Storm Warriors (14 page)
Authors: Elisa Carbone
“I am warming up,” he said.
I lifted the lantern to look at Arthur's face and saw that his lips were no longer blue.
Just then a tall white man appeared, dressed in a captain's coat, his long hair flying in the wind. He reached up into the driving cart and pulled Mrs. Gardiner to him, pressing his cheek against hers. He must have asked about Thomas, because she pointed to him, bundled and sleeping in the cart. “My God, they've saved the whole crew!” he cried. He looked around at me and Arthur, and at the other rescued sailors and the surfmen who were now gathering around the driving cart in preparation for the long trip back through the storm to the station.
“My good men,” he said, his voice shaking, “we owe you our lives.”
The trek back to the station took every ounce of strength any of us had. Mrs. Gardiner, Thomas, and Arthur rode in the driving cart. The rest of us shouldered the drag ropes and pressed our bodies against the raging wind as if it were a solid wall of force. It thundered in my ears, lashed my face, beat me to my knees more times than I could count. The two-mile trudge felt like two hundred.
No one wanted food when we got there—just dry clothes from the box donated by the Women's National Relief Association and a cot to fall asleep on. Mr. Irving stumbled wearily up the steps to the lookout deck to keep watch. Mr. Etheridge gave his room to Captain Gardiner and his family and slept in the dormer with us.
It was late morning before anyone stirred. The storm outside
had died down some, though I could still hear rain hitting the side of the station in sheets.
Mr. Wescott jostled my foot. “Come help me cook, Nathan,” he said. “These folks will be powerful hungry when they wake up.”
Downstairs, Mr. Etheridge was at his desk writing the wreck report for the
E. S. Newman
.
“Did you call Oregon Inlet?” Mr. Wescott asked.
“The phone lines are down. After we eat, I'll send someone to see what happened up there,” said Mr. Etheridge.
In the cookhouse, as I sliced bacon, I felt small and insignificant. Yesterday, and for months now, I'd been a surfman in training. It had made me feel a little taller, a little more like a man. It had made me feel like I was climbing up to a higher place. But this morning, sitting in the cookhouse with a carving knife and a slab of bacon, I felt unimportant. I was just a helper—nothing more.
A pounding on the cookhouse door brought me back from my thoughts. Mr. Davis of the Oregon Inlet crew pushed open the door.
“You're alive then, are you?” Mr. Wescott clapped him on the back as he came in.
“Barely that,” said Mr. Davis. “That storm nearly killed us three or four times. And the station is half wrecked—wall boards blown out, boat ramp gone, and the flagpole, key post box, bulkhead—all
that's gone. The cookhouse and smokehouse are full of sand. They need to move that station in a hurry, because it did us no good last night once the waves started washing through it chest high.”
“What did you do?” I asked, aghast.
“First we tethered the surfboat to the leeward of the station and huddled in the boat, thinking it was safer than inside. But after four or five waves washed right in over us and almost swamped us, we cut the tethers and made for some sand hills about five hundred yards to the southwest—they were the only bit of land sticking up out of the tide.”
I noticed that Mr. Davis's eyes were sunken and dark, like he hadn't slept all night. “Did you make it to the hills?” I asked.
“Had to row like madmen to keep from getting washed right past them and out into the open sea.” He shuddered, remembering. “We beached the surfboat, then climbed out and lay low in the brush. Lord, that wind was strong enough to throw a man from here to Raleigh!”
The Oregon Inlet crew joined us for breakfast, since their station was in such rough shape. Around the table, stories about the night before mixed with a discussion of how those officials in Washington had better agree to move both the Oregon Inlet and the Pea Island stations to higher ground before one big storm sent both crews to their deaths.
“The island keeps moving, so we'd better keep moving with it,” said the Oregon Inlet keeper.
Captain Gardiner and his sailors couldn't thank the Pea Island crew enough for what they'd done. “I had prepared to die,” Captain Gardiner said. “Then I looked out, and there you were, swimming out to the ship!” He bounced Thomas on his knee, and Mrs. Gardiner sat beside him, looking small in a Women's National Relief Association dress that was several sizes too big for her.
The more we heard about the damage done to the Oregon Inlet station, the more Daddy and I realized that our homestead might need major repairs. After breakfast, we decided to go have a look.
The day was dark, warm, and humid, with a strong northwest wind and spattering rain. The island was changed. Brush had been torn up by the overwashing tide, and tree limbs had been snapped by the wind. Wooden planks—either from the
E. S. Newman
or from one of the stations—lay tangled in toppled cedar trees. We stepped over the mess, trying to find our usual path to our homestead.
It seemed to be taking a long time for us to reach our cabin. Then, with a chill, I realized we'd already walked plenty far enough. Daddy put his hand on my shoulder, and I slumped against him. “It's all gone, isn't it,” I said. He drew me close, and we stood there like that, looking over the brambles and weeds, with not even a mound left to show where our cabin used to be.
Suddenly I jerked from Daddy's embrace. “The skiff!” I cried.
I ran, high-stepping over the debris, toward the marsh and the sound. If the skiff was gone, we'd have lost everything. If the skiff was gone, Daddy and I would have to work as day laborers….
I gasped with relief when I saw her bobbing in the waves, pulling at the ropes slightly. I splashed right into the water to inspect the hull. Amazingly, there was only a little damage—the starboard was stove in, most likely bashed by floating debris. It wasn't bad and would be easy to repair.
Daddy splashed into the water beside me.
“She's okay,” I said. “The long mooring ropes worked.”
“Thank God,” he said.
Standing at the edge of the marsh, Daddy put his arms around me, and I cried—with sadness over everything we'd lost, and relief about what we still had.
We could rebuild, Daddy said. The surfmen offered to let us stay at the station at least until we could get the cabin raised. Then we'd have to work on the smokehouse and privy and garden fence. Or we could stay with Mamma's cousins through the winter and rebuild in the spring.
It all felt confusing, and jumbled as waves in a storm. I was relieved when Daddy said, “First things first,” and we concentrated on helping the surfmen and sailors with repairs to the station houses and gathering the wreckage from the
E. S. Newman
. I was even more relieved when he said we needed to spend a day fishing, then sell our haul and buy provisions so we could contribute to all the food we were eating at the station.
The wind was light northwest, the day sunny and summery,
and out on the Pamlico Sound in the fishing skiff with Daddy felt like the place I most wanted to be. We lowered our nets and hoped for them to fill with the stripers, bluefish, and puppy drum that were running this time of year.
“We'll bring the haul in fresh today,” said Daddy.
“All right,” I said. A visit to Roanoke Island would do my spirit good.
We didn't say much, just enjoyed the calm quiet of each other's company. The light wind and sunshine, after so many days of storm, were a welcome pleasure.
If this was to be my life—fishing day after day—then I should find the enjoyment in it: the appreciation of sunny, warm days out on the sparkling water; the satisfaction of pulling in a heavy net; the friendly visits to Roanoke Island to sell the day's catch and meet old friends.
But still I wondered about what Grandpa had said—how if you work real hard, you can get your dreams even though they might not look the way you imagined they would, like the way he got the skiff to work in for himself with Daddy and me, instead of the farm to work on for himself with Grandma Dahlia. Certainly, fishing wasn't my surfman dream in different clothing. I had wanted to do something big, something great. I'd wanted to fight battles and win. I'd wanted to help people, to save peo-ple's lives. And I'd wanted to push myself into a bigger dream than the one Daddy had dreamed up for me. I watched the fat,
puffy clouds drift across the sky and wondered if the way it worked for Grandpa just wasn't going to work for me.
By afternoon, we had a respectable catch and headed to Roanoke Island to sell it. We docked at Manteo, and I helped Daddy unload the fish barrels.
“Nathan! Mr. Williams!”
I turned to see Fannie running down to the dock, her black braids flying. She arrived at our boat breathless.
“We
heard,
” she panted, “about the rescue, the storm … your cabin. I'm so sorry.”
“How did you fare here?” Daddy asked her.
“There are trees down, parts of roofs torn off, and a few privies and sheds blown away. But nobody dead except Mr. Brothers's hog who got killed when the barn caved in,” she answered.
“That's good,” said Daddy. “Nathan, help me get this fish up to Griffin's store, then you can visit with Fannie.”
Fannie and I both helped. Then we strolled back to the dock and sat on the wooden planks with our feet dangling in the water.
She asked me about the rescue, what I had done to help, and if I was scared. I answered her honestly, that those surfmen were braver than I would ever be and that I was glad to just handle the ropes and help get Arthur and little Thomas warmed up and settled. She wanted to hear about Arthur's head wound and made a scrunched-up face when I told her about the blood.
When I was done with the story, I wanted to tell her how I'd
given up my dream, how I'd decided to settle for the dull, peaceful life of a fisherman. But I had never told her that I'd had the dream in the first place, so there was no reason to tell her now about it being lost. I sighed. “So now I'm back to fishing—no more excitement,” I said.
“But just for a little while,” she said.
I gave her a sideways look. What did she mean?
She was gazing out across the bay, swinging her legs and making the water swish between her feet. “Then you'll have to go away for a while—someplace far away, I suppose.” She turned to me and smiled. “But then you'll come back.”
“Fannie, what—”
She interrupted me and kept talking. “I already told my mamma what you're going to do, and she's real happy about it. And just last night, I told my Uncle Brewster—because he's been real sick, only he still doesn't think it's time yet to go to Doc Fearing—I told him soon folks won't have to be wondering if they're sick enough to call on Doc Fearing. I said because when Nathan becomes a doctor, he'll come back here, and then we'll have our own colored doctor just like they do in Elizabeth City.”
My mouth dropped open, and I blinked at her. “And is there anything
else
you've got all figured out for me?” I asked, annoyed.
Fannie's eyes sparkled, and she gave me a coy smile.
I held up my hand. “Never mind,” I said quickly, to keep her from answering. I scowled at her, crossed my arms over my chest, then stared out across Shallowbag Bay, thinking.
Daddy says he's glad to be back among friends and Mamma's kinfolk here on Roanoke Island. He says in a way he's glad the storm wrecked our cabin. And Miss Ella Midgett, my teacher, says she can hardly tell I've been away from schooling for a whole year—that I'm reading even better than when I left. Doc Fearing says that's good news because there's loads of reading to be done in medical school. I just got the letter from Leonard Medical School in Raleigh saying yes, if I pass the entrance examination, they'll be glad to have me as a student when I'm old enough to go. Tuition is a hundred dollars a year.
When Daddy read the letter, he took an empty jar down off the shelf and put a dollar in it. He said we'll do that every other week, even if it means freezing our toes in winter because we put a dollar in the jar instead of buying coal, and when the time comes for me to go to Raleigh, the money will be there.
It was February 1997, and my husband, Jim, called me from Puerto Rico.
“I've got the story for your next book!” he announced.
Jim had gone to Puerto Rico to windsurf with a group of folks from the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Among the group were Ron and Kathy Pettit, who now own and live in the old Pea Island Life-Saving Station. Ron and Kathy had just been involved in a very exciting medal ceremony.
This ceremony involved the awarding of the Gold Life-Saving Medal—the highest honor in the United States Life-Saving Service—to a group of men who had long been dead. These men, the keeper and crew of the Pea Island Life-Saving Station, were being honored one hundred years after they had performed a rescue so heroic—and at so great a risk to their
own lives—that they fully deserved the Gold Life-Saving Medal.
During a hurricane on October 11, 1896, when the
E. S. Newman
ran aground on a shoal off Cape Hatteras, the crew of the Pea Island Life-Saving Station came to her aid. Because their normal rescue equipment had become useless in the severe storm and overwashing tide, they improvised, tying two surfmen together with a heavy shot line and sending them out to the
E. S. Newman
to carry back one survivor at a time. They rescued everyone on board. This was the kind of courage and self-sacrifice for which white surfmen of the day received recognition. But the African-American Pea Island crew was unjustly overlooked for United States Life-Saving Service honors.
In the fall of 1993, two graduate students, David Wright and David Zoby, came across the first clues that there was an untold story lurking among the files of the United States Life-Saving Service. Little by little, they unraveled the mystery, piecing together the facts from station logs, wreck reports, letters, and other documents. By 1994, they had amassed a body of evidence that verified the fact that Keeper Richard Etheridge and his crew truly deserved the Gold Life-Saving Medal. They set about to bring the facts to the attention of the Coast Guard, which is the successor to the United States Life-Saving Service.
Wright and Zoby wrote a sixty-nine-page document detailing the facts surrounding the
E. S. Newman
rescue and asking for
the Gold Life-Saving Medal to be awarded posthumously to the Pea Island crew. The document was brought to the attention of the Medals and Awards Panel of the Coast Guard by Commander Steve Rochon. A fourteen-year-old student, Kate Burkhart, wrote letters concerning the award to President Clinton and Senator Jesse Helms. People in high places listened to these four crusaders, and the result was a medal ceremony where, amid tears and applause, the racial wrongs of a hundred years ago took a step toward being righted. The Gold Life-Saving Medal came one hundred years late but was deeply appreciated by the descendants of the surfmen in attendance at the ceremony, many of whom had served or are still serving in the U.S. Coast Guard.
Readers often ask me which parts of my books are true and which parts are fiction. In
Storm Warriors,
each of the wrecks and rescues—the dates of the wrecks, the names of the vessels, the ways the rescues were done, the weather during the rescue—are true. All of the surfmen and sailors bear their real names. All of the stories told by surfmen and sailors are true stories. And yes, I have seen the photograph of Captain Squires's disembodied head and shoulders floating in the rigging of the wrecked
Louis V. Place
. I don't think it's a ghost. I think it's a double exposure— a trick done by the photographer, which apparently made good wages for the sailor who went door to door selling the photos!
During the years I researched and wrote this book, I spent many weeks living on the Outer Banks. I researched at the history
centers and libraries, spent time interviewing local residents and historians, and sometimes simply walked the beach or waded in the Pamlico Sound to get a feel for the place. This all helped me re-create what life was like in Elizabeth City, on Roanoke Island, on Pea Island, and in the United States Life-Saving Service in the late 1800s.
Nathan, his father, and his grandfather, on the other hand, are fictitious characters. At first, I didn't know how I was going to place my young protagonist on Pea Island. The historical map of the area I had gotten at the National Archives made it clear that there was no town on Pea Island where Nathan and his family could live. Then one day I was at the Outer Banks History Center listening to the oral-history tapes made by Wright and Zoby in which they interviewed some of the oldest family members of the life-saving crews. On one particular tape, they were talking with Mrs. Pinky Berry, whose husband, Maxie Berry, had served in the Coast Guard on Pea Island. She was talking about the 1920s, saying that she had stayed in a little cottage near the station house. David Wright asked her, “Did your husband build the cottage for you?” Mrs. Berry said, “No. It was already there. The fishermen used it.” Aha! I thought. That's it. That's Nathan's house.
I also like to use reenactment to help me better understand my stories. On one of my trips to the Outer Banks, in April, I thought I was safe in telling my friends that what I really needed
for my research was a good hurricane. April is not hurricane season. The first week and a half of our stay was pleasant, but toward the end of the second week, a northeaster came in with 55-mph winds, drenching rain, blowing sand, and trees bent sideways until they looked like they'd snap. It was
perfect
for my research. For three days, I either sat inside our shuddering cottage listening to the rattling and clattering as the storm seemed to try to tear the walls down or bundled myself up to push out onto the beach in the strongest wind I'd ever experienced in my life. Sand blew into my eyes, foam scuttled across my path, and my jacket flapped like rapid machine-gun fire around my body. I would go out onto the beach for as long as I could stand it, feeling the force of the wind, taking in all of the sensations. Then I'd trudge back to the cottage and write it all down. I did this over and over again until I had pages of description of what it was like to struggle against a raging storm. These were the closest conditions to the night of October 11, 1896, I could have experienced without being evacuated from the Outer Banks.
On another trip I went out at night and walked along the lonely, dark beach, thinking,
I am Benjamin Bowser, and I am walking the nine-P.M.-to-midnight patrol.
I scanned the ocean for wounded ships, willing myself to understand what it must have been like to walk this beat.
I also spent many days sailing on the Pamlico Sound the way Nathan and his father and grandfather did. Of course,
they were in their fishing skiff and I was on my windsurfer, but it's still the same
slap-slap-slap
over glistening water on a sunny, southwest day.
Although Nathan is a fictitious character, he is typical of the type of student who attended Leonard Medical School: young black men from humble circumstances who were inspired students. Many of these young men did as I suspect Nathan would do: return to the poor, rural areas they came from and provide affordable medical care to their communities.
These days, the shores of Pea Island look similar to the way they looked over a hundred years ago. It has been designated a National Wildlife Refuge, so there are still no towns or beach houses. However, New Inlet has closed up, so Pea Island is no longer an island—it is now connected to the rest of Cape Hatteras National Seashore.
The Pea Island station was rebuilt and later moved over to the sound side in Salvo, a few miles south of its original location. The fisherman's cottage, the ruins of Jesse Etheridge's house, and the hunting cabins are all gone. The Oregon Inlet Station was rebuilt and still sits near Oregon Inlet.
As you drive down Highway 12 on Pea Island, about six miles south of Oregon Inlet, you'll find a kiosk exhibit honoring the Pea Island Life-Savers. If you walk north from there along the beach, you might be able to find the ruins of the foundation of the old Pea Island Station. On Roanoke Island
at the North Carolina Aquarium, you'll find on display the Gold Life-Saving Medal that was awarded to the valiant Pea Island crew.
The Chicamacomico Life-Saving Station in Rodanthe on the Outer Banks has been restored and may be visited during museum hours. Here you can see the equipment that was used by the lifesavers: the Lyle gun, the surfboat, the hawser line, and the beach cart. Reenactors even do a real breeches-buoy drill! In the Chicamacomico boathouse are reminders of the rescues performed by various Outer Banks lifesavers, including the Pea Island crew: the old wooden name plaques from the wrecked ships. In a quiet, dusty corner you can find it, as I did: the name plaque from the
E. S. Newman
.
I would highly recommend these books for further reading about the United States Life-Saving Service and the Outer Banks of North Carolina:
Mobley, Joe A.
Ship Ashore! The U.S. Lifesavers of Coastal North Carolina.
North Carolina Division of Cultural Resources, 1994.
Shanks, Ralph C., and Wick York.
The U.S. Life-Saving Service: Heroes, Rescues and Architecture of the Early Coast Guard.
Edited by Lisa Woo Shanks. Costaño Books, 1996.
Stick, David.
Graveyard of the Atlantic: Shipwrecks of the North Carolina Coast.
The University of North Carolina Press, 1952.
Wright, David, and David Zoby.
Fire on the Beach: The Untold Story of Richard Etheridge and the Pea Island Lifesavers.
Scribner, 2001.