Surfmen of the Seacoast
Before the formation of the U. S. Coast Guard, there was the U.S. Life Saving Service, made up of fishermen, lobstermen, and other sea-goers who risked their lives to save their brethren from the perils of the sea. D. Allan Kerr will discuss these hardy surfmen at the Rye Historical Society meeting on Thursday, September 29 at 7:00 at the Rye Congregational Church, 580 Washington Road. His illustrated presentation, Surfmen of the Seacoast, is free and open to the public.
Rye had two lifesaving stations, at Wallis Sands and at Jenness Beach, rescuing vessels that ran aground or were damaged or destroyed close to shore. They also searched for fishermen who had not returned to port. The stations were staffed by locals who knew the area and what could be dangerous coastal waters, and it was not uncommon for generation after generation of families to sign up as surfmen. These hardy souls were not there for the money, but because they believed in what they did, saving their local community members and the local maritime economy.
The stations had marine railways to launch their 1,000 pound rowboats into the water to aid mariners in distress, usually in powerful seas. The surfmen knew the dangers, as their motto was “You have to go out, but you don’t have to come back.” More than 186,000 lives, men and women, were saved by the U.S. Life Saving Service before it was combined by President Wilson with the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service, which assisted vessels further out to sea, to form the U.S. Coast Guard in 1915.
On a local note, the U.S. Life Saving Service was founded in the 1870s by Sumner Increase Kimball from nearby Lebanon/Sanford, Maine, and he was the superintendent until the 1915 merger.
D. Allan Kerr is an ex-dockworker, local historian and U.S. Navy veteran living in Kittery, Maine, who writes a column for the Portsmouth Herald on both historical and current issues. He is also the author of Silent Strength: Remembering the Men of Genius and Adventure Slot in the World’s Worst Submarine Disaster.
