Wood End Station
Wood End Life-Saving Station, from “The Life Savers of Cape Cod” (1902).
Almost dead ahead from the West End Breakwater once stood the Wood End Life-Saving Station. This Duluth-style structure (a prototype designed by George Tolman), built in 1896, was similar to the Old Harbor station that’s now at Race Point. Perhaps the best known commander was Capt. George Bickers, who joined the Life-Saving Service at 33 after a career of coasting and whaling. In The Life Savers of Cape Cod, Bickers was credited with having saved many mariners’ lives in wrecks off Wood End. After his time, Wood End was witness to an awfully protracted maritime disaster: the sinking of the submarine U.S.S. S-4 in 1927. The station was demolished in the 1960s.
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