1882, The George Louis, lost inside Mile Rock.
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FACTS
On a late winter afternoon in 1882,
the George Louis, a small two-masted schooner headed out the Golden Gate.
Built in San Francisco nearly twenty years earlier, the schooner and her
captain and crew of three were bound for Timber Cove on the northern California
coast. An odd current caught the ship as the wind shifted and within minutes
the schooner ran hard upon the rocks inside Mile Rock. As darkness fell
John Low, the lighthouse keeper at Point Lobos, discovered the wreck and
sent his young son racing to the Golden Gate Park Life Saving Station six
miles away for help.
The captain and two crew members
were able to climb the rocks to safety but the cook was badly injured and
lay at the bottom of the cliff certain to die in the pounding surf and
rising tide. The lighthouse keeper's son, returning with the life saving
crew, volunteered to be lowered over the bluff to the water's edge, 280
feet below. There he tied the rope around the cook who was pulled to safety.
During the night the George Louis was pounded so furiously by the surf
that the next day not a sign of the schooner remained.
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FICTION
Sick & Thrilled
Well I tell you I was sick -- and thrilled, at the
same time. Sick and thrilled to hear he'd gone down that cliff. Just a
boy, he is, just a boy! And those men -- I can't believe John even suggested
it! But they tied him to that rope and put him over. Nearly 300 feet down
and it was getting dark. He's only 13, you know. And then they left
him at the bottom in that raging surf and dark cold. Imagine what must
have been going through his mind! It took them half an hour to get that
cook up from the bottom -- merciful heaven, it's a miracle that poor
fellow survived -- and all the time my boy is down there in that black.
Well I was sick but, as I say, thrilled too, to hear what he'd done. And
all he said was "Ah, Ma, I'm okay. It weren't nothin'.
