Remembering the Gallatin, lost off Manchester in the snow

On the morning of Jan. 6, 1892, the U.S. revenue cutter Gallatin left Kittery, Maine, bound across Massachusetts Bay for Provincetown. By late morning she lay broken on a ledge off Manchester, and one member of her crew was dead.

Watch: Kerry Jane, the Cape Ann Current's host, tells the Gallatin's story in two minutes. Images: Winslow Homer, Study for Eagle Head, Manchester, about 1869 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, CC0); Martin Johnson Heade, Singing Beach, Manchester, 1862 (public domain); U.S. Coast Survey chart of Boston Bay and Harbor, 1877 (public domain); D. F. Lamson, History of the Town of Manchester, 1895 (Internet Archive, public domain); water and rocks, Cape Ann Current. No photograph of the Gallatin is shown.

The Gallatin was a working ship of the Revenue Cutter Service, the Treasury Department's seagoing arm and a forerunner of today's Coast Guard. Built of iron at Buffalo, N.Y., in 1871, she was assigned to Boston and patrolled the coast from Portsmouth, N.H., to Holmes Hole on Martha's Vineyard. Her commander that winter was Capt. Eric Gabrielson, described in news reports at the time as a resident of Edgartown.

Wire reports printed the next day in papers from Maine to New York give a consistent outline. The cutter passed the Salvages, the ledges off Cape Ann, at about 8:50 a.m. The weather then closed in, and snow began to fall on an easterly gale. The crew turned for Gloucester Harbor to wait out the storm.

Near 11 a.m. a small island showed ahead through the snow. The pilot took it for Kettle Island, off Magnolia, and the cutter was steered east for what he believed was a clear run to Eastern Point. The island was in fact Great Egg Rock, and the new course took the Gallatin onto the sunken ledge known as Boo Hoo, off Eagle Head. Most accounts put the time at about 11:15 a.m.

Reports said the cutter began pounding on the rocks, the sea carried away her skylights and she filled within minutes. Capt. Gabrielson ordered the crew to the boats.

As the boats were being lowered, the ship's smokestack broke loose and fell. It struck the carpenter, listed on the official muster roll as J. Jacobson. Some newspapers gave his name as Jacob Jacobson. Three weeks later the acting secretary of the Treasury wrote to the Senate that "the carpenter was killed by the falling of the smokestack." Newspapers reported that his body went into the sea. None of the sources we found say it was ever recovered.

Manchester's own town history tells his death differently. Writing in 1895, the Rev. D. F. Lamson described "one seaman, a Dane," who was "struck by the falling smoke-stack, knocked into the water and drowned." The 1892 newspapers and the state's Board of Underwater Archaeological Resources instead say the carpenter was killed by the blow itself.

On his role, the record is clear. The Treasury letter and the muster roll that Congress later printed both identify him as the ship's carpenter, not a seaman. How he died is harder to settle. Every account agrees the falling stack struck him and that he went into the water. The 1892 reports say he was killed at once, while Lamson, writing three years later, says he drowned. No source we found records an inquest or a recovered body that could decide it. Lamson is also the only source we found that calls him a Dane. The Coast Guard's finding aid lists Gallatin muster rolls for 1889 to 1892 among its Revenue Cutter records, and they may say more about who he was.

The rest of the crew got clear in the boats and pulled for shore through heavy surf. Accounts differ on exactly where they landed. Newspapers mentioned a rocky cove at Eagle Head and Singing Beach, and Lamson wrote that they came ashore near the summer home of a Mrs. Bullard. Some of the boats were wrecked on the beach after the men got out. Soaked through and having lost everything they owned aboard, the men found shelter at the house of J. F. Babcock. Lamson credits the town authorities with caring for them. The officers were taken to the Manchester House, and most of the crew left for Boston by train that afternoon.

When the snow eased around 4:30 p.m., people on shore could see the cutter broken in two, with only her foremast standing. A diver sent to inspect her reported that she would be a total loss.

The Treasury ordered an inquiry, and a board met in Boston. A Boston Herald report, reprinted that March, said responsibility had been placed on the captain rather than the pilot. Years later, a congressional committee weighing the crew's claims for their lost belongings reported that the wreck was not caused by any fault or negligence of the officers or crew. The two findings have not been reconciled in anything we found.

By March 1892 the Treasury had accepted a bid of $679 for the wreck from T. W. Brophy and David Duncan, described in one report as being of Gloucester. Before that sale, someone had forged a higher bid in the name of D. H. Smith & Son. The 28 surviving crewmen filed claims for lost clothing and gear ranging from about $45 to $207. Relief bills were still before Congress in 1900, and we have not confirmed whether the men were ever paid.

Today the state lists the site as an exempted dive site, where what is left of the iron hull lies in 10 to 50 feet of water off the northwest side of Boo Hoo Ledge.

Nothing we found shows that J. Jacobson had ties to Cape Ann, and his name is not on Lamson's list of Manchester people lost at sea. He died within sight of Manchester's shore, and the town took in the shipmates who made it to land.

What we still don't know

• Whether J. Jacobson died from the blow or drowned after being knocked overboard, and whether his body was ever found or buried.
• His full name, age, nationality and home. Only Lamson calls him a Dane, and only some newspapers give the first name Jacob.
• The final outcome of the Treasury inquiry and whether the crew's claims for lost belongings were ever paid.
• The exact landing place and how far the ledge lies from Eagle Head. Lamson says about two miles; one 1892 report says about a mile from shore.
• Whether David Duncan and T. W. Brophy, who bought the wreck, were Gloucester men. One report says so; another calls Duncan a Boston diver.
• Who in Manchester, beyond J. F. Babcock and the town authorities, helped the crew that afternoon.

See something we got wrong, or have a family record that adds to this account? Send a correction or addition.