The Vineyard Sound lightship was lost with all hands the night  of the hurricane. The luckless vessel, with a crew of eleven, was at her station off the tip of Cuttyhunk in Vineyard Sound, when she was presumably overwhelmed, with no chance to radio a message of her approaching fate and ask for aid.

 

The discovery this week of certain articles identified with the ship, and five bodies of members of her crew, heightened the belief that she either foundered at her moorings or parted her cable and stranded nearby on the reef, probably sliding off and sinking in the deep water.

 

The lightship, 129 feet long overall, was built in Baltimore in 1901. She, with her helpless crew, literally gave their lives that others might live, in their efforts to provide beacon light for other vessels. Mortality among the lighthsips in these waters has been heavy. The Cross Rip lighship was lost in the ice during the terrible winter of 1917-1918, and no clue to the catastrophe was ever found. The Nantucket Lightship has been driven off station at least a couple of times in the history of the service, while she was cut in two bu an ocean liner only a few years ago.