Columns
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•August 22, 2018
Giant Ego, Giant Jetty, Tiny Waves and the Barnegat Bay Challenge
Several years ago, a surfboard with an engine hit the market. Most surfers didn’t see it as a gamechanger but more of a George Jetson curiosity. That year, I saw a bunch of guys out on them in…
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•August 15, 2018
How Spanish Flu Invaded the U.S.
In mid-August 1918, most Americans were following the progress of the war in France. It is hard to believe that tens of thousands of them would not live to see the final victory on Nov. 11 and more…
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•August 15, 2018
Sweaty Gripping a Summer Slipping
This is about the time of year some folks start getting a little antsy on LBI. Any business owners and locals doing 70-hour workweeks who didn’t have a countdown to Labor Day now have one. Some of…
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•August 8, 2018
U-117 Claims Another Victim
In mid-August 1918, as the Allies were beginning the big push that would eventually bring the war “over there” to an end, the people at the Jersey Shore were experiencing it in their own backyard. On…
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•August 7, 2018
LBI Flooding Gets Complicated; Ins and Outs of ‘Littler’ Egg Inlet
SOUTH-END NOTION: I attended a meeting of the Island’s joint taxpayers. (See related story this issue.) It tentatively focused on our increasingly chronic roadway and back bay nuisance flooding.…
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•August 1, 2018
Local, Benny, or Shoob … No Avoiding Summer Congestion
Being a local at any seasonal place is a funny thing. From Hawaii to Cape Cod to Lake Tahoe, locals love to bitch about the folks who come to wherever it is they live. LBI, with its split of New York…
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•August 1, 2018
New Torpedo Radio Controlled?
In August 1918, the U-117 was heading toward the East Coast with orders to lay mines and attack shipping off New Jersey. At the same time the Norwegian steamship Bergensfjord was bound for New York…
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•July 31, 2018
Hunters, Birders Circle Wetlands Wagons; Headboat Tradition Craves Last-Gasp Love
It could be that wildlife and wilderness areas won’t survive without the bedfellowing of some diametrically opposed folks. I’ll explain.
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•July 18, 2018
U-boat Threat Returns to the Shore
Following the raids of the U-151 in early June 1918, the East Coast seemed to return to normal, and most hoped that the threat from German U-boats along the shore was over. But a June 29 telegram…
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•July 11, 2018
Letters From the Battlefront
During the summer of 1918, most residents of Ocean County were closely following the war on the Western Front. The year before, the majority of those drafted locally had been sent to Camp Dix and…
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•July 4, 2018
What’s Happening in the Pinelands?
World War I is repeatedly used to show the horrors of modern warfare, and as June 1918 ended, Ocean County and its citizens found themselves totally involved. Early in the month, coastal sections had…
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•July 3, 2018
Chew Like Your Wallet Depends On It; When Blowfish Ruled the Bay
CHEW LIKE YOU MEAN IT: After 30 years of this-here columnizing, it can get iffy coming up with ne’er-before-told subject matter. With that in tired mind, I proudly bring you one of the oddest…
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•June 27, 2018
Espionage on Long Beach Island?
The attacks by the U-151 just off the Jersey coast in early June 1918 did more than just sink merchant ships. They rattled the nerves of those living along the shore. Shock was followed by rage as…
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•June 18, 2018
Were Spies on Land Helping the U-151?
In early June 1918, the German U-boat U-151 brought the reality of World War I to the Jersey Shore. In one day it had attacked and sunk six ships, leaving hundreds stranded in lifeboats awaiting…
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•June 13, 2018
Navy Faces Fact of U-151 Attacks
On June 2, 1918, after months of telling the American people there was no threat from U-boats, the U.S. Navy admitted the U-151 was attacking shipping off the Jersey Shore, including the sinking of…
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•June 6, 2018
Deadly Sinking of the Carolina
As the sun set on June 2, 1918, the U-151 had finished its historic day off the coast of New Jersey. It had destroyed six allied ships, including the liner SS Carolina, and left nearly 450 people…
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•May 30, 2018
U-151 Has a Busy Day
Noon on June 2, 1918, found Capt. Heinrich Nostitz and the U-151 off Long Beach Island, with orders to bring World War I to the shores of America. Nostitz had already sunk three ships that day when…
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•May 23, 2018
Three Ships Sunk Before Noon
In April 1918, Capt. Heinrich Nostitz, in the U-151, had been sent to the United States’ East Coast with orders to take the war to the Americans. As May ended, he had placed bombs on three ships…
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•May 22, 2018
Of Mice, Men and Mosquito Bites; Red Drum Warm to Climate Change
Of MICE, MEN AND MOSQUITOES: At times, science seems hell bent on proving and further proving the obvious. Take for itchy instance, just this month, when a study out of Baylor University of Medicine…
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•May 16, 2018
U-Boat Takes Americans Captive
In May 1918, as American eyes were fixed on sending an Army to France and the Western Front, the German U-boat U-151 was off Cape May bringing the Great War to the East Coast. On the 25th, the U-boat…
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•April 25, 2018
Sumner Continues to Cause Havoc
As World War I raged in far-off France, Ocean County residents were dealing with a growing problem – the hulk of the once-elegant Army transport Sumner. The ship had stranded in December 1916 and…
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•April 16, 2018
Sumner Becomes Major Obstacle
Most shipwreck stories end with the final count of those lost or rescued, but the story of the stranding of the U.S. Army Transport Sumner in December 1916 was only the beginning of its influence on…
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•April 11, 2018
No Hope for Saving the Sumner
In December 1916, the Army transport Sumner was stranded just beyond the breakers in Barnegat Light. Once called the most elegant transport in the Army, the 351-foot ship had served the nation in…
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•April 4, 2018
Sumner Comes to Watery End
On the foggy night of Dec. 11, 1916, the 351-foot Army transport Sumner, once described as the most elegant ship in the Army, ran aground in calm seas just beyond the breakers at Barnegat Light. The…
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•March 28, 2018
Running Afoul of Barnegat Shoals
On the night of Dec. 11, 1916. U.S. Army Transport Sumner was heading north, parallel to the beaches of LBI, bound for New York City from the Panama Canal. The official Coast Guard report sets the…
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•March 21, 2018
From Troop Transport to Special Missions
U.S. Army transport Sumner was destined to end its career on the Barnegat Shoals, but there is a long and winding story of how the ship got there. By June 1904, the Sumner was back in the Atlantic…
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•March 21, 2018
Trying to Drive Winter Down the Tubes; Robbing Tom’s Piping Plover to Pay Paul
Our winter is trying to pass … like an oversized kidney stone. You have to admit we’ve been taking a brutish hibernal hit, twixt 2017 and 2018. Even this week’s official calendrical transition into…
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•March 14, 2018
A ‘Grewsome’ Voyage Home
After the Army transport Sumner survived two typhoons in the Pacific, the U.S. government decided it was time to bring the ship back to the East Coast. It was considered by many to be the finest and…
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•February 28, 2018
The Sumner: Floating Place or Hellhole?
The story of how the U.S. Army transport Sumner ended up stranded at Barnegat Light is full of twists and turns and its involvement with the geopolitics of the time. It had been a passenger ship…
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•February 21, 2018
Is Renaming a Ship Bad Luck?
Stories of Long Beach Island shipwrecks usually focus on the event and the rescue, but sometimes if you dig deeper, you uncover an interesting prelude and epilogue. So it is with the little-discussed…
