She sailed from Delaware Breakwater on the 2nd of December, 1907, with a cargo of coal for some port in France. She carried a complement of a crew of 19 officers and men. And in a bad storm was driven on the rocks a short distance from France on Friday, December 13, 1907. There 17 men of the ship’s company perished. The vessel was a total wreck. No other attempt was ever made to construct a vessel of this type. She was too large to operate in the coastwise trade. She was a bad sea boat and not satisfactory as an ocean going proposition. The loss of her crew was not on our coast but unusual conditions surrounding the craft make it of moment to note her loss in this connection. LOSS OF THE SHIP ASIA This was one of the worst wrecks that had occurred on the New England coast in many years. This ship was on a voyage from Manila for Boston with a cargo of East India goods. Approaching the Cape Cod coast she encountered a terrific storm and struck one of the outlying shoals off Nantucket. The furious sea which drove over her decks in torrents soon began the work of destruction. When she struck the shoal on Sunday morning there was a furious northeast gale tearing the sea into a fearful condition. The next day the ship gave every indication that she must soon be a broken and dismantled wreck. Besides the crew of twenty-three men, Capt. Dakin’s wife and little daughter were on board. When the ship began to pound to pieces the mate and such members of the crew as had not already been swept overboard did all in their power to assist Capt. Dakin in shielding his wife and daughter from being swept away by the seas which broke in fury over the vessel. Before the ship broke up the mate lashed the captain’s daughter and himself to a large piece of wreckage, hoping in that way to reach the shore. Capt. Dakin and his wife were swept away before they could fasten themselves to any part of the wreckage. Of the whole number on board the ill-fated craft but three were saved. These were sailors who clung to a piece of the ship, and after drifting about in Vineyard Sound for several days were finally picked up, and placed on the lightship, more dead than alive. The bodies of the mate with his arms locked about the captain’s daughter, and both securely lashed to a piece of wreckage, were picked up a few days later far down the coast. Both had been frozen to death. The bodies of the captain and his wife were never recovered, and only a few bodies of the crew were ever found. BARGES WADENA AND FITZPATRICK On March 17th, 1902, after some very bad weather, two coal carrying barges lay stranded on the shoals off Monomoy Point, and the terrible disaster which followed was the worst in some ways that ever happened on this wreck strewn shore. Seven members of the Monomoy Coast Guard and five men whom they went to rescue perished in the awful sea that swept over the shoals and rips.