Wreck of Lightship LV-73/WAL-503

 military, shipwreck, United States Coast Guard, lightvessel

Laid down at the Spedden Shipbuilding Co. of Baltimore, MD in 1900 for a contract price of $79,872.00, Light Vessel 73 was the second member of the LV-72 Class of Lightships built for the US Lighthouse Service, and entered service in 1901. After conducting her shakedown cruise to the US Lighthouse Service Depot on Staten Island, New York, LV-73 and her crew reported to the Pollock Rip Shoals Station in the Spring of 1902 and began their duty as a floating, manned aid-to-navigation.

Remaining assigned to the Pollock Rip Shoals Station for the next 22 years, LV-73 shifted to the nearby Vineyard Sound Station in 1924 after several violent storms badly damaged the ship while she and her crew struggled to remain on station. Remaining at Vineyard Sound through the 1939 streamlining of Federal lifesaving services which saw her and her fellow US Lighthouse Service Lightships joining the US Coast Guard, LV-73 was given new hull number of WAL-503 by her new operators, but otherwise continued her routine service on station through the outbreak of the Second World War. Placed into the operational control of the US Navy, the Lightship was given a less visible paint scheme, had her Submarine bell silenced and extinguished her light to prevent her identification by enemy vessels, but despite the dangers posed by German U-Boats she was neither armed nor pulled from her station.

Serving as one of the few Lightships along the US East Coast not replaced by unmanned buoys, WAL-503 and her crew continued to conduct their mission of transmitting weather reports, broadcasting directional beacons and providing assistance to mariners transiting Vineyard Sound without incident through 1944. As summer gave way to fall, the seasoned crew aboard the Lightship were alerted on the 12th of September that weather conditions along the Southern US Atlantic Seaboard were beginning to deteriorate, and by nightfall on the 13th the Lightship was beginning to experience the mounting seas and dropping barometer readings which usually preceded a large storm. Closely monitoring their weather instruments as conditions grew worse through night and into the morning of the 14th, the crew aboard the Lightship battened down their ship’s hatches and prepared for the coming weather as best they could, but by the late evening the Lightship was being lashed by heavy rain, increasing wind and steadily mounting seas.

Clearly dragging both her main anchors by nightfall as the wind and waves pushed the Lightship from her assigned station, WAL-503’s crew were forced to run her engine at full speed in order to counteract the force of the waves, but as the night wore on it became clear the storm was winning the battle. Sometime during the night, larger seas began to completely overwash the main deck of the Lightship and damage to her topside fittings, with several waves striking the ship with enough force to topple her smokestack, exposing the ship’s boiler and engine rooms to uncontrollable flooding. With her radio antennas carried away, the Lightship’s Captain ordered the ship’s lighthouse lamps illuminated in the hopes of signaling her distress to the nearby fishing village of Cuttyhunk and bringing out a rescue party. Though residents ashore sighted the sudden burst of man-made light from the vicinity of the Lightship’s usual station, the lights went out as suddenly as they had lit and by morning there was no sign of WAL-503 or her crew.

Initially reported as being off-station by the US Coast Guard, WAL-503 and her crew were declared missing on the evening of September 15th when the ship failed to report in or show up at any nearby ports or aground on nearby shores. After the discovery of two deceased crew who had washed ashore in their lifejackets, many feared the worst for the remaining 10 crew aboard the Lightship. These fears were confirmed on September 23rd, 1944 when US Navy Divers traced WAL-503’s multi-mile anchor drag scar to her main 5-ton mushroom anchor, then followed its chain all the way to the ship which is lying on an even keel in 80ft of water at this location. As if giving testament to the fury of the storm that sank her, the Lightship’s mainmasts were snapped at the deck, her smokestack torn from its mounting and her bow stove in from the pounding of the sea. Though easily retrievable from her shallow grave, the US Navy and US Coast Guard elected not to salvage the old ship or disturb the crew still aboard her, so to this day the WAL-503 remains in the same condition as the date of her loss, making her a popular dive site.

The loss of US Coast Guard Lightship LV-73/WAL-503 on September 14th, 1944 marked the third loss of a Coast Guard vessel in the same day in what has become known as the Great Atlantic Hurricane of 1944.

www.uscg.mil/history/weblightships/LV73.pdf
www.mwdc.org/Shipwrecks/vineyardsoundlightship.html