Permanent Exhibitions

Massachusetts Humane Society Beach Cart Circa 1870

The Nantucket Shipwreck & Lifesaving Museum is proud to exhibit the only surviving Massachusetts Humane Society Beach Cart. Volunteer Nantucket life-savers used the beach cart when performing maritime rescues during the last quarter of the 19th Century. The beach cart carried all the tools and lines necessary for life-savers to rig a breeches buoy between shore and the shipwreck.

Massachusetts Humane Society Boat

One of only three Massachusetts Humane Society boats remaining, this surfboat on exhibit at the Nantucket Shipwreck & Lifesaving Museum was used during the Great Gale of 1879. It was acquired by the Henry Ford Museum in 1900 and remained on exhibit there until 1995, when it was purchased by the museum. In 2007 the boat was professionally conserved while the museum underwent its most recent renovation. In the expanded Nantucket Shipwreck and Lifesaving Museum the surfboat is exhibited with its mast raised, providing a dramatic image of how the boat may have appeared under sail.

Breeches Buoy

By 1806, the Massachusetts Humane Society had begun placing equipment, along the shore of Massachusetts and places like Nantucket, for volunteer life-savers to use in the event of shipwreck. These life-savers hauled the cart and its load of equipment either by hand or with a horse to a point on shore near the wreck. The cart carried the life-saving equipment needed to perform a rescue using a breeches buoy.

A breeches buoy is a rope-based rescue device used to extract people from shipwrecked vessels. The device on display at the Nantucket Shipwreck & Lifesaving Museum is a life ring with a leg harness attached, similar to a zip line, and was deployed from shore to ship using a small cannon, to allow for single person evacuations.

 

New Film: You Have To Go Out...

You have to go out… tells the story of the rescue of the H.P. Kirkham. On a frigid winter night the three-masted schooner ran aground 15 miles off Nantucket, on the dreaded Rose and Crown shoal. The Coskata crew’s 26-hour journey to rescue the crew and captain of that doomed ship is the stuff of United States Life-Saving Service legend. The film was produced and directed by John Stanton of Shouldered Oar Films and is shown at the Nantucket Shipwreck & Lifesaving Museum throughout the day.

The Robert Caldwell Collection

The Nantucket Shipwreck & Lifesaving Museum’s permanent collection is due largely to the vision of Robert Caldwell, who returned home to Nantucket after serving on board the United States Coast Guard Cutter Spencer during World War II. Deeply affected by his personal experience and intrigued by stories of the Coast Guard and its roots, Caldwell began collecting objects related to Nantucket's history of shipwrecks, life-saving and rescues. In 1967, he donated his collection and a piece of his property for what was to become the Nantucket Shipwreck & Lifesaving Museum.

The Robert Caldwell Collection presented in the Nantucket Shipwreck & Lifesaving Museum today is dedicated to the memory of James F. Davis Jr., a friend and fellow Coastguardsman, who perished when his ship, the United States Coast Guard Cutter Escanaba, was sunk while performing convoy escort duty in the Davis Straight during World War II.