June 28th, 1922,
Berwick Register,
Schooner Puritan Lost On Sable Island
Sixteen Of Crew Missing – Feared They Have Perished
The fine new Gloucester racing fishing schooner Puritan, launched at Essex, Mass., last March, as a possible contender for the International Fishermen’s Trophy, struck on the Northwest Bar of Sable Island, on Friday night, and is reported to be a total wreck. Captain Jeffrey Thomas and seven of his crew are safe at Sable Island. Sixteen men are missing and it is feared they have perished.
News from the Island, while fragmentary and meager, still supplies sufficient information from which to piece together the story of still another grim, shocking drama of the North Atlantic. The first tragic message reached Halifax on Saturday forenoon, about eleven o’clock, when C. H. Harvey, agent of the Marine and Fisheries Department, had a wireless from Mr. Henry, superintendent at Sable Island. The message stated that Captain Thomas and seven of his crew had reached the island in three dories, reporting the loss of the schooner, that she struck on the Northwest Bar, and that they had been forced to abandon her. The sixteen men, this message stated, were adrift in the open boats.
The weather was very thick when the Puritan struck, and as said, a heavy sea was running. Captain and crew took to the boats immediately, only to be separated, as later messages to Mr. Harvey disclosed. When last seen, the missing men, at least, some of them, were rowing northward in the fog. The whole Island, at the time the first message was sent, was still enveloped in fog, rendering assistance at the time next to impossible, but preparations were being hastily made to made a search as soon as weather conditions permitted.
(added Aug. 17, 2003 ... PV)
The Register
June 28, 1922
ALL BUT ONE OF PURITAN’S CREW SAVED
Fifteen men, members of the crew of the ill-fated fishing schooner Puritan, the pride of the Gloucester Fishing Fleet, which went ashore in a dense fog on the Northwest Bar of Sable Island on Friday night last, resulting in complete wreck of the schooner and the lost of life of one of her crew, were on Monday morning landed at Pleasantville, a small village on the LaHave River, six miles below Bridgewater.
They were brought there and landed by the LaHave Fishing Schooner, Coral Spray, Capt. Roger Wamback, who picked them up on Saturday afternoon, fifty miles north-west of the scene of the disaster, after they had been in their dories exposed to the rigors of the open Atlantic for a period of twenty hours, without food and with very little water.