore many of the American Civil War-related shipwrecks. In a remarkable feat of historical detective work, Gaines scoured countless sources -- from government and official records to sports diver and treasure-hunting magazines -- and cross-indexes his compilation by each vessel's various names and nicknames throughout its career. An essential reference work for Civil War scholars and buffs, archaeologists, divers, and aficionados of naval history, Encyclopedia of Civil War Shipwrecks revives and preserves for posterity the little-known stories of these intriguing historical artifacts.
Download or read book The Wreck of the Portland written by J. North Conway and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-07-01 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The SS Portland was a solid and luxurious ship, and its loss in 1898 in a violent storm with some 200 people aboard was later remembered as “New England’s Titanic.” The Portland was one of New England's largest and most luxurious paddle steamers, and after nine years' solid performance, she had earned a reputation as a safe and dependable vessel. In November 1898, a perfect storm formed off the New England coast. Conditions would produce a blizzard with 100 miles per hour winds and 60-foot waves that pummeled the coast. At the time there was no radio communication between ships and shore, no sonar to navigate by, and no vastly sophisticated weather forecasting capacity. The luxurious SS Portland, a sidewheel steamer furnished with chandeliers, red velvet carpets and fine china, was carrying more than 200 passengers from Boston to Portland, Maine, over Thanksgiving weekend when it ran headlong into a monstrous, violent gale off Cade Cod. It was never seen again. All passengers and crew were lost at sea. More than half the crew on board were African Americans from Portland. Their deaths decimated the Maine African American community. Before the storm abated it became one of the worst ever recorded in New England waters. The storm, now known as “The Portland Gale,” killed 400 people along the coast and sent more than 200 ships to the bottom, including the doomed Portland. To this day it is not known exactly how many passengers were aboard or even who many of them were. The only passenger list was aboard the vessel. As a result of this tragedy, ships would thereafter leave a passenger manifest ashore. The disaster has been blamed on the hubris of the captain of the Portland, Hollis Blanchard, who decided to leave the safety of Boston Harbor despite knowing that a severe storm was hurtling up the coast. Blanchard, a long-time mariner, had been passed over for a promotion for a younger captain. He decided he wanted to show the steamship company that they had made a mistake by getting the Portland safely into port ahead of the imminent storm. Author J. North Conway has created here a personal, visceral account of the sinking and the times and the people involved, with stories to bring readers onto the Portland that day: Here is Eben Heuston, the chief steward onboard the ill-fated ship. More than half of the crew of the ship were African Americans. Hueston was an African American who lived in the Portland community of Munjoy Hill and was a member of the Abyssinian Church. After the sinking of the Portland the African American community disappeared and the church closed. And Emily Cobb a nineteen year old singer from Portland’s First Parish Church who was scheduled to give her first recital at the church on that Sunday. And Hope Thomas who came to Boston to shop for Christmas and because she decided to exchange some shoes she purchased missed taking the ill-fated Portland. Because of the lack of communications from Maine to Cape Cod, it was days before anyone was able to get word about the fate of the ship or survivors. Author J. North Conway has painstakingly recreated the events, using first-hand sources and testimonies to weave a dramatic, can’t-put-it down narrative in the tradition of Erik Larson’s Isaac’s Storm and Walter Lord’s enduring classic, A Night to Remember. He brings the tragedy to life with contemporaneous accounts the Coast Guard, from Boston newspapers such as the Globe, Herald, and Journal, and from The New York Times and the Brooklyn DailyEagle.
