(Sunday, February 10, 2013 – posted late due to technical difficulties)

These days the term “rescue animal” most often means an animal that has been rescued from a bad situation and is looking for a suitable home.  I first heard that particular application of the term applied to cats and dogs who had survived Hurricane Katrina.  Suddenly, it seemed, an entire industry was born – a sort of next generation of the S.P.C.A. or Humane Society.

Here on the Peninsula we have several such animal rescue operations.  One is for horses.  But, when I hear “rescue horses” my mind flies back to the stories of the Ilwaco Beach Lifesaving Station (later named the Klipsan Beach Station) and the horses that were trained as part of the surf rescue operation. I think the term for today’s recovering or rehabilitated animals should be “rescued.”  (Somehow it all reminds me of President Kennedy’s question, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”)

The Ilwaco Beach Station had been established in 1889 as one of 19 Life Saving Stations protecting the West Coast from Nome, Alaska to the Golden Gate at San Francisco.  The station, itself, consisted of a station house, a lookout tower, a boat house and a launch platform.   It was manned by eight men, including the keeper of the station.  Known as surfmen, the crewmembers had to be able-bodied, and experienced watermen. None could be over 48 years of age, and all had to be able to read and write. The local residents called the keeper, usually from the local area, “Captain.”

Two basic methods of rescue were used.  One involved rowing a lifeboat out through the surf to remove the crew and bring then back to the beach.  The other method involved the use of a small cannon called a Lyle Gun which shot an overhead line from the beach to the stranded vessel and enabled the rescue to be carried out with a breeches buoy.  Although the latter method was the most dramatic (and certainly the most popular with the tourists who gathered to watch the drills),  in our waters, surf boats were found to be the most reliable.

The Dobbins self-righting lifeboats measured 26 feet, weighed 900 pounds, and were stored on a specially designed four-wheeled wagon that could be pulled by men or horses into the water and disassembled for launching.  Horses were especially trained for their roles, plunging fearlessly through the surf with boats manned by six men with twelve to eighteen-foot oars.

Many years ago I read a poem in the New Yorker about those rescue horses and, later they were described in Patricia Beatty’s book The Nickel Plated Beauty.  In both of those fictional accounts, however, the horses were not pulling boats but were free-swimming to the rescue, themselves.  I have found only one actual historical account of such a rescue horse.  In the winter 1966 Sou’wester describes the role of “a country doctor” who unhitched his horse and became a hero as the Strathblane disintegrated on the sands near the Ilwaco Beach Lifesaving Station on November 3, 1891:

            On the Peninsula making his usual house calls, Dr. T. H. Parks responded to an appeal for help from Nelson. Astride the horse he had trained to enter the surf, he directed the survivors to grab hold of the harness, or the horse’s tail, to be towed to safety. Of the thirty men aboard, twenty-four were saved…

            Now THAT was a rescue horse!