About 3,000 ships and small fishing boats have wrecked in heavy fog or storms along the Cape’s coastline. Periodic northeasters and occasional hurricanes pound the coast and drive ships upon sandbars—more than 1,000 of them between 1843 and 1903 alone. One of the first recorded wrecks occurred December 17, 1626, when the Virginia-bound _Sparrowhawk_ ran aground off Orleans. A gale then forced the ship over the sandbar and grounded it in the harbor. The ship was repaired, but another storm caused so much damage it was abandoned. In 1863 a storm removed sand from the wreck, and the remains were taken later to the Pilgrim Hall Museum in Plymouth. The _Sparrowhawk’s_ passengers survived their ordeal, but many have not been so fortunate. More than 145 lives were lost when the pirate ship _Whydah_ sank off Wellfleet in 1717. The most lost in any wreck were all 175 passengers and crew who went down off Truro with the steamship _Portland_ in a huge gale November 27, 1898. Such storms have turned many fishermen’s wives into widows. Of the women living in Barnstable County in 1839, nearly 1,000 had lost husbands at sea. In one of the worst disasters, only 2 of Truro’s 9 fishing fleet crews survived a gale on October 3, 1841; 57 fishermen were drowned, and 9 of them were 11 to 14 years old. The storm left 19 Truro widows with 39 children. Dennis lost 20 men and Yarmouth lost 10. Some military ships and large liners also have gone down in Cape waters. On December 17, 1927, the Coast Guard cutter _Paulding_ collided with a Navy submarine as it surfaced off Wood End at Provincetown’s tip. Divers found that 6 of the 40 submariners initially survived, but they perished as a gale hampered rescue efforts. In 1956 the Italian passenger liner _Andrea Doria_ sank 50 miles south of Nantucket after colliding in fog with the Swedish ship _Stockholm_; 52 were killed; 1,662 were rescued. Overall, losses have been reduced since 1914, when the Cape Cod Canal linked Cape Cod Bay with Buzzards Bay and allowed ships to avoid treacherous shoals. Today 30,000 ships and boats use the canal annually. _This map shows the locations of Cape shipwrecks between 1802 and 1967. The schooner_ Messenger _(top) of Boston lost its masts in a storm off Long Island in 1894; weeks later the hull washed ashore in Wellfleet. Sailing out of Salem, the_ Ulysses _(right) was grounded with 2 other ships off the Cape on February 22, 1803. After struggling ashore, 87 men froze to death_. ############################################# Lighthouses and Lifesaving [Illustration: (Crew at the Chatham station. Hauling the boat by horse to the water. Logo of U.S. Life Saving Service. View of a station.)]