Seals basked on the rocks, gulls swooped over the water, and a cat scampered along the bluff past a lone stone memorial on Manomet Point Tuesday.
The tranquil late winter setting made it hard to picture the horrific scene that played out in the water off the Point exactly 82 years ago.
Today marks the sad anniversary of a valiant rescue attempt that took the lives of three local Coast Guardsmen. Now one local resident would like to see the names Frank Griswold, William Cashman and Edward Stark elevated to the status of local heroes.
“Maybe they didn’t call them heroes back then, but nowadays if someone does something like that they call them a hero,” Manomet resident Paul Barber said this week. “They’re a part of our history, who we are.”
Griswold, Cashman and Stark died March 10, 1928, after their rescue boat capsized just off shore.
The men were returning from the Mary Ann Rocks, where nearly 276 passengers and crew were stranded aboard the steamer Robert E. Lee, the night before. All aboard the Lee survived the grounding without injury. Some even slept through the night without realizing the ship had run aground in the fierce blizzard. It was a much different boat tide for the men of the Manomet Coast Guard Station.
According to news reports of the day, the Lee, a 5,000-ton steamer, left Boston for New York around 5 p.m. March 9, 1928, and lost its bearings in a blinding snowstorm off Plymouth. Passengers were strolling through cabins and chatting in the lounge when the ship hit the Mary Ann Rocks without warning. Passengers crowded the deck and donned life jackets, but learned the ship was not in any danger of sinking. It was wedged between the rocks with a hole in its hull.
Ships converged on the scene, and when the weather abated the next morning, rescuers began transferring 160 passengers and 108 crewmen to Coast Guard ships. Passengers and crew were put ashore near Plymouth Rock and returned to Boston by bus.
Cashman, a boatswain’s mate and commander of the Manomet station, tired unsuccessfully to launch a rescue boat to help the Lee during the night. He and seven men, Griswold, Stark, Alden Proctor, Irving Wood, Joseph Ducharme, Ernest Douglas and Arthur Young, rowed to the rocks in a surf boat to help with the rescue in the morning.
They returned to shore after the first passengers were safely transferred and were approaching the shoreline when a huge wave capsized their boat. Local residents jumped to the rescue of the rescuers, using nearby boats to pull all but Griswold from the water.
