- The Rescue.
The Rescue.
Claudy, C.H.
Yachting Magazine, ( 1908), n.p.
27.5 x 35.5 cm. (20) pp. b/w photo plates and facsimile.
Price: $125
This is an offprint of an article in “Yachting” magazine, with added material, in folio-sized format, featuring an artist’s rendition of the wreck of a coasting schooner and action shots of the sleek open-ocean motor boat that recsued her crew. It bills itlself as, “A story of the saving of the crew of the schooner Charlotte T. Sibley by the motor boat Ildico in a Cape Cod gale.” The coasting schooner “Charlotte T. Sibley” was proceeding from Stockton Springs, ME to New York when she was struck by a gale off Bass River, South Yarmouth, Cape Cod. The account, as rendered by author Claudy, is quite melodramatic, but it marked a significant moment in American maritime history. The “Ildico” was a 40-foot motor boat built by Crosby and designed as a rescue vessel. In fact, she was the first boat in US Lifesaving Service to be powered by a gasoline engine, which made for an enormous difference in speed and efficiency. “Ildico” and her volunteer crew made their way through high seas and 70 mph winds. Fortunately, shortly after they reached the wreck, the wind shifted, enabling the schooner’s crew to get into a small boat and drift toward the motor boat, which took them aboard and returned to port, leaving the “Sibley” a total wreck. The story is a good one, and the narrative is fairly well known. But this oversized photographically-illustrated essay is unaccountably obscure. Not in Toy, and no copies currently for sale online. Worldcat shows only three libraries holding copies. Very good condition in decorated heavyu paper wrappers, as issued.