Digest>Archives> May 1998

A Century-Old Coast Guard Rescue Continues to Touch Lives

By Robert A. Hamilton

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The Pea Island Life Saving crew in front of the ...

"They were driven by a force more powerful than any of us can realize-it was the force of God's love for people, no matter what the color of their skin."-Coast Guard Cmdr. Stephen W. Rochon

New London, CT - Coast Guard Cmdr. Stephen W. Rochon didn't like history. Fairfield Fire Chief Daniel Gardiner didn't know his family history. But a dramatic rescue of a white sea captain's family by an all-black Coast Guard crew off the North Carolina coast more than a century ago brought them together.

Gardiner's uncle and grandparents were among nine people pulled from the wreck of the sailing ship E.S. Newman by the men of Pea Island rescue station in 1896, a rescue he learned of only after Rochon tracked him down during his research of the history of blacks in the Coast Guard.

"They were driven by a force more powerful than any of us can realize-it was the force of God's love for people, no matter what the color of their skin," Rochon told a luncheon crowd at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy Officer's Club, "Wouldn't it be great if the bond they shared at that moment, and the bonds their descendants have today, could be felt by everyone?"

Gardiner said he was amazed to learn that station keeper Capt. Richard Etheridge made his men train 10 hours a day, seven days a week. They would unhitch their mules and pull the boat wagon through the soft sand and swim miles through the cold waves.

"These people felt that because they faced such (prejudice), they'd better be sure they knew what they were doing... and because they did, I'm standing here today," Gardiner said. "I owe everything to the Pea Island sailors."

And in part because of Rochon's 69-page recommendation to the Coast Guard Medals and Awards panel, the seven men of the Pea Island crew were recognized with a long overdue Gold Lifesaving Medal in 1995.

During a March 1996, ceremony commemorating the rescue at the Navy Memorial in Washington, DC, Rochon was pulled aside by William Bowser, an octogenarian who worked at the Pea Island station in the early part of the century and a cousin of Benjamin Bowser, one of the crew that rescued the people aboard the Newman.

He told Rochon that he almost didn't come because he was afraid the National Anthem would be played and he would cry out of anger over how he was treated as a black man during his years in the Coast Guard.

"I will still cry when I hear the National Anthem," Bowser told Rochon. "But now I will cry out of joy because this day has erased 50 years of bitterness from my heart."

Etheridge, a former slave, was appointed keeper of Pea Island station in 1880 after a career in the Army and as a fisherman on the Outer Banks. The white members of his crew left their post rather than serve under a black man, and the Coast Guard appointed blacks to work with him. Pea Island would remain an all-black station until 1947.

On Oct. 11, 1896, the three-masted schooner E.S. Newman was on its way from Providence to Norfolk, VA, when it ran into a hurricane that ripped off its sails and tossed it almost 100 miles before it slammed into a shoal about two miles north of Pea Island. Despite the driving rain and near zero visibility, one of the Pea Island crew spotted a flare, and Etheridge led his men out into the storm.

Repeated attempts to fire a line over to the foundering vessel failed, so Etheridge took two of his men in the water with a rope, and they swam out to the wreck. Over the next six hours, Etheridge's crew brought the nine people on board to shore, one at a time.

Rochon said he was amazed to learn that the rescuers were never recognized.

"Other less daring rescues by non-blacks were rewarded with gold and silver medals," Rochon said. One rescue station crew of that era won a lifesaving medal for a failed rescue in gale force winds, which are not as intense as a hurricane. Another was awarded a medal for retrieving the body of a drowned boy. "Based on this information, we decided to go for the gold."

In concert with a North Carolina schoolgirl who was working on the rescue as part of a school project, and two graduate students working on a history of the station, he convinced the medals committee that the Pea Island crew deserved the honor.

But Rochon's work was still not done.

On Sept. 12, 1996, the phone rang in Gardiner's office, and the caller asked him if he was the great-grandson of Sylvester R. Gardiner. No, Gardiner said, he was not - he was the grandson. The men in Gardiner's family had children well into their late 40s, so even though almost a century had passed, he was only the third generation.

Gardiner said he was completely unprepared for the story Rochon began to tell him. He knew his grandfather had been a ship captain, but he knew only of the Shenandoah, a large wooden sailing ship that he acquired after the E.S. Newman went down. He said even today he has no idea why his father or other members of the Gardiner family never recounted the tale. Perhaps, he said, they were too traumatized by the events of that night.

Rochon, who has been selected for promotion to captain, continues to work on a book about that night off Pea Island, and how the rescue continues to touch lives even today. He types long into the night after his duties as executive officer of the main Baltimore office are done.

"There's a message for everyone, regardless of race or ethnicity," Rochon said. "Pea Island belongs to all of us."

Story courtesy of the New London, CT Day Newspaper

Photograph courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources.

This story appeared in the May 1998 edition of Lighthouse Digest Magazine. The print edition contains more stories than our internet edition, and each story generally contains more photographs - often many more - in the print edition. For subscription information about the print edition, click here.

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