Six shipwrecked men from the wrecked barkentine Hattie G. Dixon, which went ashore on the reef to the southward of Washqua Hill, Chappaquiddick, about 3:30 o’clock Sunday morning, went to New Bedford on Monday morning to the Mariner’s Home there. As all the men had money they left for Fall River to go to New York to look for another berth.
With the eyes of the Atlantic seaboard directed toward the Vineyard this week, the twelve-year-old mystery of the sinking of the rum runner John Dwight began to unfold. The investigation has progressed to a point where it is definitely established that the wreck lies undisturbed with but slight damage to the hull, and that, presumably, her cargo of liquor, her store of wealth and the bones of the victims of violence are still in the decaying hull.
The sloop Silver Heels, Capt. Eugene Nohl, returned to Vineyard Haven on Tuesday after spending more than two weeks in investigating the wreck of the rum runner John Dwight off Cuttyhunk and reported rather discouragingly that the hull is filled with bottles. Nohl, who has done most of the diving, said he had completed a thorough examination of the wreck, which he found damaged but slightly and sanded scarcely at all. But to the height of his shoulders, the entire cargo space is filled with empty beer bottles and rotted barrel staves.
A survey of the sunken wreck of the steam rum-runner John Dwight will begin today, weather permitting; Eugene Nohl and David J. Curney of Vineyard Haven having made their plans to begin the work. This same crew has completed its survey of the Port Hunter, and has reported that salvaging her cargo of steel is feasible.
Eight men, and perhaps others, paid the toll in a tragedy of the sea in Vineyard Sound last Friday morning, during a thick fog.
At six o’clock that morning, the fog lifting for a short while, the Cuttyhunk Coast Guard crew observed a distress signal at the masthead of a steamer of apparently 125 or 150 feet length, midway in the Sound between the Vineyard and the Elizabeth Islands.
Massachusetts Environmental Police are investigating after the remnants of a vessel washed ashore this week that was believed to have broken loose from a mooring in Hyannis harbor.
Steamer Nantucket was still fast in the sand of Sturgeon Flats this morning, with the prospect that more powerful towing equipment or the aid of a dredger will be needed to get her clear. Attempts were made to float her at high tide last night, and the working vessels were heard tooting again this morning in the thick fog which surrounded all the craft and made them invisible from the shore.
The Mercantile Wrecking Co., of New Bedford, of which Barney Zeitz is the proprietor and with whom is associated Jacob Dreyfus & Sons, large wholesale merchants of Boston, and Michael J. Leahey of New Bedford, has been awarded the contract for removing the American cargo in the British steamer Port Hunter, which lies sunk on Hedge Fence shoal in Vineyard Sound.
Survivors of the British steamer which was beached after colliding with a seagoing tug in the Sound Saturday morning, were taken into Vineyard Haven. There were 53 men, including Captain Stafford. Many of the men were destitute of clothing and in many instances wore only shoes and trousers. The villagers had been notified of the coming of the survivors, and a committee, headed by Frank L. Eddy, manager of the telephone company, got together a large quantity of clothing, money, tobacco, food, fruit, etc., with which to welcome the ship-wrecked crew.
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.
