At 1:48 am on the moonless early morning of Nov. 2, 1918, the 4,000-ton British steamship Port Hunter collided with the ocean tug Covington while en route from Boston to New York. The tug made a massive gash in the side of the steamer, the impact knocking 20 crewmen out of their berths, injuring four. The skipper managed to ground the 380-foot freighter on the slope of nearby Hedge Fence Shoal. The crew barely had time to evacuate before the wreck sank, ultimately sliding into deeper water and breaking in two.
The steamer was filled with supplies for U.S. soldiers fighting in France, and had been scheduled to rendezvous with a convoy headed for St.-Nazaire. The cargo, valued at between $5 million and $7 million, contained more than 200 tons of steel, together with motorcycles and automobiles, railroad car wheels, freight cars, machine guns, phosphorous bombs, millions of rounds of ammunition, and huge quantities of clothing, including 5 million pairs of shoes, 1 million uniforms, 250,000 leather jackets, and 10,000 pairs of rubber boots.
Stan Lair of Vineyard Haven, a teenager at the time, recalled, “We got the word that cargo boxes were coming ashore on the north side of the Island, so a bunch of us boys headed down toward the Herring Creek, about a three-mile walk through the woods. We arrived there, and sure enough, there were all sorts of things coming ashore in boxes. There were leather jerkins, there were leather vests lined with olive drab wool, long woolen underwear, there were wool socks, olive drab shirts, trousers, matching wool puttees — those were the puttees that they used to wrap around their legs. Lots of soap — boxes of soap were aboard there.”
Others flocked to the scene of the wreck on fishing boats, dropping hooks into the holds to liberate even more cargo.
Lair continues: “For a time, there was ‘finders keepers,’ and fishermen were bringing leather jerkins into the town wharf, and selling them right off the boats for a dollar apiece. And they were bringing those things in by the hundreds. That brought all the merchants from New Bedford here, every boat that came in was loaded with them to buy up some of this stuff. I recall a drayload of rubber boots going up past my house on Center Street, just heaped right up with new rubber boots. Then the Coast Guard made the announcement that everything must be turned in to them at the Vineyard Haven wharf. They had an armed guard there on patrol. Nobody paid any attention to it. I don’t know how much stuff got turned in; I don’t think it was very much. But they tried anyway.”
It took nearly three months for the federal government to work out a salvaging plan, complicated by the fact the vessel was British-owned, and some of the cargo was a French consignment. In January, a dispatch was issued declaring that persons purchasing salvaged cargo without permission would be liable to prosecution. It was widely ignored.
The official salvaging contract was finally awarded to Barney Zeitz of the Mercantile Wrecking Co. of New Bedford (and great-uncle and namesake of our local sculptor). Stories were circulated that Zeitz’s salvage crew was armed with rifles and would shoot any unauthorized boats that approached. But it was nearly too late — more than $2,000,000 worth of cargo had already disappeared. “Nearly everyone on Cape Cod was wearing Army and Navy clothing after the wreck,” reported the New York Times.
Lair said: “Zeitz hired the sanitary laundry in Oak Bluffs, all 50 or so [employees], to launder these things. They’d been in saltwater, of course. They were washed, pressed, packaged, and sold to mainland buyers. They would hang these out to dry in the yard by the laundry. There’s a fence around the area, almost like a chainlink fence. In the evening, why, men on the outside of the fence would come equipped with fish lines and poles and throw the line over the fence and hook out a few leather vests and so forth. Well, they were worth $3 or $4 apiece, so there was a lot of pirating going around. Also it wasn’t safe to hang your vests out on the line to dry at your home along with your wash, ’cause you’d look out the next morning and the whole thing would be gone, including your family wash. There were a bunch of pirates around here in those days!”
Over the years the Port Hunter has attracted further salvage attempts, fueled by tales of hidden gold, jewelry, and shipments of brandy still aboard, but none has proven profitable. The wreck remains submerged today, nearly intact, less than two miles off East Chop.
Chris Baer teaches photography and graphic design at Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School. He’s been collecting vintage photographs for many years.