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Archiver > SHIPWRECK > 2002-09 > 1033165680


From: "John Curran" <>
Subject: RE: [SW-L] Montauk Light
Date: Fri, 27 Sep 2002 23:28:06 +0100
In-Reply-To: <ac.2de104c4.2ac6307f@aol.com>


Please delete me from your mailing lists ASAP

-----Original Message-----
From: [mailto:]
Sent: 27 September 2002 23:07
To:
Subject: [SW-L] Montauk Light

<A
HREF="http://www.fiddlersgreen.net/buildings/lighthouses/montauk/info/in
fo.htm">Montauk Light</A>


Ephraim Harding, captain of the full-rigged sailing ship ``John
Milton,'' did
not know about the opening of the Shinnecock Lighthouse. Nor did
he know that Montauk had switched to a flashing light. Returning home in

February, 1858, from a two-year voyage and heading for New Bedford, the
``John Milton'' ran into gales and a heavy snowstorm as it sailed east
along
Long Island's South Shore. When Captain Harding
saw the steady beam of the Shinnecock Light on Feb. 20, he mistakenly
took it
to be the Montauk light. Traveling a bit further east, he turned to port
and
headed north, thinking he was heading into the waters of Block Island
Sound.
Instead, the ``John Milton'' crashed into the rocky Long Island coast
about
five miles west of Montauk Point. All 33 men aboard died.In her memoirs,
``An
East Hampton Childhood,'' Mary Esther Mulford Miller recalled being a
9-year-old girl at the time, and going down to the shore with her father
the
next morning to see the wreck. ``The morning saw a hopeless wreck piled
on
the rocks five miles west of the
lighthouse. Ship, masts, spars, sails, officers and crew lay in a
confused
and frozen mass on the bleak beach.''A number of other shipwrecks have
occurred in the vicinity of Montauk. Perhaps the worst happened on Sept.
1,
1951, when the 42-foot fishing
excursion boat ``Pelican'' capsized in heavy seas just north of the
Point. Of
the 64 people on board, 45 lost their lives.Some maritime mishaps near
Montauk Point have left their names on the maps. In 1862, the huge,
double-hulled iron ship ``Great Eastern'' out of Liverpool, England,
with 820
passengers aboard, scraped an underwater rock near Montauk that left an
86-foot-long gash in her outer hull. She limped into New York, but since
then
the culprit rock has been known to seafarers as Great Eastern Rock. And
Culloden Point, near Great Pond Bay, was named for the British warship
Culloden, which in 1781 was blown onto Shagwong Reef near Montauk. No
lives
were lost, but the ship was burned to the water line, and what remained
now
sleeps 15 feet under the water at Culloden Point.One of the lighter
Montauk
shipwreck stories predated the lighthouse -- it was told in 1794 by Mrs.

Sarah Miller, a 78-year-old East Hampton resident. She said she
remembered
the first tea kettle ever seen in those parts, and it was taken off the
wreck
of the ``Captain Bell,'' which had gone aground on Montauk when she was
a
young girl. All the farmers in the area came to look at the tea kettle,
but
no one could figure out what it was. Finally, one man said decisively
that it
must be the ship's lamp. The farmers all agreed that yes, indeed, that's
what
it was -- the ship's lamp.


Jeffery G. Scism, IBSSG

Despite resistance by others, he heroically pursued his goal of
mediocrity.

















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