From Prelude to the Portland Gale
By John Galluzzo
On Wednesday morning, February 2, 1898, a lifesaver on patrol from the Point Allerton U.S. Life-Saving Station spotted an old quilt flying in the rigging of the schooner Albert Crandall, owned by Captain Harrison Mitchell of Hull. During the past evening's gale, the ship had apparently dragged her anchor across the bay and was now stranded off Fort Point, Weymouth, just south of Sheep Island. Quickly, Captain Joshua James and his crew launched a lifeboat into the frigid waters toward Quincy Bay, but soon found they could get no closer to the vessel than three quarters of a mile. The Crandall had become locked in ice as the harbor froze. Trapped beside the vessel sat a small canoe.
Captain James brought the surfboat around, and headed through Hull Gut into Boston Harbor in search of a tugboat. After a three mile pull, they secured the services of the Peter W. French, which followed the lifesavers to the icebound schooner. The Captain and a volunteer from his crew, Surfman Martin Quinn, then set off by foot across the ice to the Crandall in order to secure a line from the ship to the tug. They did not get far before breaking through the ice and plunging into the bone-chilling waters. Pulling themselves out, the surfmen crawled back to the lifeboat. The captain of the tug tried next to cross the ice, but also quickly plunged through nearly drowning before the lifesavers reached him by crashing their boat through the ice. The rescue team finally reached the schooner by dragging the 600 pound boat onto the ice and letting it crash through, a process that was repeated over and over to cover the last half mile.
On board they found Captain Harrison Mitchell, Henry Webster Mitchell, and
Louis F. Galiano, all three of whom were volunteers with Hull's Massachusetts
Humane Society and the latter one of Keeper James's original Point Allerton
surfmen. Having taken part in the rescue of the schooner Clara Jane early
Tuesday morning, they had paddled out to the Crandall in a canoe and been
stranded in the schooner for about 36 hours with nothing but a single can
of beans to share. Finally, the tug pulled the schooner out of the ice to
safety. As the surfmen dragged their boat ashore in front of the station,
they agreed that this trip had been the worst they had undertaken that season.
Exhausted, they returned to their duties.