The Wanderer was the last of New Bedford’s square-rigged whaleships, whose wreck on Aug. 26, 1924, would serve as a symbolic death for the city’s whaling industry,
The 116-foot bark proved to be a resilient ship, making 23 whaling voyages in a 46-year career and landing more than 900,000 gallons of oil. She survived an attack from an aggressive whale in the Caribbean Sea; she was iced into the Arctic Ocean several times; and she dodged German submarines during World War I.
After anchoring the Wanderer near Mishaum Point in Dartmouth, Capt. Antone Edwards hopped back on the tugboat to New Bedford. While he was away, an unexpected storm blew in.
“August 26 1924 will be a day long remembered in New Bedford for on that day, one of the worst storms in the memory of old timers swept the city,” a local publisher said at the time in a short book about the storm. “Not since 1869 had there been a tempest to compare with it.”
Newspapers reported 60 mph winds and 15-foot waves within Buzzards Bay, an astounding height for such a sheltered body of water. The force from the gale snapped one of the Wanderer’s two anchors and dragged the ship roughly seven miles across the bay until she struck the Middle Ground shoal near Cuttyhunk Island.
The Wanderer’s crew decided to abandon ship in two of the smaller boats typically used for approaching whales at close range and harpooning them. One boat made it safely to shore. The other disappeared for a night before it was rescued by a lightship stationed near the dangerous Sow and Pigs reef.
Everyone survived in the end, except the Wanderer, which ran aground on Cuttyhunk, totally ruined. A salvage company came to scrap the Wanderer for valuable parts the next day.
This story was reported by The Public’s Radio. You can read the entire story here.
