Gilbert's Bar
It seemed as though today would be yet another drizzly day, even though yesterday was so hot. We decided to drive over to Hutchinson Island and the little town of Stuart since we’d heard through the grapevine that there was a good snorkelling place over there. It’s called the Bathtub and is an inlet that’s sheltered by coral reefs, a lot like the beach in Oahu where we stayed the first time we went to Hawaii. It was a little too cool out for us to go swimming, so we walked the beach instead and watched the surfers out in the open water. They seemed to be having a hard time staying up, because we saw quite a few face plants in the time we were watching. After a while, the rain started up again so we hurried back to the truck and drove a little ways back up the island to a refuge house. There were ten refuge
houses erected along the Florida coastline during the 1870’s and were used to house the survivors of shipwrecks off the coast until they were able to return home. This refuge house, called Gilbert’s Bar, is the only one of the ten still standing and it is quite weathered since it’s so close to the ocean shore. Each one was manned by a keeper who would stay on the job for as long as they wanted. If there was a storm, the keeper, and his family if he had one, would walk along the beach, 13 miles north, 13 miles south, looking for shipwreck survivors. Most of the time though, the refuge house would be empty. The most men they ever had at Gilbert’s Bar was 22, following two shipwrecks in as many days. The first ship to go down was the Georges Valentine, a cargo ship carrying mahogany. 7 survivors came out of the wreck. The next day, the Cosme Calzado sunk three miles down thanks to the same storm. She had a crew of 16 but only 15 made it. For the next few weeks, the house had to accommodate all the men as well as feed them and clothe them. In 1915, Gilbert’s Bar became a Coast Guard station used for all of WWI. It was also used in WWII as a post to look for German U-Boats. After the war, the station was decommissioned and left abandoned until 1955. By that point, all the other refuge houses had collapsed and the Martin County Historical Society began work on Gilbert’s Bar, making it stable and refurbishing it with period furniture so they could open it as a museum. The tour was very interesting and it was cool looking inside the house to see what it would have been like to live there around the turn of the century. After we had all finished looking around, we headed back to the trailer to do some cleaning up, some packing up and some school work. Peace out m8s.
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