near the Cedar Point lighthouse in Scituate, MA.
I was a very small child and my parents had just bought the house I grew up in the next town over. The town is Marshfield.
Etrusco ran aground in March of 1956 and was stuck aground for several months until they managed to get her refloated after several Herculean tries.
If I am not mistaken, it was one of the last times the Coast Guard has used a breeches bouy to rescue anyone as they used one to evacuate the ship once she was firmly aground.
What interested me about it is that the people in Scituate opened their doors to these crewman, all of whom were Italians and practically none of them spoke English.
One little old lady had been born in Italy and had naturalized so she was basically the interpreter for some time.
It took months to refloat her and they salvage crews included some of the people that managed to refloat out Navy after Pearl Harbor but they got her refloated again and took her to a Boston shipyard for repairs.
She went ashore St. Patrick's Day eve and was refloated on Thanksgiving, if my memory serves me.
Every so often I return to Boston's South Shore and stumble into Scituate harbor and look for things and notice the changes.
If I am lucky I meet someone I know and we chat.
The last time I was there I met someone and their neighbor asked how long ago I used to live in the area.
I grinned and held up my hand and said I had laid it on Etrusco.
That unequivocally made me senior man there.
Etrusco was a WW2 freighter the Maritime Commission gave to Italy after the war to help the battered Italian economy get on their feet. When she was refloated she was renamed 'Scituate' by the grateful shipowners.
If you want to, you can Google around and find out all about her.
Try 'Etrusco Scituate'.
To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this:
http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY
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Yes I was there with my Father. I was 15. Have some pics here sone where. We lived in Weymouth. Remember ship appeared to be in middle of road when approaching. Very exciting moment. Thanks
ReplyDeleteI'll be damned! Where do you live now?
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