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Alfredo Monteiro, one of crewman of the ill-fated Nantucket Lightship LV 117, who lost his life in 1934 when the lightship was rammed and sunk by a famous ocean liner, has finally been honored with a U.S. Lighthouse Service marker at his gravesite.
Monteiro lost his life on the foggy morning of May 15, 1934 when the 882-foot, 45,000 ton RMS Olympic, sister ship to the RMS Titanic, smashed into the tiny lightship and sent the vessel to its watery grave in the waters of the Nantucket Shoals about 42 miles south of Nantucket Island, which is about 200 miles from New York City, the destination of the giant passenger ship.
After the 1912 sinking of the Titanic, the White Star Line, owners of the Olympic, made some safety upgrades to the Olympic, mainly with extra life boats, but in those days there was almost no truly safe way to deal with dense fog, especially the kind that is often prevalent off the coast of Cape Cod.
As Fred Clark, the chief wireless operator of the Olympic, struggled to pinpoint his ship’s location, he only had the radio beacon from the Nantucket Lightship LV 117 to hone in on. He assumed that he was not doing anything that was considered improper because it was an accepted, although dangerous, method, of pinpointing a location, even though U.S. Government officials had warned against it.
Captain George Braithwaite, the 70-year old master of the Nantucket, had been up all night hearing the sounds of nearby ships. In fact, at 4 am the S.S. Paris had plowed within 100 feet of the lightship.
Then, around 11 am, the captain heard First Mate Clifton E. Mosher scream, “The Olympic is upon us!” and Mosher quickly started ringing the bell to warn other members of the crew. Braithwaite later told a reporter “I was looking out when I saw the Olympic coming. I could see the helmsman on her, putting his helm to starboard. I waved frantically at him to put her to port. If he had, he would have missed us. He evidently did not see or misunderstood my signals. The next thing I knew she struck us.”
Braithwaite said, “The Olympic was not going fast, but was moving with great force, kind of up and down.” He continued by saying that he was knocked down, got up, and was knocked down again. “The next thing I knew I was in the water. I can’t swim but I was trying.” It was later determined that over half of the lightship’s crew could not swim.
First Mate Mosher told a reporter from the Boston Globe, “The minute she [the Olympic] hit us the boiler exploded and the inside [of the ship] was filled with steam. I don’t know how the firemen were lost, but I think they must have tried to reach a lifeboat and got swept under. I had enough time to get to my cabin, get a life belt, and come back on deck. Of course that takes no longer than it does to say it. We are usually ready.” In referring to the dangers of lightship duty, because a lightship is never allowed to leave its station, regardless of weather, he continued by saying, “We are apt to get it at any time.”
Meanwhile, on board the Olympic most passengers were not aware of what had happened. They had only felt a small jolt as the ship came to an abrupt halt and reversed its engines. But Olympic passenger John De Freitas was out taking a walk on the ship’s promenade when suddenly crewmen rushed past him. He looked over the railing. He recalled, “I saw men dying. I could see men on the lightship running around trying to get life preservers. They were shouting to each other and some were bleeding. I could see the spars of the Nantucket disappearing and quicker than I can tell you the lightship settled and was gone.”
Almost immediately upon the impact of the two vessels, the crew of the Olympic, with amazing speed and efficiency, had launched lifeboats to rescue the lightship sailors. De Freitas, from his view on the Olympic, recounted what he saw to a reporter from the Boston Globe. “I saw men start to swim. What surprised me was that they made a few strokes and seemed not to want to swim anymore. I learned later that the water chilled them so they could not swim. It was terrible.” He recalled when a lifeboat reached one man in the water how extremely difficult it was to get him out of the water and into the lifeboat.
As other passengers began to gather on the outside deck of the Olympic, the giant ship had come to a complete halt. The fog was thick and crewmen on the Olympic kept dropping flares over the side, and the Olympic kept blowing its whistle to help guide the lifeboats, which had disappeared into the fog, to help them find their way back to the ocean liner.
Upon its arrival in New York, the captain of the Olympic, John Binks, met with reporters who bombarded him with questions. Reportedly, Captain Binks had almost no sleep in the preceding 30 hours as the giant ocean liner had moved slowly though almost constant fog. He said, “Sometimes the fog would shut down and we could see nothing. We could only rely on the radio beacon. I did not want to steer directly into it so I edged a bit to port. I heard the lightship fog signal on the starboard bow and changed my course to port to put the light vessel more on our starboard bow and make a greater allowance for safety. Then the lightship showed up and I saw it . . . when we were about stopped, we hit her. It was not our speed but the weight of the Olympic that sank the light vessel.”
All in all, the lifeboats of the Olympic had managed to pull seven of the lightship’s eleven man crew from the water. In the dense fog the lifeboats searched for other survivors, but after a little more than an hour they gave up the search, realizing that no one could have survived any longer in the bitter cold water. Three of the lightship’s crewmen died in the on-board hospital of the RMS Olympic. The survivors were Captain George Braithwaite, First Mate Clifton E Mosher, radio operator John Perry, and oiler Laurent U. Roberts.
The White Star Line, owners of the Olympic, reimbursed the U.S. Lighthouse Service for the cost of building a new lightship: the Nantucket Lightship LV 112. The amount was $300,000. The dependents of the men who lost their lives were given restitution through the United States Employee’s Compensation Act.
For Captain John Binks, this was a disastrous end to his long, distinguished career; it happened just six months before his retirement. But it was even more disastrous to the seven of the eleven crewmen of the Lightship Nantucket LV 117 who had lost their lives, including the Alfredo Monteiro.
Alfredo Monteiro was the lead cook on the lightship and most likely would have been in the ship’s galley preparing lunch for the crew when the crash happened. For the past 82 years, he had not been honored with a U.S. Lighthouse Service grave maker at his gravesite in the St. John the Baptist Cemetery in New Bedford, Massachusetts. That has changed now, thanks to Ron Janard, Director of the United States Lightship Museum LV 112, who recently placed a historical marker at Alfredo Monteiro’s gravesite.
This story appeared in the
Mar/Apr 2016 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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