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 Gettysburg’s Peach Orchard
Longstreet, Sickles, and the Bloody Fight for the “Commanding
Ground” Along the Emmitsburg Road

James A. Hessler
Britt C. Isenberg
© 2019 by James A. Hessler and Britt C. Isenberg

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a

retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Hessler, James A., author. | Isenberg, Britt C., author.

Title: Gettysburg’s Peach Orchard: Longstreet, Sickles, and the Bloody Fight for
the “Commanding Ground” Along the Emmitsburg Road / by James A. Hessler and
Britt C. Isenberg.
Description: El Dorado Hills, California: Savas Beatie, 2019
Identifiers: LCCN 2019002519| ISBN 9781611214550 (hardcover: alk. paper) |
ISBN 9781611214550 (ebk)
eISBN 9781611214567 (ebk)
Mobi ISBN 9781611214567 (ebk)
Subjects: LCSH: Gettysburg, Battle of, Gettysburg, Pa., 1863. |
Sickles, Daniel Edgar, 1819-1914—Military leadership. | Lee, Robert E.
(Robert Edward), 1807-1870—Military leadership. | Longstreet, James, 1821-1904
—Military leadership.
Classification: LCC E475.53 .H477 2019 | DDC 973.7/349—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019002519

First Edition, First Printing

Published by
Savas Beatie
989 Governor Drive, Suite 102
El Dorado Hills, CA 95762

Phone: 916-941-6896
(web) www.savasbeatie.com
(E-mail) [email protected]
Savas Beatie titles are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the
United States by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more
details, please contact Savas at [email protected], or visit our website at
www.savasbeatie.com for additional information.
To our family, friends, historians, and fellow Gettysburg Licensed Battlefield
Guides who assisted in the completion of this book.

James A. Hessler:
To Michele, Alex, and Aimee. Thank you for sharing our time and space with
Dan Sickles for too many years.

Britt C. Isenberg:
To Snezana and Una. Thank you for supporting this sacrifice of our time for
theirs. Any shortcomings are of the head and not of the heart.
Table of Contents

Abbreviations

Preface

Introduction: A Fatal Mistake

Chapter 1: War Comes to the Sherfy Farm
Chapter 2: Commanding Ground
Chapter 3: Incomprehensible Movements
Chapter 4: Crush the Enemy’s Line
Chapter 5: Gain the Emmitsburg Road
Chapter 6: Let Me Charge
Chapter 7: We Are Going to Have a Fight
Chapter 8: I Wish I Were Already Dead
Chapter 9: The Ground Secured by Longstreet
Chapter 10: The Wreck of Battle
Chapter 11: Sherfy’s Peach Orchard Immortal

Appendix: Select Order of Battle

Bibliography

Acknowledgments
List of Photographs and Illustrations

Sherfy House

Joseph Sherfy

James Longstreet

Daniel Sickles

David Birney

Andrew Humphreys

Lafayette McLaws

Sickles’s Hole

Charles Graham

Joseph Carr

Meade and Sickles July 2

Edward Porter Alexander

Freeman McGilvery
 Edward Bailey

Ames Battery Position

Peach Orchard

Kershaw’s Attack

Joseph Kershaw

Kershaw Hunkered Down

William Barksdale

Barksdale’s Attack

Benjamin G. Humphreys

Andrew Tippin

68th Pennsylvania Position

Moses Lakeman

Bucklyn Position toward Sherfy’s

Sherfy House, East Side Emmitsburg Road

Sherfy Garden, South Side of House

William Wofford

Cadmus Wilcox

William Brewster, John Austin, J.H. Hobart Ward

Klingle, Rogers, Emmitsburg Road

 Humphreys’s Retreat

Dead Horses at Trostle Farm

Norwood Rock

Barksdale’s Bullet

Night Falls on the Peach Orchard

Hummelbaugh Farm

Enfilade Cemetery Hill

Sherfy Barn

George Pickup

Cannon Ball in Sherfy Tree

Sickles and Staff

Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock

Peach Orchard ca. 1880

The “bloody angle of the second day”

Sickles, Longstreet, and Chamberlain

Sickles, Carr, and Graham

Wildcat Monument

141st Pennsylvania Monument

James Longstreet (1893)

Excelsior Field, Pre-Sickles Avenue

Stuckey’s

Twilight on the Sherfy Farm

 List of Maps

Sherfy Farm

1958 Adams County Map

Attack Up the Emmitsburg Road

Morning Situation South End of Field

Noontime Positions

Longstreet’s Countermarch

Pitzer Woods Fight

Moving Toward the Emmitsburg Road

Sickles’s Move to the Emmitsburg Road

Union and Confederate Artillery

Confederate Infantry in Position

Hood Attacks

Kershaw Attacks
 Barksdale Steps Off

Barksdale Hits the Peach Orchard

Union Rallies

Situation North of the Wheatfield Road

Stand at the Trostle Lane

Humphreys Attacked

Barksdale’s Attack Ebbs

July 2 Evening Positions

July 3 Morning Positions

Confederate Artillery July 3

Wilcox’s Advance July 3

Wreck of Battle

Modern Monuments
 Abbreviations

ACHS: Adams County Historical Society

CCW: Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War
GNMP: Gettysburg National Military Park
HSP: Historical Society of Pennsylvania
LOC: Library of Congress
NARA: National Archives and Records Administration
OR: Official Records of the War of the Rebellion
SHSP: Southern Historical Society Papers
USAHEC: United States Army Heritage and Education Center
VHS: Virginia Historical Society
 Preface

G ettysburg’s Peach Orchard is not new to either author. Both of

us have written previous books that touched upon it. James
Hessler penned Sickles at Gettysburg (Savas Beatie, 2009), a
detailed biography of Union General Daniel E. Sickles that includes
analysis of his decision to occupy the Peach Orchard. Britt Isenberg
wrote The Boys Fought Like Demons (CreateSpace, 2016), a
complete regimental history of the 105th Pennsylvania, one of the
many regiments that fought near the orchard.
We embarked individually on those projects because we
appreciated the significance of the Peach Orchard to the battle. We
also realized there was much left to tell about this landmark, the
action there, and the people involved than was possible in our
original books. In many ways, the book you are now reading is a
sequel to our earlier work. However, completing the story of the
Peach Orchard was surprisingly difficult. The fighting was confusing,
at best, and has escaped the scrutiny of many Gettysburg historians.
The numerous controversies surrounding Longstreet and Sickles
muddied post-battle and contemporary perceptions. Conflicting
accounts and differing opinions existed then and now. The Peach
Orchard was both a reward and a challenge to interpret, but we are
honored to tell the stories of those who fought there.
James A. Hessler and Britt C. Isenberg
 Introduction: A Fatal Mistake

“In front of General Longstreet the enemy held a position from which, if he
could be driven, it was thought our artillery could be used to advantage in
assailing the more elevated ground beyond.”

– General Robert E. Lee,

Army of Northern Virginia (July 31, 1863)1

T he battle at Gettysburg on July 2, 1863, is primarily remembered

as one fought for control of Little Round Top, a small hill on the
Army of the Potomac’s left flank. Although other terrain features also
proved significant that day, including a farmer’s wheat field and a
rocky ridge later known as “Devil’s Den,” Little Round Top
overshadows all others in Gettysburg historiography. Confederate
forces struck the position and Union forces repulsed the attack. The
Northern army’s heroic defense saved the day and prevented the
Southerners from capturing the high ground. This is the typical
interpretation of the second day at Gettysburg.
In reality, another location played a greater part in Confederate
General Robert E. Lee’s plan of attack, and inadvertently defined
Union Major General George G. Meade’s defense. Major General
Daniel E. Sickles, the controversial commander of the Army of the
Potomac’s Third Corps, had orders to occupy Little Round Top, but
he apparently considered another position more important. Lee and
Sickles both valued roughly four acres of elevated terrain along the
Emmitsburg Road as a key artillery platform. A farmer’s fruit orchard,
forever afterwards known as the Peach Orchard, sat on this
elevation and became the scene of brutal combat on the afternoon
of July 2. Not only did the Peach Orchard heavily influence the
second day’s fighting, but it also partially persuaded Lee to launch
the disastrous assault known as “Pickett’s Charge” on July 3. Clearly,
the Peach Orchard was vital to both armies at Gettysburg. Yet, the
story has often been overlooked by Gettysburg historians.
From a military perspective, a battle’s outcome is often
determined by effective evaluation of terrain and the resulting
selection of positions. Terrain is defined as a “geographic area, a
piece of land, ground” or “the physical features of a tract of land.”
The physical features of terrain include ridgelines, roads, fences,
woodlots, and open farm fields. The works of military theorist
Antoine-Henri Jomini and West Point instructor Dennis Hart Mahan
influenced many Civil War commanders who studied at institutions
such as the United States Military Academy at West Point. Both
Jomini and Mahan prescribed rules for selecting offensive and
defensive positions. Mahan considered topography, “or the study of
the natural features of positions” as one of “the most important
modern additions to the military art.”2
While allowing for some evolution and terminology changes,
many of the basic principles accepted by Civil War officers still exist
today. A modern concept of terrain assessment expects leaders to
evaluate ground through five aspects: key terrain that can give a
marked advantage to combatants; observation to see and maintain
effective fields of fire; cover and concealment to protect against
enemy fire; obstacles to impede troop movements; and avenues of
approach to reach an objective. General officers from both armies
utilized similar concepts to varying degrees of success in and around
the Peach Orchard.3
This terrain evaluation process is one of the few parallels
between civilians and soldiers. Civilians use their own form of terrain
assessment when deciding where to build their homes and their
lives. Is the land accessible? What obstacles exist? Are there open
fields for farming? Is there shelter for concealment from the
elements? This was particularly true in nineteenth century America
when a family’s livelihood often literally depended on their land.
The intersection of these assessments frequently causes
collisions between armies and civilians. This was true at the Peach
Orchard in Gettysburg. The roads and ridgelines that convinced an
enterprising fruit dealer to build a better life for his family also cost
the lives of countless soldiers. Military historians emphasize
command decisions made by the general officers. The stories of
civilians who lived there are often forgotten, but they too valued the
same terrain and often for the same reasons.

***

Confederate General Robert E. Lee had commanded the Army of

Northern Virginia since June 1862. For more than one year, Lee’s
army provided the Confederacy with hope through a series of
victories that frustrated the Northern army and the Lincoln
Administration. The morale in Lee’s army soared during the opening
days of May 1863. Lee secured another success against the Army of
the Potomac and Major General Joseph Hooker at the battle of
Chancellorsville, in the wilderness of Spotsylvania County, Virginia.
Lee fought with aggressive audacity, divided his outnumbered army,
and stole the initiative from Hooker with a series of feints and
marches.
Lee’s aggressiveness culminated in a surprise flank attack
unleashed by Lieutenant General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson on
May 2. Jackson marched 30,000 of his men over narrow and
circuitous country roads, and massed opposite the Army of the
Potomac’s exposed right flank. However, members of General
Sickles’s Third Corps discovered Jackson’s flanking march while in
progress but misinterpreted the movement as a Confederate retreat.
This mistake contributed greatly to a general lack of preparedness
within Federal lines. Major General Oliver Howard’s Eleventh Corps
held the Federal right flank. When Jackson launched the attack, the
sight of thousands of screaming Rebels pouring out of the woods
and undergrowth sent many of Howard’s men to flight. Negative
feelings against Howard’s corps ran strong in the Army of the
Potomac after this debacle, and every Union general hoped to avoid
being caught in a similar situation the next time these two armies
met.4 Sickles’s Third Corps was in a critical position again on the
following morning, May 3. His infantry and artillery initially occupied
a salient position in advance of the army’s main line. Hooker decided
to consolidate his lines into a defensive posture and reduce the
chances of the Confederates catching Sickles in a crossfire from
multiple sides. Hooker ordered the Third Corps to abandon Hazel
Grove, an open grassy ridge of several hundred yards in length.
Confederate artillerist Colonel Edward Porter Alexander later
described Hazel Grove as simply “a beautiful position for artillery.”5
Brigadier General Charles Graham’s infantry brigade and one
battery fought as the rear guard during the Federals’ evacuation of
Hazel Grove. Advancing Southerners quickly outflanked Graham’s
men, and the Northerners withdrew. After their departure, Southern
artillery rolled in as many as 28 cannon under Colonel Alexander. His
gunners could see much of the Federal line from Hazel Grove,
including Hooker’s headquarters at the Chancellor house. Alexander
placed an additional 14 guns in positions nearby and opened fire on
Hooker’s beleaguered army.6
“A converging fire of the enemy’s guns from front, right, and left
swept the ground,” near the Chancellor house wrote New Yorker
Josiah Favill, “round shot and shell filled the air about us, and
confusion reigned supreme.” Alexander considered Hooker’s decision
to remove Sickles from Hazel Grove “a fatal mistake.” The Southern
artillerist added, “There has rarely been a more gratuitous gift of a
battle-field.”7
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SIGHTED BY SHIPS OFF CAPE COD
 A GALE, AND WHAT IT DID
The sea, powerful, wonderful and ever full of mystery, ever
restless and uncontrolled by human efforts, destructive in its might
when sea and wind and tide combine, calm and beautiful when the
summer sun shines across its blue surface, over which the ships
move grandly and safely; but when the flying snow sweeps over the
frozen surface of the gale-swept ocean with seas that scatter
destruction as it is hurled upon craft or shore, it is a different story.
This is a book primarily of shipwrecks, where there is loss of
human lives that drop to untimely graves in the wild seas.
But there are many strange events on the sea coasts, though not
directly concerned in the sacrifice of human lives, but are so strange
and unusual that they appeal to our wonder and interest.
We want to tell you a little about what the wind and the sea did in
and around Provincetown Harbor one night in December, 1926.
At this time and for some time previously the waters in the
immediate vicinity of the harbor had been used for the testing
grounds of the submarines of the United States Navy, and this made
it necessary for some large vessel to be stationed here for the
purpose of carrying the supplies and parts that might be needed on
the submarine boats, and the ship selected for this purpose was the
large Government cutter Morrill. This ship, on the afternoon of a day
in December, returning from a short cruise in the bay, tied up at her
anchorage in the harbor.
All day the wind had been coming strong from the southeast and
blowing directly into the harbor. As darkness came on the gale
steadily increased, and before midnight had reached hurricane force.
It was a time in the month when the tides were very high. All around
the harbor little power fishing boats were straining at their anchors as
the rising seas swept constantly over them.
Soon the force of the gale, as it drove the rising seas against the
high sides of the Morrill, slowly but surely forced her constantly
nearer the shore of the harbor, dragging her anchors with her as
wave after wave beat against her bow and sides. Suddenly the
anchor chains snapped and the ship began her wild course of
destruction across the harbor. Swinging to the right she crashed into
a fishing boat and sent it to the bottom, then sharply to the left she
sent another fishing boat to destruction, continuing her swinging,
zigzag course until she had passed over or through three more
boats. Then, as a big wave drove with great force at her quarter, she
swung around towards the west and plunged into the centre of a
long pier which extended into the harbor. This offered no appreciable
check to her onward course; tearing through this, scattering timbers
and wharf logs in every direction; then on to a short pier on the shore
she smashed into a good sized building on the head of this wharf
which had been used during the summer as a playhouse and
restaurant. Her further progress was then checked but not until she
had landed within a hundred yards of the main street in
Provincetown.
For miles along the shore front at Provincetown the beach was
littered with wharf logs and debris by the ton. Cottages were
undermined, boats were wrecked and driven ashore, buildings
damaged, cellars flooded, and the whole harbor front presented a
scene of desolation. The loss to property ran into thousands and
thousands of dollars.
In the Congress of the December Session of 1927, a bill was
introduced to obtain money to reimburse the fishermen for the loss of
their boats in the mad voyage of the Morrill.
From 1845 to about 1870 was the period of the highest efficiency
in this type of sailing craft and the full rigged ship sailed upon every
sea and navigated every ocean of the civilized world, and with their
great white sails spread in the sunlight, were pictures of delight upon
every sea.
 Shortly after the Civil War steam propelled vessels began to
assume a place in the passenger and freight carrying business of the
sea somewhat to the exclusion of the sailing ship. Slowly but surely
they were forced back and driven from the sea, growing less and
less in numbers until this year of 1928 it is doubtful if there is one
vessel of this type on the Atlantic coast of this country today, and
very few on any ocean of the world. Steam and electric power have
driven them into the discard.
 LOSS OF THE MONTCLAIR ON
ORLEANS BEACH
The beginning of 1927 was a season which resulted in many
disasters along the North Atlantic coast, and especially on the outer
coast of Cape Cod. It is a matter of record that not since the terrible
disaster of the loss of the steamship Portland in 1898, had so many
people gone to their deaths in the cold waters of the gale-swept sea
from Nantucket to Boston.
On the second day of February the three masted schooner
Montclair of New Jersey, from Bangor for New York, with a cargo of
lumber, after battling a fierce gale for forty-eight hours, drove ashore
one-fourth of a mile from the Orleans Coast Guard Station.
She struck the bar at low water and instead of driving over she
held fast and the waves poured in awful force over the doomed
craft’s decks from stem to stern, tearing away her deck load of laths
which were piled high above her rails and scattering them into the
wild sea that ran racing towards the shore.
Soon her deck houses yielded to the terrific pounding of the
storm-borne waves. The strings that held the laths in bundles were
soon broken and these little strips of wood a quarter of an inch thick,
an inch and a half wide and four feet long, were being smashed into
kindlings, thrown about in the surf until they formed a great stack of
broken stuff, and a short distance away looked like a huge hay stack.
Her crew consisted of a captain and six seamen. Into this mass
of broken and jumbled sticks the vessel’s crew were hurled by the
never ending rush of the driving sea.
Two of the crew were fortunate enough to get hold of a bit of
floating wreckage and were swept clear of the tangled mass of laths
and thrown to the shore where rescuers succeeded in pulling them
from the surf. Not so with the other five members of the crew. The
onrushing current swept them from the deck of the fast breaking up
craft and threw them directly into the surging mass of broken and
piled up laths, practically cutting off nearly every possible chance of
escape. Had the lumber been of boards and timbers the chance for
the sailors to reach shore would have been much better.
The Coast Guard from Nauset and Chatham reached the scene
as promptly as they could, but they were a long distance from the
wreck, and the nature of the cargo made it practically impossible to
send a line over the vessel, and the distance from the shore where
the craft lay still further operated against the rescue of the
unfortunate crew.
Sometimes the Government has fits of economy, but the Coast
Guard service is a poor place to begin the practice of it. Some time
before the Coast Guard Station at Orleans had been abandoned,
that is, the crews had been withdrawn and the station locked up.
Another case of the irony of fate that under these conditions this
schooner should be thrown at the very doors of the station that had
been abandoned.
Had this station been manned it is quite probable that every man
of the crew of this craft would have been saved.
After this experience the Government made haste to reopen the
Orleans station and a full crew went on duty December 1st, 1927.
This seems to be another case of locking the stable door after the
horse has been stolen.
 LOSS OF THE REINHART AT RACE
POINT
A short time previous to the seventh day of December, 1926, a
storm of considerable violence had prevailed all over the North
Atlantic and in and around the waters of Massachusetts Bay and
along the shores of Cape Cod.
The temperature had been low for several days, and high
easterly winds with frequent flurries of snow and sleet, and the sea
was running riot all over the ocean from Maine to Nantucket Shoals.
Under these conditions, late in the afternoon of the 7th, the three
masted schooner W. H. Reinhart, Capt. Barton, from Bangor for
Philadelphia, with a load of lumber, was driven hard and fast upon
the outlying sand bars at Race Point, about half way between Race
Point Coast Guard Station and the Light.
Several of the crew were more or less frost bitten and exhausted
by the trying conditions with which their vessel had been beaten
about in the storms. The Coast Guard men were promptly on the
scene and after a hard struggle succeeded in taking off from the
vessel Capt. Barton and the seven members of his crew and rushed
them to the Coast Guard Station.
The storm continued and before daylight next morning the
schooner showed unmistakable signs of going to pieces, and later
the mizzen mast smashed off and fell into the sea. The ever rising
gale swept the big waves in torrents over the deck of the stranded
craft and after a while tearing much of her cargo of lumber from her
decks and scattered it along the shore, men on the shore were able
to secure a considerable portion of the deck load which had come
driving in with the sea.
 The owner of the cargo then contracted with E. Hayes Small to
salvage the lumber and deliver it in Provincetown or some nearby
point from which it could be sent to destination.
Mr. Small, manager of the Highland Hotel, ten miles away, kept
on his farm there eight strong horses which had been accustomed to
work on the beaches and sands. The contract provided that he
should use whatever lumber was needed for the construction of a
suitable shed or stable in which his horses could be kept near the
wreck. The horses were, with grain and hay, removed to the beach
and three men left there to watch and care for them. This stable was
necessary because of the distance from the hotel which barred going
back and forth every day.
Rapid progress was made in recovering the cargo. Then the
stripping from the vessel of all material of any value began. Rigging,
sails, anchors and material of various kinds were brought ashore at
every favorable opportunity.

WHAT THE SEAS DO AT RACE POINT, CAPE COD

 In the meantime the vessel was being pounded to pieces. The
next storm tore away the mainmast and the hull became more and
more battered until finally the foremast toppled into the sea and only
the smashed up hulk lay scattered on the storm-swept shore.
Mr. Small’s contract also provided that he should have the
lumber with which the temporary stable was built; then it was carted
to the Highlands in North Truro and went into the construction of a
fine cottage which bears the name of “Mayflower.”
This was begun in January, 1927, and completed in June.
Fortunately no lives were lost in this disaster, but it caused many
hours of suffering for those men who comprised the crew of the
wreck.
 WAS IT MURDER?
Tragedy stalks abroad on the great sea and land always, not
only on the wide stretches of the great ocean but all along the
bordering coasts and inlets.
A big ship sails away into the mists and fogs of the pulsing deep
and never comes back, a fisherman pulls out in his little boat to draw
his nets and drops as completely out of sight as though he had never
been.
This little book tells of shipwrecks and disasters and in the same
line we may note the passing of human life on the sea wherever it
may be.
Mystery goes hand and hand with passing events on the ever
restless waters.
The following little story is but one of many like it.
Mr. Eugene W. Haines was a much respected, active citizen of
the town of Sandwich, Cape Cod. He had held many important
offices in the town and was a member of the Board of Selectmen
and engaged in several lines of business.
During the summer season he set a string of lobster pots in the
bay. He owned a small power boat which he used in going to and
from his lobster traps.
On the 19th of November, 1927, an hour or more before daylight,
as was his custom, he sailed away in his boat to draw his lobster
pots, and from that hour he was never seen again by those on shore
who awaited his return.
For many days the waters of the bay were unruffled by any
strong wind and the waters were smooth. When he did not return by
mid-afternoon searching parties started out from many points and
men patrolled the coast beaches from Provincetown to Plymouth,
and boats dragged the nearby waters of the bay for many hours.
Every foot of the coast beaches were covered but not a single trace
was found of the missing man or his boat.
There was but one possible clue to this strange situation. A gang
of rum runners had been operating in and about the bay for some
time and some of them had been caught, and Mr. Haines had been
instrumental in bringing some of them to trial and punishment.
The theory has been advanced and quite generally accepted
that these law-breakers, holding a feeling of enmity against Haines,
watched his daily going out in his boat until there came a time in
which to get him.
It is generally believed that they overtook his boat, made him a
prisoner, and took the boat in tow and then proceeded out in the sea
miles from land, where they murdered their victim, weighted his body
and dropped it to the bottom of the sea, then weighted and sank the
boat and left no trace.
During the last week in November a man patrolling the shore
came upon two oars and a few things such as are carried in fishing
boats which were identified as having belonged to Haines’ boat. But
this does not clear up the mystery of the lost fishing boat, and the
how and where of the tragedy will ever remain, like many others,
unsolved.
On the 20th of December portions of Haines power dory drifted
ashore at Sandwich.
 STRANDING OF THE BARGES
On the afternoon of April 3rd, 1915, the steam tug Mars,
belonging to the Reading Railroad Company, left the harbor of
Bangor, Maine, with three light barges bound to Philadelphia. The
barges were the Tunnel Ridge, Coleraine and Manheim.
 DECK HOUSE OF BARGE COLERAINE
Wrecked on Cape Cod. Now Highland Golf Club House

Soon after clearing the outer roadstead at Bangor, the weather,

which had been fine, became overcast and threatening, but the wind,
though strong, was fair, so that sail was made on the barges and the
tow made good progress. The captain of the tug hoped to pick up the
Highland Light in a short time, but on the morning of the 4th snow
began falling, the wind swung out to the northeast and soon
increased to a gale, and the tow was soon wallowing in a rapidly
rising sea. At six o’clock on the afternoon of the 4th suddenly, right
under the bow of the tug, came great rolling waves, breaking white
capped over the sand bars, only a hundred yards from the tug. The
captain immediately realized that unless his boat could get away
from this danger the tug would be smashed to pieces on the sands
of the bar. The only safe thing to do was to cut away from the
barges. This was done; then by all the power in the tug’s engines he
was able to pull away, round Race Point and anchor in Provincetown
Harbor. Hardly had this been accomplished when the propeller of the
tug dropped off. Had this happened when the tug was attached to
the barges or was battling the sea outside of Cape Cod, it is quite
probable the tug would have foundered and her entire crew lost.
The barges left to the fury of the storm drove rapidly towards the
sand bars and on towards the beach. In this encounter with the sea
the Tunnel Ridge and the Coleraine were so badly smashed that
they were not worth any attempt to float them, and it was only by the
prompt action of the Highland Coast Guard crew that those on the
barges were brought safely to shore.
Capt. George Israel of the Manheim, a man of many experiences
in shipwrecks, believing he could save his vessel, dropped both
anchors off the bow of the barge. This only checked for a short time
the onward drive of the barge. Capt. Israel had mistaken the force of
the sea on the outside of Cape Cod in a storm, and his barge
dragging her anchors was forced nearer and nearer the shore, until
he and his crew of four men had to be brought ashore in the
breeches buoy by the Coast Guard men.
The fury of the gale and the high and rising tide soon forced the
barges well up on the beach, so that on the following morning one
might walk dry footed entirely around them. The Manheim escaped
serious injury. Then began an effort to float her. Soon it was found
that the action of the sea and tide was building up a great
breakwater of sand around the Tunnel Ridge and Coleraine which
were stranded one on each side of the Manheim. There could be no
hope of floating the latter until these hulks were removed. Kerosene
was liberally poured over them and on a dark night a torch was
applied, and the burning hulls lit up the sea and shore for many miles
around. When it was decided to burn the barges, Capt. Israel told E.
Hayes Small if he would send a gang of men on board and remove
the deckhouses from the Coleraine he could have them; he did so,
and a few days work landed the houses on the sands of the beach,
where they were cut into three pieces. Some planks were laid on the
slope of the 100 feet high cliff, and with four horses the three parts
were skidded to the top of the cliffs; then on trucks the parts were
drawn to a point on the south side of the town road leading to
Highland Light, there put together and converted to a three-room
cottage. Later on, with a small addition on the south side, made the
club house of the Highland House golf links.
Capt. Israel, with two of his men, lived on the Manheim all winter,
and on the 4th day of April, 1916, just a year to a day from the time
the Manheim stranded, she was floated off and entered the coal
transportation business again.
 THE JOHN TRACY MYSTERY
On the 9th day of January, 1927, the big 2000 ton freighter John
Tracy of the M. & J. Tracy Transportation Line, with some 2500 tons
of coal for Boston, steamed out of the harbor of Philadelphia, but she
never reached her destination, and from that day to this no word has
come to land to tell what befell her. Every effort by search in every
port on the coast, by telephone, by wireless, and the hunt through
every possible avenue for information, failed to obtain the slightest
clue to the missing boat. Another tragedy of the sea had been added
to the long and ever increasing list of sea tragedies of lost ships that
have dropped beneath the sea.
Knowing the usual speed with which these ships move along the
coast and knowing the conditions which prevailed, it is estimated that
this ship would have been in the immediate vicinity of Highland Light
on the night of January 11th, when conditions on the sea were dark
and stormy, with a gale-driven fog over all the sea.
In the early morning of the 10th, the three masted schooner
Charles Whittemore, with a high deck load of piling (logs), bound
from Portland to New York, encountered a strong gale and rough sea
when a few miles east of Highland Light and her entire deck load of
these big logs was swept from her decks. It has been quite generally
believed that the Tracy, steaming up the coast in the darkness and
storm, ran directly into this mass of floating logs, and the fury of the
sea drove one of them through the steamer’s side and sent her to
the bottom in a very few minutes.
On the ship were thirty-one officers and men. No man or
message ever came back to tell how, why and where it happened.
No wreckage came to the surface or the shore, but this is readily
explained because of the fact that this was an iron ship, with very
little material that could be washed from her decks, so the ship
carried everything with her when she went to the bottom of the sea.
 WRECK OF THE ROGER DICKY
On the first day of January, 1927, one of those fierce easterly
gales which frequently sweep the North Atlantic coast and the
outside of Cape Cod from Chatham to Boston Light, caught the
fishing schooner Roger Dicky in a dense fog and drove her hard and
fast on the outside beach a short distance beyond the Cahoon’s
Hollow Coast Guard Station, within the boundaries of Wellfleet.

ROGER DICKY
Wrecked on Cape Cod, January 1st, 1927
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