On February 11, 2017, the Core Sound Waterfront Museum & Heritage Center, Harkers Island, N.C., will be hosting a special event honoring the 1905 Cape Lookout Life-Saving Station Gold Medal recipients for their rescue of the crew of Rawson. The families of Surfmen William H. Gaskill, James W. Fulcher, Kilby Guthrie, John A. Guthrie, Calupt T. Jarvis, John E. Kirkman, Joseph L. Lewis, Tyre Moore and Walter M. Yeomans will be participating.
According to the 1905 Annual Report of the Life-Saving Service, the three-masted schooner Sarah D.J. Rawson was carrying a full load of lumber from Georgetown, S.C., bound for New York in rough seas, when the vessel stranded on the south side of Lookout Shoals on February 9, 1905. The nearby lifesaving crew set out, but could not approach the vessel without being beaten back by the breakers. The next morning, they were able to approach more closely and used a line to rescue the remaining crew (one crew member, Jacob Hansen, had been swept off the decks by heavy seas when the schooner struck the shoal). A few hours later, the vessel broke up and disappeared. Each member of the lifesaving crew was awarded the gold medal of honor on April 12, 1905, for “extreme and heroic daring in saving life from the perils of the sea.”
Mike Carlson, Secretary, U.S. Life-Saving Service Heritage Association (USLSSHA), alerted us to this event. An affiliate of the U.S. Lighthouse Society, the USLSSHA encourages an appreciation of Life-Saving Service history and supports the preservation of lifesaving stations all over the United States. Their website at uslife-savingservice.org has a wealth of information about the Service and the lifesaving stations which once lined our coasts.
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U.S. Lighthouse Society News is produced by the U.S. Lighthouse Society to support lighthouse preservation, history, education and research. Please consider joining the U.S. Lighthouse Society if you are not already a member. If you have items of interest to the lighthouse community and its supporters, please email them to candace@uslhs.org.
Candace was the US Lighthouse Society historian from 2016 until she passed away in August 2018. For 30 years, her work involved lighthouse history. She worked with the National Park Service and the Council of American Maritime Museums. She was a noted author and was considered the most knowledgable person on lighthouse information at the National Archives. Books by Candace Clifford include: Women who Kept the Lights: a History of Thirty-eight Female Lighthouse Keepers , Mind the Light Katie, and Maine Lighthouses, Documentation of their Past.