Heroic History Goes Live in Rodanthe

In the late afternoon of August 16, 1918, the British tanker Mirlo made her way along the coast of North Carolina's Outer Banks with a full load of oil. Without warning, the day erupted into explosions and flames.

The Mirlo had been hit by a torpedo fired by a German U-boat.

The captain and most of the Mirlo's crew made it into the tanker's lifeboats, but further explosions capsized one of the boats, and trapped two others behind a wall of flames and debris that spread over the water.

1874 station next to the ocean

Fortunately for the crew that day, the men manning the life-saving station at Chicamacomico on Hatteras Island witnessed the attack and were soon on the way to the rescue. Launching into heavy seas, John Midgett and his men succeeded in bringing 42 men who survived the explosion to shore through the burning oil.

For their efforts that day, they became the most decorated members ever of the Coast Guard and Life-Saving Service, receiving the U.S. Treasury's Gold Lifesaving Medal, the Silver Cup from the British Trade Commission, a special gold medal commissioned especially for them by King George V of Great Britain, and the Grand Cross of the American Cross of Honor, the nation's highest award for valor at the time. Only 11 of these were ever awarded and the men of Chicamacomico got six of those.

Interior exhibits in 1911 station

Five of the six lifesavers were local guys named Midgett and the sixth was married to a Midgett girl.

These weren't the first Midgett's to win awards for valor, however.

Almost 20 years earlier, on August 19, 1899, with a hurricane raging off the N.C. coast, Rasmus Midgett singlehandedly pulled ten sailors from the decks of the wrecked barkantine Priscilla, when he realized he had no time to summon his fellow surfmen from the station. This Midgett also received the Gold Lifesaving Medal.

These are just two of the daring rescues performed by the men of the U.S. Lifesaving Service along North Carolina's Outer Banks.

The recently rediscovered logs of the station keepers are revealing just how many rescues were made and the often life-threatening conditions the surfmen faced on a daily basis. These men patrolled the beaches on foot or horseback night and day, in every kind of weather, and took an oath to attempt a rescue even at the risk of their own lives.

Surfboat No. 1046 used in the Mirlo rescue.

The surfman's motto, said to have first been put into words on Hatteras Island, is still referred to by the Coast Guard today: "The book says you have to go out. It doesn't say anything about coming back."

The men of the Life-Saving Service used two methods in their rescues.

When the wreck was far off-shore, they launched a boat through the surf. However, when the wreck was close to the beach, as often happened on the Banks, the surfmen turned to the breeches buoy apparatus.

Breeches Buoy apparatus.
Photo above courtesy of James Charlet

A cannon was fired toward the foundering ship carrying a line that could be attached to the rigging. Then, the so-called apparatus resembling a pair of trousers attached to a life preserver was sent over via this line and the ship's crew and passengers were brought one-by-one to safety.

Although the feats performed by the surfmen of the U.S. Life-Saving Service are nearly forgotten today, as the 19th century turned into the 20th, they were media darlings.

Loss of life by shipwreck along the East Coast grabbed headlines and tales of daring rescues made great copy. North Carolina's turbulent coast garnered more than its share of wrecks, securing it a reputation as the Graveyard of the Atlantic.

All up and down the Outer Banks, crews of lifesavers at the 29 official Life-Saving Stations rescued hundreds of people from a steady stream of sinking ships. Yet today these men and their feats are largely unknown.

While lighthouses and lighthouse keepers have achieved cult status, the lifesaving surfmen who launched themselves into the ocean to save lives are forgotten.

Details of 1874 station. Mouse over for more.

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"Ninety-nine percent of Americans have never even heard of the U.S. Life-Saving Service," said James Charlet, site manager of the Chicamacomico Life-Saving Station Historic Site, the most complete of the few remaining stations on the East Coast. "The heroism they displayed on a daily basis, what they endured, made them international heroes in their day. But somehow America forgot."

That's a situation Charlet and other members of the Chicamacomico Historical Association (CHA) are determined to change. Their mission is to preserve this unique slice of American history and tell the stories of the dedicated men who risked their lives so others might live.

They face several challenges, according to Charlet, who with his wife Linda Molloy, operations director of the society, frequently presents living history performances based on station history.

"The first thing I'm asked is how the heck do you say it," he said. Derived from an Algonquian word that meant "land of sinking sands," the name is pronounced "chick-a-ma-CO-mico."

Location is the site's second problem. The name once applied to a long stretch of what is now Hatteras Island, then called the Chicamacomico Banks. The U.S. Postal Service couldn't quite make out all those syllables and in 1874 renamed the village adjacent to the station Rodanthe, something of a tongue-twister itself ("ro-dan-thee").

No one's sure where the name came from, but with the release of the Richard Gere movie, "Nights in Rodanthe," filmed partly on location here, it's now more familiar. The village is now home to the giant vacation cottages of Mirlo Beach (named for the wreck), and the Chicamacomico Life-Saving Station is easily overlooked among the much larger buildings that surround it.

"We've got about a two-second window to attract people driving by," Charlet said. The final challenge, he said, is that old stand-by: funding.

"Lots of people assume that we are run by the state or the national park service, but we aren't on any state or national budget. We're a private, non-profit 501(c) organization and receive funds strictly from gifts and grants."

The society, made up mostly of volunteers, has accomplished a lot. The 1911 Life-Saving Station as been restored as a museum and gift store, housing a small portion of the historical society's collection of period photographs, journals, uniforms and personal memorabilia recalling the old way of life on this once-isolated stretch of oceanfront.

1911 station

Exhibits detail the daily drills of the lifesavers, as well as the many rescues and wrecks that took place along this coast. At the top of the station, visitors can look out toward the sea in the tower where the lifesavers once kept watch.

Other buildings on the site include a cookhouse, equipped with period appliances, the 1907 Midgett House, complete with original furnishings, and a variety of outbuildings.

Chicamacomico's collection includes much of the unique equipment used by the lifesavers, including a working set of breeches buoy equipment with cannon, one of the few metal Life Cars still in existence and Surfboat No. 1046, used in the Mirlo rescue.

Charlet works closely with local Coast Guard units which is appropriate since the Coast Guard was established in 1915 by the merger of the Revenue Cutter Service and the Life-Saving Service. The Chicamacomico station remained an active Coast Guard station until 1954 when it was decommissioned.

Above, Metal life car.

The Coast Guard's last shore-based rescue using the breeches buoy apparatus took place here, just a few days before the station was closed.

Today, volunteer crews from the Coast Guard Lifeboat Stations at Oregon and Hatteras inlets reenact the beeches buoy drill weekly during the summer season. This is one of only two demonstrations of the drill being performed regularly in the United States, and the only one involving Coast Guard personnel.

"The Coast Guard is very interested in resurrecting its early history and this is an important piece of it," Charlet said.

Much of the pre-1915 history of the service was lost, or rather misplaced, when the federal government sold off many U.S. Treasury records dating from 1795 to 1914 back in the 1970s. The records surfaced recently at a small foundation that is working to make them available to the public.

1874 station

Chicamacomico's most treasured relict is the original 1874 Life-Saving Station, the first one built along the N.C. coast. Designed by architect Frances W. Chandler in an eclectic style with Medieval and Renaissance influences, the station reminds many people of a Scandinavian ski lodge.

Using a board and batten style put together with wooden pegs, the Chicamacomico Station is the only surviving example retaining its original form of the stations built in this style up and down the East Coast.

One of Chicamacomico's major annual events is American Heroes Day. "The crews do the breeches buoy demonstration dressed in period costumes and the Coast Guard Airstation in Elizabeth City sends a Jayhawk helicopter to do a search and rescue operation just like you see in the movie The Guardian," Charlet said. Personnel from Coast Guard stations up and down the coast participate. "They're really the stars of the show."

Find out more about the Chicamacomico Historical Site at www.chicamacomico.net or call 252-987-1552. The site is closed from November through mid-April.