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PROVINCETOWN GUIDE
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| DIRECTORY |
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Provincetown :: Sunday, September 7th 2008
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The Old Harbor Life-Saving Station. Photo by Michael DiGioia.
Guardians of a Graveyard
An Exhibit at the Old Harbor Life-Saving Station
By Kahrin Deines
June 29th, 2008
As is often the case with the beautiful, the Outer Cape has its treacherous side. Known for its tricky shoals and shallow sand bars, ship captains have long had a healthy respect for its shoreline. It’s a respect bred from the experience of generations, as in the last 300 years the stretch of sea between Chatham and Provincetown has reportedly subsumed more than 3,000 ships.
| The Old Harbor Life-Saving Station at Race Point Beach is open on Sundays. |
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So dangerous was the area in certain weather conditions at earlier times that it came to be called the “graveyard of the Atlantic,” and a term – “mooncussers” – was also developed for those who waited on shore to pillage wrecks.
Now, of course, the U.S. Coast Guard is always on duty to help sea travelers in bad weather. But long ago, it was the U.S. Life-Saving Service that stood at the ready to help victims of the volatile Atlantic, patrolling the coastline in all weather from a series of stations built by the federal government in 1872.
One of these life-saving stations, the Old Harbor Station, resides in Provincetown today. Moved to Race Point Beach from Nauset Beach in the late 1970’s, the station is now used as a museum, which is open in the summer months on Sundays from 1:30 to 4 p.m.
It is a familiar sight to frequent visitors of the Cape Cod National Seashore, standing in vigil near the Cape’s end, just to the left of the walkway that leads down to Race Point.
The journey it offers into the past may not be as familiar, though, because the station is only open one day a week. It is well worth a visit on the way to the beach, however, as inside there are exhibits that bring to life the brave efforts of the early lifesavers, who often risked life and limb to save their seafaring brethren. Old rescue equipment can also be viewed, and during July and August the station frequently reenacts how cannons, pulleys and buoys were used to bring sailors safely to shore.
For more information about the reenactment or the museum, call the Province Lands Visitor Center at 508.487.1256.
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