LV 117 Nantucket
May 15th, 1934

 

LIGHTSHIP NANTUCKET SUNK BY R.M.S. OLYMPIC

The Nantucket lightship was sunk in heavy fog by the passenger liner Olympic on May 15, 1934. One of the most monotonous, arduous and dangerous duties that the Coast Guard and one of its predecessors, the U.S. Lighthouse Service performed was manning lightships. The Nantucket station established in 1854, had become the major beacon that guided vessels from Europe to New York and other Atlantic coast ports. Nantucket was built in 1930 and was first placed on station in May 1931. The ship carried the most modern signaling equipment of the day. It was 133-feet overall and thirty feet in the beam, displacing 630 tons. Anchored forty-one miles from the nearest land, the lightship guided ocean traffic with a radiobeacon signal system and lights. Ships could take radio bearings on Nantucket from as far away as 300 miles. Duty at the station was hazardous because many of the large steamers, using the beacon as a navigating aid, steered directly towards the lightship. This danger was compounded by the frequent and heavy fogs in the area. It was nighttime, May 15, 1935, and the lightship was anchored where it always was; 50 miles southeast of Nantucket, smack dab in the middle of the terminus of the trans-Atlantic shipping lanes. That night, the bell tolled through a heavy fog to give ocean liner Olympic -- a 47,000 ton, 900-foot-long sister of the infamous Titanic -- its bearing and guide it past the dangerous shoals. "We saw the Olympic loom out of the fog a short distance away," remembered first mate C.E. Mosher of New Bedford in a newspaper interview two months later. "The visibility was only 500 feet. A crash was inevitable. I sounded the collision alarm. We all donned life preservers. Then we waited." Olympic, nearly seventy-five times larger than the lightship and travelling at about twenty knots, struck it broadside and drove it to the bottom. Boats from Olympic were immdiately put over, but the lightship sank within minutes. Seven of the eleven lightship crewmen were killed.