Sonya's Blog - Day 202 - Hutchinson Island

Sonya’s Blog - Day 202 - January 10th - Hutchinson Island

Yesterday, when we walked Kizmet on the beach, we met a lady who lived in the area. She suggested we check out The House of Refuge and Bathwater Beach on Hutchinson Island. I checked it out and discovered that it was only a half hour away and The House of Refuge would be open today from 1 - 4. Bathwater Beach has a natural reef that encircles the small bay and when it is low tide it creates a nice little swimming hole with hardly any waves. You can snorkel out to the reef and see all the fishy’s that use it as a home. We got out our snorkelling gear, in case it was nice enough to brave the waters.

We went to Bathwater Beach first, since The House of Refuge doesn’t open until 1. It started to rain on our way there, which wasn’t ideal for braving the waters. The beach is lovely, but the surf was quite high so we wouldn’t be snorkelling today. There was a break in the rain, so we walked along the beach. They had some great shells on the beach and the kids had fun beach-combing and collecting shells. We could see lots of surfers in the distance, so we walked over there to check out the surfing. They had really good waves and lots of them were getting up and trying their luck. We saw two guys surf the wave for a bit, inside the curl. Pretty cool.

It started to rain again, so we ran back to the truck and headed over to The House of Refuge, which was 5 minutes away. After the Civil War, the government decided to build 5 Houses of Refuge along the coast of Florida for shipwreck survivors. The population along the coast of Florida, at that time, was very small. If there was a shipwreck, then the survivors had nowhere to go and nothing to eat. In the end, the government ended up building 10 Houses of Refuge and they were each 26 miles apart. We were visiting Gilbert’s Bar House of Refuge, which is the only remaining one. It was named Gilbert’s Bar after a famous pirate that trolled these waters for unsuspecting merchant ships. Gilbert and his crew were the last pirates hung for piracy in the United States.

The Houses were built by the U.S. Life-Saving Service (a precursor to the U.S. Coast Guard) and each one had a keeper. Sometimes the keeper was a bachelor and other times they had families. Their job was to walk the beach (13 miles one way and then 13 miles the other way) after storms, looking for shipwreck victims. They would then guide the survivor, or survivors, back to the House of Refuge where they would be housed, fed and clothed until they could get on another ship. The keepers had to keep a daily log which had to include weather reports and submit wreck reports. Each house had life-saving equipment, extra clothes (for the survivors) and about 20 to 25 cots on the upper floor for the survivors to sleep on. The keeper (and his family) lived on the main floor. The house was set up like a row, if you were facing the house then the bedroom was on the very left hand side, the living area was next, then the dining room and finally the kitchen. Each room was small and there were walls dividing each section. The stairs leading to the upstairs (which would have been like an attic) were off the main living area. When there were shipwreck survivors, they would occupy the upper floor. Mostly, they did not have “guests”, so if there were children they would be upstairs.

There were two spectacular shipwrecks near the Gilbert Bar House of Refuge and they happened within one day of each other in 1904. First the Georges Valentine went down, right outside the house. There were 7 survivors of that shipwreck, whom were brought in and given clothes, food and shelter. The next day, 3 miles from Georges Valentine, the Cosme Calzado went down (in the same storm that wrecked the Valentine). There were 16 crew on board and 15 survived the wreck and went to the Gilbert House. They had 22 men in the house and luckily the keeper of the house, Captain William E. Rea was married and he and his wife helped to house the men for 2 weeks until they could travel to Jacksonville and return home. One survivor remained in the area and became a fisherman.

In 1915, two departments (The Life-Saving Service and the Cutter Revenue Service) in the U.S. government merged and became the U.S. Coast Guard. The Gilbert’s Bar House of Refuge became U.S. Coast Guard Station #207. It became important during WWII when freighters were being torpedoed off the Treasure Coast by German U-Boats. A lookout tower was constructed and additional buildings to aid in defending the U.S. and unsuspecting ships. The Guard Station was decommissioned in April of 1945 and was abandoned. The elements took their toll on the building, until in 1953 the building and surrounding land was purchased by The Martin County. In 1955 the Martin County Historical Society was organized and went to work preserving the building and setting it up as a museum. They have had their share of hurricanes over the years, forcing the museum to close for months at a time. The building still remains standing and they continue on their quest to educate the public about life on the East Coast of Florida at the turn of the century.

We enjoyed our tour and having a look around. It was very educational, in that we didn’t even know about these Houses of Refuge or about any of the shipwrecks that we learned about. Now you all know too!!!

After the House of Refuge we headed back to the RV. We took a different way home, traveling closer to the coast. There are some really quaint communities on the Treasure Coast. We were going to take Kizmet to the beach, but it started to rain again. So we just did blogging, school work, cleaning up - all the boring stuff. We leave tomorrow, so we wanted to start the packing up process. We then had some supper. We so enjoyed our Dover Sole that we had the other night, that Blake bought some more. We had a a yummy-licious supper, ahh that Dover Sole is good fish.

After supper I read my book, Food - A Love Story by Jim Gaffigan. Ahh, he is funny. It is not as laugh out funny as the Dave Barry book, mostly because the reason I find Gaffigan so funny is his delivery. I mean, he is a stand-up comedian and delivery is everything in that job. It is pretty funny though.

We are off to the Florida Keys tomorrow, it is so exciting. The Southern most point in the Continental United States and the southern most point of our journey. After this, it will really feel like we have reached a turning point as we will be heading home.

Sonya