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Shipwrecks on Cape Cod

Chapter 19: WRECK OF THE SOMERSET BRITISH MAN OF WAR
By Isaac M. Small
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History - American

About This Book

A longtime marine reporting agent at Highland Light compiles eyewitness narratives and investigations of numerous shipwrecks and maritime mysteries along Cape Cod. The collection recounts individual losses, rescue attempts, weather- and navigation-related causes, abandoned or puzzling vessels, and large-scale disasters, while describing coastal observation, telegraph reporting, and life-saving practices. Personal recollections and practical detail are interwoven with thematic discussion of the sea’s hazards and local responses, producing a series of concise case studies that illustrate how storms, fog, shoals, and human error have repeatedly shaped the region’s maritime history.

WRECK OF THE SOMERSET
BRITISH MAN OF WAR

So far back as November 2nd, 1778, the British warship Somerset was wrecked on Peaked Hill Bars, two miles east of Race Point Lighthouse.

The Somerset was one of a fleet of British warships which had been throwing shot and shell at Bunker Hill Monument and terrorizing Boston and the surrounding coast towns for many weeks.

THE WRECK OF THE SOMERSET—BRITISH MAN OF WAR

She often anchored in Provincetown Harbor, and a few days before this November day on which she was lost, left the harbor for the purpose of intercepting some French merchant ships which were due in Boston. On the second day of the cruise, and while attempting to re-enter the harbor, she encountered thick weather and a fierce northeast gale. Losing her bearings she stranded on Peaked Hill Bars and everything movable was speedily swept from her decks. She carried a list of nearly 500 officers and men, more than 200 of whom were swept from her decks and drowned when the ship stranded.

Next day the ship was beaten over the bars by the rough sea which continued, and she was forced near enough to the beach to allow of the rescue of the remainder of the ship’s company.

Capt. Hallet of Yarmouth and Col. Doane of Wellfleet with a detachment of the Militia came down the Cape to the wreck, put Capt. Aurey of the frigate under arrest and marched them all up the Cape to Boston, where they were imprisoned.

For more than a hundred years the old ship lay buried in the sands of the beach; then the ever moving sands and the currents of the ocean tore away the sand bars and exposed the timbers and rust covered cannon of the once proud ship, but it was not for long that the remains of the hull lay exposed. Relic hunters carried away many of the old timbers as souvenirs; then the relentless sea drove back the ever shifting sands and completely covered ship and guns. That was more than fifty years ago and since that day no part of the old Man of War has shown on the surface.

She was supposed to have carried sixty guns, most of them 24-pounders; that is, they shot a solid ball that weighed twenty-four pounds.