The Tragic True History of Ship Bottom’s Origin
By Reilly Platten Sharp
Nestled among the narrow cottages of Ship Bottom’s historic district around Ship Bottom Avenue, the original life-saving station still stands tall today. Now, the latest in a line of owners who take great care of the fragile maritime relic, Rick Baldt and family, have seen their grandchildren bunk in the same alcoves local lifesavers once did and the family dines in the same room where cold and hungry survivors of wrecked boats once supped. Where the giant surf boat was stored, surrounded by life-saving equipment hung from the rafters, are now comfortable couches framed by a warm fireplace. This has been a happy home to generations of people as the dramatic scenes of life and death so common at the station have been left in the past. The past, though, is ever-present in each doorframe, beam, and board. Some walls were found to contain the very remnants of the ships it was built to protect. Indeed, this is the house that Manahawkin’s Edward Jennings built. It is near the spot where Ship Bottom made a name for itself. The town’s very existence is a monument to a tragedy unfortunately lost to the passage of time and living memory. And it is a long story whose threads must be pulled apart before it can be put back together in the right order. The first thread to pull is right at the start in Ship Bottom.
In 1817, “Captain Stephen Willets” of Tuckerton sailed out of Little Egg Inlet around the southern tip of Long Beach Island during a terrible storm. He was a religious man who cared about the wellbeing of others. He and the men aboard his boat felt an urgency to patrol the shoreline for hours in search of any vessels and people in distress. Eventually they found an upturned boat in the surf near the middle of the Island. The wreckage was a frightful sight with bodies strewn about and no sign of survivors. But a tapping was heard coming from the hull, and Willets and his men soon set about hacking an opening into it with axes. After a time, they cut through and found a young girl. Upon helping her out of the ship, the lone survivor of this tragedy spoke only Spanish but was clearly grateful for her rescue as she made the sign of the cross in the sand. Though she went on her way, the memory of this unforgettable wreck stayed with Willets and locals who gave the part of the Island where it occurred the name “Ship Bottom.”
That is the story that has been told by old-timers in Ship Bottom going back to at least the 1950s. It has appeared in Island history books and articles for years. It is the unique and moving story honored anew upon the 100th anniversary of the incorporation of Ship Bottom celebrated this spring.
But is it the whole story?
Contemporary books and articles aside, repeated attempts at investigation into the remarkable story of Ship Bottom’s naming have yielded no additional accounts or documentation to verify the famous story. With no reason to doubt its accuracy, the goal of digging into the details, like all Island stories, has always been to find the facts and prove our rich history is as grand as we believe it is. In this case, the first pull on the thread came from an entirely unexpected place.
One day in the summer of 2024, Liz Daukas Oliner came into the Barnegat Light Museum straight after visiting Barnegat Lighthouse State Park. At the park she saw a sign naming every lightkeeper to serve there. One name caught her eye and gave her pause — Ellen Low. A female lightkeeper?! In 1839 no less; the second keeper! Through months-long research, Oliner uncovered fascinating clues as to who Ellen was and how she became one of only a handful of women in American history to ever serve as a lighthouse keeper. This dedicated work led to a talk on Ellen Low and, utilizing her expert skills as a designer, creation of a period dress similar to something Low would have worn as a way to help tell her story through a new exhibit at the Lighthouse Interpretive Center and periodic use of the clothing by an historical re-enactor.
In support of Oliner’s research, this historian tried to find any new information he could about the first few lightkeepers at Barnegat Lighthouse. Unfortunately, details have always been scarce as record-keeping was quite limited so long ago, plus the fact that many of those early keepers served briefly and had no local ties. Little relevant information about Ellen Low was found in the end. But a stroke of luck came out of the work that pulled on a thread.
The keeper who took over for Low was Garret Garrison Harring from near Tarrytown, New York. However, in most places, from the sign Oliner saw at the park to local history books to government records themselves, he is recorded in all but one case as “Garrett Herring,” sometimes with the middle initial H or A. There was also an old hotel in Barnegat Light in those days remembered incorrectly in all sources as the “Herring House.” The simple misspelling of his name meant nearly every previous attempt to find new information about him, or his family, reached a dead end. Out of desperation this historian searched books, records, databases, archives, and the internet using alternative spellings. Only then, at long last, did new detailed and accurate information flow forth. The most interesting of which was another key to unlocking Ship Bottom’s past.
Late in the second week of September 1846, a slow-moving tropical system made its way up the mid-Atlantic coast sinking and wrecking several vessels. One stood out from the rest. Headlines like “MIRACULOUS ESCAPE OF A LADY” in the New York Daily Herald highlighted the epic story of survival. News reporting expediency of the time placed the lady’s escape at Squan Beach, short for Manasquan, when in fact the wreck occurred on the shoals of Barnegat Inlet, the next notable landmark south of Squan Beach that on maps extended as far down as Island Beach.
The Brooklyn Evening Star among others reported, “During the gale of last week, the sloop Mary Adelaide…was capsized off Squan Beach, and all hands perished except for a young lady, who was saved in a most miraculous manner, the sloop having drifted bottom up. When the wreckers boarded her, they heard a noise which appeared to be that of a human voice, coming from the cabin. They instantly cut a hole in the bottom, and there found the lady…who had been standing in water up to her neck from the time the vessel capsized until she drifted to the shore…”
This lady was Edith Lamson of Manahawkin. Her uncle, Samuel, was the captain who went down with his ship attempting to get out of Barnegat Bay in what he thought was a break in the storm. Her rescuers were none other than former keeper Garret Harring, still residing in the area and working with his father at the Harring House hotel nearby, and future keeper Charles Collins. It was Harring who wielded the axe freeing Lamson from a watery tomb. As in the Ship Bottom story, there were bodies strewn about in the rigging and on the beach, those of her family and neighbors.
This true story had been notably recounted in George Somerville’s 1914 edition of The Lure of Long Beach, albeit with some inconsistencies, as well as Charles Edgar Nash’s heavily re-written edition of the same book, Edward Rowe Snow’s 1955 Famous Lighthouses of America, and John Bailey Lloyd’s posthumous 2005 Two Centuries of History on Long Beach Island.
After rediscovering the rich backstory to Harring’s post-keeper days and this seemingly underappreciated Barnegat Light wreck that bore an uncanny resemblance to the Ship Bottom tale, it begged the question — was there anything more to be found about Ship Bottom’s genesis? Taking a page from the Harring breakthrough, a wide net was cast for “Stephen Willets” of Tuckerton and another thread was pulled on the suddenly expansive backstory to Ship Bottom.
Like so many Island stories, there is a kernel of truth at their cores even if some of the details have drifted away over time. Sometimes the most dramatic stories are spot-on accurate, while others so ordinary as to be unquestioned are wildly off the mark. In this case the popular story attributed to Ship Bottom’s naming was somewhere in between but, in the end, misplaced.
Captain Stephen Willits — not Willets — Sr. was indeed a noted resident, captain and wreckmaster from Tuckerton in the early 1800s who owned the schooner, Rob Roy. The details from there are familiar yet notably different. It is claimed in many places where the story of Ship Bottom has been told that the wrecked boat and the name of the surviving girl have been lost to history.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported simply of the events of May 15, 1831, “Last night in the fog, the brig Howard…Capt. Denning, from Madeira for New York, laden with wine, struck upon Long Beach, near Company House; the crew, with the exception of the mate, Mr. Walsh, and the cook, are safe on shore — the cook and mate perished attempting to land…” The Company House mentioned is the old Philadelphia Company House hotel in Holgate, which later became well-known locally as Captain Thomas Bond’s Long Beach House. Records confirmed the Howard and Willits’ schooner, Rob Roy, were both active during this period and made many journeys from Madeira, Portugal, and Tuckerton, respectively.
Other reports provided more details of the otherwise ordinary rescue, save for one crucial aspect.
A ten-year old girl from Madeira coming to New York City to attend school was among the eleven survivors that day on the beach at Holgate, according to these accounts. The captain was rescued near shore just as he was about to give in to exhaustion by Mrs. Hannah Cranmer Churchman, who was staying at the nearby Company House and saw the brig in distress near shore. The cook and mate who also attempted to swim to shore drowned. Meanwhile, the rest of the crew and passengers waited onboard for rescue, which soon came from several vessels.
“…About eleven o’clock A.M. Capt. Willits, of the Rob Roy, the schr. Pilgrim and sloop Sportsman,” reported The Charleston Daily Courier, “came up and lowered his boat, and with one of his men, Joseph Gaskill, and Jos. Heyward and Morris Seaman, the two latter from the other two vessels…determined to attempt the safety of the…unfortunates in the shrouds of the Howard, where distressing cries rent the air.” Through teamwork pitching dangerously in the surf, all survivors were brought aboard Willits’ schooner and taken to port in Tuckerton.
The Courier concludes interestingly, “The little girl (who does not speak English) when some wine was presented to her on board the Rob Roy, would only taste it in the presence of her deliverer by drinking to him with signs denoting her gratitude.”
These accounts seem to have been lost over the course of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The first known re-appearance of a variation of this story was the Ship Bottom legend contained in Charles Edgar Nash’s 1936 edition of The Lure of Long Beach and attributed to Tuckerton resident J. Henry Bartlett, whose version as written by Nash had the date of the wreck as 1817, a notably religious narrative including guidance for Willits from a heavenly voice to exactly where the wreck was located in the thick fog, placed the location of the wreck at the middle of the Island at Ship Bottom, removed all other responding boats from the narrative, had the girl as the sole survivor, and transformed the wreck into an upturned hull in which she was trapped and cut free by an axe swung by Willits. In subsequent years books and articles, even word of mouth, repeated this version of the story largely unchanged. An Island yarn was born. If it is now pulled apart, what should be woven together in its place?
It seems clear that Ship Bottom was not named after a wreck in Holgate in 1831 or a wreck in Barnegat Light in 1846, nor an inspirational parable apparently told among some Tuckerton residents in the 1930s. If not those, though, then where did the Ship Bottom name come from, and why? The tragic explanation may have been known all along and simply lost in the historical shuffle of wreck stories and popular town histories. That answer was found back at the start with Edward Jennings and his life-saving station.
In the mid 1850s, coastal navigation was critical to the future of the United States. Trade with Europe was growing. Immigration was exploding. Sailing was the primary means for the growth of the nation about to become a global power with the onset of the industrial revolution. As such, safe passage to New York Harbor was essential. That approach began far from the harbor itself, extending as far into the Atlantic as Barnegat Inlet, New Jersey and Fire Island, New York.
The government had already undertaken the construction of lighthouses and Houses of Refuge to reduce the number of wrecks, loss of life and valuable cargo that had been suffered in the early 1800s. But these initial efforts were token gestures and grossly insufficient toward the deadly matters at hand. It would take a series of tragedies that dominated the headlines of national, and international, newspapers from 1853-1856 to force real change. This expansion of maritime infrastructure led to the expansion of the House of Refuge network, later to be replaced by larger life-saving stations, and the building of new bigger lighthouses up and down American coasts, including our storied current Barnegat Lighthouse built in 1858.
One such tragedy, the deadliest to this day in the history of New Jersey, spurred immediate action yet is largely only a footnote in the annals of Island history.
Late Saturday night, April 15, 1854, the packet ship Powhatan out of Baltimore returning from Europe with over 300 German families grounded on an outer bar about 100 yards from shore near the middle of the Island. She was discovered after first light the next morning, Easter Sunday, by Edward Jennings. Jennings was the local wreckmaster, with a home in Manahawkin. He was also the long-time manager of the Mansion of Health hotel located on West 7th Street in Surf City in the days long before Surf City was even conceived of. Being at the hotel at that time, he was easily able to spot the three-masted, 600-ton, nearly 150-foot-long bark in the surf just down the beach. What followed scarred the memories of Jennings and all those involved in the aftermath.
The New York Daily Herald declared, “Terrible Suffering on the Powhatan.” “Total Loss of the Powhattan [sic],” read the front page of The New York Times. Newspapers far and wide took notice. Even The Sydney Morning Herald with its story, “DREADFUL SHIPWRECK AND LOSS OF LIFE.”
Jennings was first on the scene and provided an account of what happened that terrible day to reporters just days later.
“On Saturday the wind blew with great violence from the northeast,” he recounted. “The sea ran very high all day…On Sunday morning I observed a ship…thumping on the bar…I immediately sent those men who were with me to the government station house, distant about six miles, for the life car, mortar, and other wrecking apparatus. During the day the ship’s deck was crowded with passengers, and when the surf ran out, I could get within seventy-five yards of the vessel, which I found out to be the ship Powhatan, of Baltimore, Capt. Meyers, on her voyage from Havre to New York. The surf ran mountain high. Indeed, I never saw such a sea in my life. Several persons now began to be swept overboard, when Captain Meyers hailed me through his speaking trumpet and asked me for God’s sake to try and save some of those who might happen to wash ashore. I told him I had went down the beach to where the bodies came on shore, but found them all dead, and it was of no use trying to save them, as they were all drowned before they got halfway to the beach…women and children came on shore first.”
“The vessel then lay E.S.E., and had shifted from the N.E. Her foremast was gone at this time…About 5 o’clock P.M. on Sunday, the ship keeled over to windward from the shore. The sea then…made a clean break over her, and passengers began to be washed off in great numbers. The sea running mountain high and completely hiding the vessel from my view…Bodies appeared floating in the surf in great numbers. Some twenty-five…mostly women came on shore about a mile south of the wreck…The shrieks of the drowning creatures were melancholy indeed, but I could render them no aid, as the sea ran so high…Never did I see such a sight in my life. Never do I remember witnessing such a dreadful gale or such a high running sea.”
In all, three hundred and twenty-six men, women, and children would die that day in front of Edward Jennings.
As for the men he had sent to the House of Refuge at Harvey Cedars, the closest and one of only two on the Island at the time, “the men got back the next morning,” he explained, “with a lifeboat, mortar, and the usual wrecking apparatus, but it was too late.” In fact, these men suffered from exposure to the cold and exhaustion in the difficult journey up to the House of Refuge then the return trip towing the heavy equipment over sand, dunes and thick brush that dominated the largely undisturbed Island in those days.
Initial reports had the wreck occurring at Absecon Beach or on the Absecon coast. In the days that followed all correctly identified the location as Long Beach Island. Even more specifically, various witnesses, including Jennings, placed the Powhatan about present day northern Brant Beach or southern Ship Bottom. But the destruction was spread far, making it not just a Long Beach Island story but one of New Jersey. The raging nor’easter and its currents sent bodies and debris down the coast. Absecon, now Atlantic City, reported remains washing up for days, numbering in the dozens. Brigantine reported more. Due to wash-overs of the Island during the storm, some were also found in the bay marshes near West Creek and elsewhere. Within days, over 140 bodies were gathered and the grim thankless task of bringing them to the old Baptist Church at Manahawkin for a proper burial was undertaken by many local men. Most of the people living there at the time became involved in making coffins and digging trenches for the mass graves. Women in town took on the delicate duty of washing the bodies and preparing burial shrouds, toiling each day until midnight. When the first number were ready for burial, a New York Daily Herald reporter was present and owing to the lack of identification could only describe the deceased by the number of their coffins lying in a row before the trenches. “From No. 19 to 28 were children, varying from five to ten years of age. Among them were some very handsome boys, with fine curly hair and red cheeks, whose sweet little faces were admired by all the spectators and even drew tears from the tender-hearted.”
Those who witnessed or took part in any aspect of the Powhatan tragedy were deeply scarred by the scale and brutality of it. Most bodies were badly bruised or mangled. Dozens of children and babies were among the flotsam found up and down the coast. One of the most haunting was found near the wreck by Jennings. Up at the edge of the dunes was the body of an injured man leaning upright cradling a baby, suggesting at least one person made it to shore alive before succumbing to the cold conditions. After recovering all the remains, Jennings and others would focus on gathering letters, personal effects, some valuables, luggage, even money, which they reported for the family of victims to claim. Reporters wrote of the great piles of luggage and clothing on the beach in the days after the wreck, while describing small trinkets and jewelry and identifying materials to readers. When no one came forward, it was later decided that anything of value that remained could be sold to defray the costs of the burials. Months later, the state legislature also authorized limited funds toward the immense efforts made by locals along the coast responding to the deadliest shipwreck in New Jersey history.
Jennings’ duties, though, didn’t end with the Powhatan on the night of April 16. A mile or two down the beach, another ship, the schooner Manhattan, went aground. Jennings and his men left the terrible scene of the first wreck, now broken up and scattered in the surf, to respond to the latest ship in distress that day. Attempts at rescuing the seven-man crew were unsuccessful because those onboard believed they could ride out the storm in the cabin despite pleadings from the rescuers. A few hours later, the Manhattan was overwhelmed and broke apart. Some of the men made it out and attempted to reach shore, with only one making it alive.
In the months that followed, outcries for reform came from all corners. Wrecks such as the Powhatan and the earlier New Era tragedy were unacceptable for the simple lack of life-saving equipment and stations. In the fall of 1854, the first steps toward action began. The Monmouth Democrat reported, “It appears that vessels are generally lost during fogs, in the attempt to avoid the coast of Long [Beach] Island. The sand bar lying some distance from the mainland, on the Jersey coast, is so nearly level with the sea, as scarcely to be seen until close upon it, and the bay between the bar and the shore serves to aid in deceiving those on the ship as to their real distance from the land. Then the currents on this coast are so constantly changing…that mariners can make no calculations for them…There should be no half-way work in this matter. It is of great importance to the commercial world, and a great work of love and humanity which should be liberally encouraged by our government.” The United States Congress that year authorized the construction of fourteen new Houses of Refuge on the New Jersey coast. One, which became Life-Saving Station No. 20, was placed at Ship Bottom, “about two miles south of the Mansion House, Long [Beach] (where the Powhattan [sic] was lost),” the Democrat reported.
Although the Powhatan tragedy is most commonly associated with Surf City and the Mansion of Health, likely due to the lack of other Island landmarks in the area and the response coming from hotel manager Jennings, it was a founding event in Ship Bottom’s history, if forgotten over the years. An event which led directly to the construction of the government station there. Though it has since been moved back from the beachfront and the threat of storms and erosion, that 1855 station endures today as the Baldt family summer cottage.
In the way that things come full circle, the man tasked with running new Station No. 20 was Edward Jennings, likely selected for his wrecking experience and the proximity of his job at the Mansion of Health and Manahawkin. He would serve as station chief until he retired in 1871 after which he and his wife moved to California to live out their days near their grown children living there.
In the annals of life-saving history, Jennings took part in scores more rescues during his nearly fifteen years of official time with the Service, adding to his fifteen-year volunteer record before that as wreckmaster. So, it is unfortunate that in the 20th century, tales were told that cast Jennings not as a tireless public servant but as an unscrupulous villain. An old ghost story and claims by some in modern times contained in history written by John Bailey Lloyd amounted to a condemnation of Jennings’ character as that of the lowliest of thieves picking the pockets of every body that washed up from the Powhatan and evading justice by leaving the area a few months later. Nothing in the record suggests anything of the sort was ever attributable to Jennings or other rescuers on the Island involved in the Powhatan response. On the specific claims, there is voluminous evidence to the contrary. Far from a disreputable figure, he is praised by the government and locals alike repeatedly throughout his life as a good man. That such a record as his was lost in time and replaced by something wholly opposite is an added tragedy to the already sad tale of the Powhatan.
The final threads in reshaping Ship Bottom’s historical tapestry came around the same time Jennings’ story time on the Island ended.
First, a new station chief was needed ahead of Jennings’ retirement. Another experienced local man was found in Manahawkin’s Henry Lamson. Coincidentally, Henry was the brother of Edith Lamson, the sole survivor of the 1846 wreck at Barnegat Light. That leads one to imagine that in his time at Station No. 20 at Ship Bottom Henry may have told his crew and their families about the time his sister was rescued from a shipwreck in a most remarkable way. Could this have led to some confusion over the years about where her incredibly similar story to the Ship Bottom legend really happened?
Second, though Lamson was stationed at No. 20, that was not the name the station was known as when he assumed command, nor was it recorded to government reports as such starting in 1873. Around that time, the government took to using local names for their stations to make it easier for everyone to know where they were. Old No. 17 became Barnegat, No. 22 became Bond’s, and so on. Jennings’ No. 20 became known as “Ship Bottom” in the first government report noting the change. In newspaper reports and local stories, however, it was known for much of the late 1800s as “Ship’s Bottom” or “Ships Bottom.” This name, and its variations, was born during Jennings’ tenure at the station near the site of the Powhatan wreck, whose deadliest calamity occurred when the ship was rolled over, its giant hull nearly turned completely bottom up, and the great mass of humanity on deck sent to their deaths, washing up one by one before Jennings like a Neptunian taunt at man’s feebleness against the power of nature. It would seem to strain credulity to doubt that Jennings and his men, helpless witnesses to that maritime horror, thought of anything other than the poor Powhatan when they took to calling that uninhabited part of the Island and its new life-saving station “Ship’s Bottom.”
This year, the town of Ship Bottom celebrated an anniversary. Serendipitously, the newly completed municipal building saw the return to a place of honor the anchor from the famous Ship Bottom wreck of the Fortuna, visually the embodiment of the town’s name and seal for generations. The anchor also happens to be a Baldt anchor made by Rick Baldt’s ancestor, making his family and their old House of Refuge a unique bridge bringing together much of Ship Bottom’s heritage. Mindful of the past during this anniversary year, it would be fitting if the community were to revisit its history and reconnect with a seemingly lost chapter that, far from diminishing what has been believed to be its origin, was far more dramatic than previously understood and changed the course of Long Beach Island, New Jersey, and American history. Such a legacy is something to be deeply proud of and honors the memory of all those lives lost on that terrible Easter Sunday long ago and the service of our Island lifesavers who responded so selflessly then and continue to do so today.
