Fire Island: Heroes & Villains on Long Island's Wild Shore by Jack Whitehouse

Author:Jack Whitehouse [Whitehouse, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Photography, Subjects & Themes, Regional, Travel, Pictorials, Historical, history, United States, State & Local, Middle Atlantic (DC; DE; MD; NJ; NY; PA)
ISBN: 9781614233848
Google: 4_l-CQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Published: 2011-06-03T23:40:21.733520+00:00

Chapter 8

THE MYSTERY AT OLD INLET

Early in the evening of Friday November 5, 1813, eleven men from Fire Place and the village of Brookhaven on eastern Long Island decided to take advantage of the calm, clear and warm weather and go fishing in the Atlantic just off Fire Island’s Smith’s Inlet (today’s Old Inlet). Most of the men probably had sailed in and out of the deepwater passage on numerous occasions and in weather and sea conditions that would test the skills of even the best of small boat sailors. But within hours of setting sail, all eleven men were dead, their boat destroyed. To this day, no one knows how or why a sturdy fishing boat and its entire crew of healthy and experienced men, in fair weather—perhaps no more than one hundred yards off the great barrier beach—could all be lost.

Provided below is a description of the facts of the case as known, what local officials, family members and historians have theorized over the past two hundred years and several new details suggesting what may have actually occurred.

On November 17, 1813, a New York City newspaper, the Columbian, republished a Long Island Star news account of the tragic Old Inlet incident. It reads as follows:

“Melancholy Occurrence”

Rarely, indeed, has it been our painful duty to record a more melancholy occurrence, than one which recently took place in that part of Brookhaven called Fire-Place.

In the evening of Friday, the 5th Instant, eleven men, belonging to that village, went to the south shore with a seine, for fishing; viz. William Rose, Isaac Woodruff, Lewis Parshall, Benjamin Brown, Nehemiah Hand, James Homan, Charles Ellison, James Prior, Daniel Parshall, Henry Homan and John Hulse. On Saturday morning the afflicting discovery was made that they were all drowned. It is supposed that the whole party embarked in one boat, and went to the outer bar—a distance of two miles from the shore, and which at low water is in some places bare; but that by some accident the boat was stove or sunk, and the whole party left to perish by the rising of the tide, which at high water is 8 or 10 feet on the bar. The boat came on shore in pieces, and also eight of the bodies. The six first named have left families. Long will a whole neighborhood lament this overwhelming affliction, and the tears of the widow and orphan flow for their husband, father and friend.

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