Word: portlanders
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Dreadful Spew. The Portland was a 291-ft. side-wheeler, trim with white and gold paint, and to Boston's fond eye, as slick as a schoolmarm's leg. On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, 1898, many families were returning to Maine after holiday visits to Boston. Despite storm warnings, the skipper decided he could make Portland ahead of the blow. Shortly after dark, with 176 people aboard, he cast off. The Portland disappeared down the channel into a swirl of snow...
Just beyond Thacher Island, the gale struck. All that night, the Portland's paddle wheels thrashed vainly as giant seas battered her superstructure, drove her southward before the raging northeast wind. Elsewhere, 141 ships foundered. In the bitter cold and driving snow, men could not see across a ship's deck, had trouble getting their breath...
Next morning, in a slatch in the storm, surf watchers on the tip of Cape Cod saw the Portland, among the snarled and yelping seas, just off the treacherous Peaked Hill Bar. The storm closed in, and the day wore on. That night, the sea suddenly belched forth a dreadful spew of trunks, mattresses, chairs, stateroom doors and barrels on the sands near Race Point. The bodies came more slowly, rolling inertly in the surf. Explained a coast watcher: "The bodies do not float as woodwork does, but the tide and waves push and roll them along the bottom until...
Sounding Lead. For years, no one could find the sunken hull. Other wreckage was found miles away. Mooncussers, scrabbling among the jetsam, found a piece of cabin from the Pentagoet, another steamer lost without trace. Had the ships rammed each other? Or had the Portland hit the bar? Or had she clawed off shore only to break up under the terrible pounding...
Last week, on the chill wharf, the surviving relatives heard the roll call of the Portland's dead for the last time. As each name was called, survivors threw flowers on the ebbing tide. A woman played Rock of Ages on a zither. It was the last meeting. The old were ailing, the young had no memories. Said Historian Snow: "After all, you've got to stop some time, and the 50th anniversary seemed to be a good time to stop...