Nov. 19, 1908, was shaping up to be momentous day for the U.S. Life Saving Service. In fact, Capt. George McAfee and eight of his surfmen had already spent most of it out testing a new motorized lifeboat — the first ever for what would later become the Coast Guard.
Piloting home after dinner, McAfee could feel a storm kicking in, making the seas off Washington’s Olympic Peninsula rougher. As the crew neared their Waadah Island station, it became clear they’d never get the lifeboat safely between the reefs and up the rails to the boathouse. So, they anchored it, and five men climbed into to a flat-bottomed dory to row to the rocky shore.
They were nearly there when an oar broke. The dory spun around. It smashed into the opposite reef and capsized — its crew disappearing beneath the waves. Three of the men managed to scramble up onto the rocks. But John Sundstrom and John Jacobsen, who were both in their 20s, drowned. McAfee would later testify that the two were excellent swimmers, so he suspected they had been knocked unconscious. Since no one could find their families, they were buried near their station. Two years later, when another storm destroyed the boat rails on Waadah Island, the station was relocated to Neah Bay, where it remains today.
But the men were not forgotten.
This past May, a pair of Coast Guard crews made a trip to this rocky island and honored them. On a routine operation to inspect two aids to navigation (ATON) there, they used their downtime to reclaim the cemetery, which had become so overgrown it was almost impossible to find. Along the way, they gained new appreciation for the importance of sharing stories and for the oath that they took.
“When you learn what happened here and in places like James Island (where three Coast Guard members lost their lives during a rescue operation in 1997), you get a sense of the bigger picture of the Coast Guard,” said Chief Petty Officer Jacob Niehaus, leader of the Aids to Navigation Team (ANT) in Puget Sound, who helped organize the mission with Chief Warrant Officer Micah Kaneshiro from Station Neah Bay. “It’s a reminder that the work we do is inherently dangerous.”
Hazardous waters
Waadah Island is northeast of Neah Bay in the Straits of Juan de Fuca — the waterway that connects the Puget Sound with the Pacific Ocean. Back in the 19th century, the ocean stretch directly outside the straits was dubbed the Graveyard of the Pacific, after its unpredictable weather and sea conditions led to multiple shipwrecks. In fact, Waadah Island was commissioned to be a station in response to the wreck of the SS Valencia in 1906. That steamship — which was headed to Seattle from San Francisco — missed the entrance to the Straits of Juan de Fuca in bad weather and ran aground on the rocky coast of Vancouver Island. Tragically, 136 people lost their lives when pounding waves tore the vessel apart as rescuers struggled to get there.
Even once you’re in the straits, Waadah Island has always been a tricky place to navigate. Rocky fingers at its north end make landing a boat there feel like threading a needle. Swells come in from the Pacific and crash on the rocks that enclose the 33-acre island, often rebounding into even bigger waves as tides pull out. Today, the west side of the island is attached to Neah Bay by a breakwater, which reduces the swells. But back in 1910, there was no barrier.
It started with stories
Niehaus became curious about Waadah Island after working on the lights there. He’d heard stories about an old Coast Guard cemetery on tribal land but had never seen any evidence of one. So, he asked Chief Warrant Officer Jeffrey Vasseur, the bosun at Sector Puget Sound Waterways, to investigate.
With a little digging, Vasseur found that the island was owned by the Makah Nation, a Native American tribe known for canoe-making. Although the station was closed, the tribe had agreed to allow the Coast Guard access for as long as there were ATON lights on the island.
Something else about the story struck Vasseur as familiar. Hadn’t the officer in charge at his previous station in Port Huron Michigan once mentioned an old Coast Guard cemetery he’d visited while based in Washington? Seemed like it was worth checking, so Vasseur called Senior Chief Petty Officer John Boyer.
“The first thing he said to me was, ‘you mean they let the cemetery go?’” Vasseur said.
Boyer was very familiar with both Waadah Island and its memorial. When he was stationed in Neah Bay from 2009 to 2012, he often kayaked out there. He’d initially found the graveyard covered with brush. According to Coast Guard history, vegetation on the island grew so quickly that even after the station was shut down, the service left a couple of goats there to keep it under control.
“I went back and told my CO about it,” Boyer said. “After that, we’d take a crew over once a year to polish the marble, slap some paint on the fence, and clean up the brush.”
Boyer sent a picture over to Vasseur. It showed a cemetery surrounded by a white picket fence. The two graves had flower beds on top of them.
Once Vasseur and Niehaus realized the historical significance of the cemetery, they got in touch with Kaneshiro’s crew over at Neah Bay to see about finding it and cleaning it up.
Kaneshiro didn’t need convincing. “I already wanted to go there from the pictures I’d seen in our history books at the station,” he said. “But no one could ever tell me where it was.”
They planned the joint operation for months. The pay-the-bills part for the ANT would be setting the seasonal buoys in the Quillayute River and Neah Bay, plus the regular servicing of the two lights on the island. Kaneshiro, meanwhile, reached out to the Makah cultural resource director and the 13th District Tribal liaison to make sure there were no concerns over the work they planned to do.
The mission
On May 14, the two crews headed for the cemetery, which was located on the southeastern part of the island. Except once they got there, Niehaus and Kaneshiro couldn’t find it. After an hour and a half of walking in circles in the brush, they phoned Boyer in Michigan to ask for directions.
Boyer wasn’t surprised. “I remembered how difficult it was for me at first,” he said. “So, I told them to just to look for the flagpole and the cemetery was 50-feet north of that.”
Once they spotted the pole, it was obvious why they’d had a hard time. The cemetery was buried under weeds and random foliage, and a large tree had fallen on the chain link fence surrounding the site. Over the next two days, the two 12-member crews put over 60-man hours of work into clearing trails, removing the brush and debris, servicing ATON, and hauling the trash off the island. They cleaned off the marble pillar so you could read the inscription, tidied the graves, and left a walkable path from the southern part of the island to the cemetery. Both the chain link and white picket fences were destroyed and had to be carted away.
During the operation, Station Neah Bay provided the ANT crew with lockers, meals, and the opportunity for two-boat training while the crews were working on the island. The Neah Bay crews also helped them carry supplies — including tools, batteries, and dayboards — from the landing at the southern part of the island to the Waadah Island Light on its northern tip, eliminating the need for two trips.
At lunch one day, Niehaus even met back up with a member he’d mentored at boot camp who was now stationed at Neah Bay. “I think it was great for Station Neah Bay to see another side of the Coast Guard,” he said. “They’re more search and rescue and enforcement, we’re the dirty buoy draggers.”
Kaneshiro said his crew enjoyed the collaborating with the ANT and got a lot out of the undertaking. “It was an honor to pay respect and say thank you to those who served before us,” he said. “It humbles me to remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice and gives me motivation to keep doing what I’m doing.”
The plan is to go back annually, cleaning the cemetery up a little more each time. Perhaps, they’ll even add flower beds or get another fence in the future. “We have to maintain our trail on the island to get to the lights anyway,” Niehaus said. “This is probably the coolest thing I’ve done as an officer-in-charge. With all this outside stuff that’s going on, it was great to take my crew and do this one good thing.”
-USCG-
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