5 minute read
by Henry A. Willard III
26
By Henry A. Willard III Recollections of the Gauge Railroad at Nantucket and other Memories ABOUT 1909 MY FATHER took me as a boy to the Main Street crossing by the Killen Fuel Company office. Frank Leial, the kind fireman, would give me a ride to the end of the line at the steamboat dock. It was a real thrill to hear the ding-dong of the old bell as it came to town from 'Sconset. I believe the daughters of Mr. Leial are now on the island.
A curious coincidence occurred last summer when Harry Gordon, Rev. Harry Longley and I recall riding on the Nantucket Central 63 years ago before it was removed for shipment during WWI to the AEF to France.
The crew that ran the line was Billy Sandsbury, Superintendent, Hendricks, engineer. "Rang" Dunham was flagman at the Orange Street crossing. It was here the only fatality occurred in the summer of '17 when a span of horses driven by a man named Dodge was struck by the locomotive coming to town. Peter Grant was crossing guard at Washington Street by Commercial Wharf.
It is our recollections of going to 'Sconset in the summer of 1915 with my brother and sister and our old nurse, Patsy, on the train to the Tucker Cottage, "Tuckernuck", Mr. Cowles Tucker gave a magician show for the children present at Helen Tucker's Birthday party. In the tragic and terrible crash in the Knickerbocker Theatre caused by the blizzard of unprecedented snow on the roof when 98 people lost their lives in Washington D.C. My father took me to see it roped-off about a week later when I was a freshman at college. The snow was piled high 6 or 7 feet around the perimeter of the building.
Going back to the train, there was an odd baggage car rectangular in shape. We have a picture of this at Nantucket at Main Street. There was a contraption called the "Bug and Birdcage" two open small cars ran that one summer. Also, there was a motor car that vibrated about that time, 1907, so that had to be removed after a short run. There was a special or extra train that ran to the fair grounds in August when the Nantucket Agricultural Society sponsored the county fair. What a pity it was abandoned to the limbo! The railroad at first ran to Surfside before the tracks were removed to mid island.
About ten years after the abandonment of the Nantucket Central my brother and I flew for the first time in a Stinson Detroiter airplane with pilot Wickford at the controls. It was a beautiful day and the visibility was unlimited. Curiously, we landed at a very primitive runway cut out of Bayberry near where the old road bed of the rail line was located at Tom Nevers. "When the wind is in the southard, and fog comes rolling in like a ghostly wrath of sin" beyond sing the seas perhaps the old spirits of the passengers will come back from spring land to ride the old train after more than half a century, who knows!
28 HISTORIC NANTUCKET
On the Harbor south shore about August 1909 the engine turned turtle which was visible from our yard on Orange Street. We went down to see it immobilized where the spread rails had thrown it on its side. The late Harry Turner, an ardent photographer, made some photographs and we have in our files a postcard of same. Also in Godfrey's History of Nantucket Island as it was published in 1882 there is a time-table of the runs to Surfside. A very fine volume on the far away rail line was published several years ago by Mr. Clay Lancaster which is well worth reading if interested in the island lore. One of my earliest recollections is going with my grandparents from Washington on the "Steamcars" Pennsylvania Railroad to New York. Then we had to take a ferry boat to cross the North River and thence to the Hotel Breslin way down town in Manhattan.
The next day we embarked on the Commonwealth for Fall River, Massachusetts. Then we boarded a boat - train for Boston, but we changed at a little junction point called Myricks on to another train to the New Bedford Wharf where the old side-wheel steamer Gay Head awaited us. At the advanced age of 87 Grandfather Willard was placed in the stateroom for the trip across Buzzards Bay to Woods Hole and the Vineyard Cottage City to Nantucket Island. Years later my brother, William and I were on the Gay Head September, 1918, in a gale off Tuckernuck where the old ship pitched and tossed and the wooden superstructure groaned as if it were going to the bottom of the sea. However, I believe Captain Sandsbury brought us through into fair weather.
In July 1956, Nantucket was alerted to the tragic shipwreck of the Italian Liner Andrea Doria west bound to New York from Genoa. In the fog shrouded Atlantic near the light the Swedish liner SS Stockholm rammed into the starboard side of the Andrea which finally capsized with 51 fatalities. The Isle de France carried about 700 survivors to New York with several others, more notably the Coast Guard vessel Hornbeam. Some of the survivors were brought to the Nantucket Cottage Hospital and transferred to the mainland. Years later curiously when visiting Copenhagen, Denmark we saw the rehabilitated Stockholm under another name.
Some years later I made a trip to the Cape with a friend on his cabin cruiser, Our Gang. It was a beautiful morning and we followed the M.V. Uncatena to Hyannis. It was our pleasure to visit some old friends on the Cape Cod area passing Camp Goodnews directed by Reverend Wyeth Willard for 40 years.
On our return trip about 4:30 we ran into a smokey Sou'wester with some fog and strong chop. We finally were able to pick up the Half Moon Shoal Buoy and then Tuckernuck Bell to the island after passing again the Uncatena out-bound, a cheerful sight as dark descended on a lonely sea, arriving at the town dock about 8:00 p.m.
