On a black night almost 37 years ago, August 11, 1883, a summer visitor stood on Vineyard Haven wharf. As the northeast wind whistled past he shuddered and said, “what a night for a fire.” A chance remark which anyone might make as he thought of a town built of wood, with no means of fighting a blaze except the humble cistern and the bucket brigade. But uttered that night it was remembered through the years. For the fire came.

A hundred years the quaint old village with its friendly harbor which sheltered, during the supremacy of the sailing vessel, 10,000 vessels and 60,000 sailors each year, had escaped the catastrophe which the pessimist was fond of predicting was only a question of time.

But as a matter of fact he expected Oak Bluffs, then Cottage City, to furnish the fuel for a monumental blaze. Vineyard Haven was so quiet, so careful, so old that it seemed no fit setting for the spectacular. Yet, 62 buildings, valued at $200,000 and including every store in town but one, fell before the onslaught of the fire that August night.

A large part of the population was in Cottage City that night, listening to a concert. Many more had finished their day’s shopping or gossiping and left Main street deserted and silent. If you had asked any one of them what he or she would do in case of fire, he would have first laughed off its possibility, perhaps glancing uneasily out into the night meanwhile, and admitted that he hadn’t the slightest idea how to fight a fire and that if a big blaze started the town was doomed.

But when it came with the sturdy reinforcements of wind and weather and darkness, the town was ready. It was man’s work, every stroke of it that was done the whole night long, but women made it their work, too. Into the breaches of the bucket brigade they flung themselves. Furniture that would have taxed a man’s good right arm, they moved as if it had been pasteboard. Generalship which seemed to desert many of their husbands and fathers, they gave.

“The women! How they did work. Why, lots of the men — understand a great many more worked like Trojans - stood around in the streets and didn’t seem to know what to do. They’d stand right by houses that were burning or in danger and not seem to think of using water on them. Women had to crowd past them to get to the cisterns. If you’re writing up the fire, don’t forget to tell the women’s part in fighting it.”

This from Rodolphus W. Crocker, who naturally remembers the fire as well as anyone, considering the fact that the harness factory where he employed some 80 men was the first building to go, and that he spent the night half suffocated on this roof and that roof, soaking them with water and putting out ambitious little blazes.

Mrs. Charles E. Lord, whose mother’s house was in the line of fire on Main street, remembers the effective manner in which her mother took charge of the situation and really deserved the credit for saving the house. And she also introduced the story of the “hero in the derby hat.”

The flames had swept up Main street with such speed and had done their work so thoroughly in passing that as they stuck out their hungry tongues to envelop the Daggett house, the men in the vicinity assumed a fatalistic attitude and opined that it was useless to combat the elements.

Mrs. Daggett thought differently. She announced to the assembled multitude that the house could be saved if she could find anyone to help her.

Then the hero in the derby hat approached.

“Madam,” he said, “I am at your service.”

Mrs. Daggett led the way to the attic, where the good Samaritan removed his precious derby, to permit her to bind his head in flannel soaked in water. Then he took up his post at the top of the ladder leading to the roof, where if the flames did not touch him, their heat scorched his face. Because of his example and hers, the men in the street set to with a will, baled out the cistern and passed up the water bucket by bucket until the danger was past.

Before she could reach him to thank him for his aid, “the hero in the derby hat” had slipped away and lost himself in the crowd. Only the derby remained. Some days later Capt. William Buckley, whose large and varied collection of head gear had been lost in the excitement, was presented with the derby of the nameless hero whose identity has never been discovered from that day to this. Visitors wonder sometimes why the Main street of Vineyard Haven does not boast in such profusion the quaint, comfortable old houses, and the magnificent trees which mark the rest of the town. 

Visitors wonder. But Vineyard Haven folk know. For they remember, can never forget, their supreme test which came rushing to them out of the darkness of an August night, 37 years ago. And the regret for what they lost must be softened by the memory of their heroic meeting of that test.

Compiled by Hilary Wall
library@mvgazette.com