Almost dead ahead from the breakwater once stood the Wood End Life-Saving Station of 1896. This “Duluth”-style structure was similar to the Old Harbor station from Chatham that’s now at Race Point. Perhaps the best known commander at Wood End was Capt. George H. Bickers (b 1858), 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 ensured that numerous wrecks off Wood End occurred without fatalities. (Bickers is pictured here in a painting by Alice C. Bevin.) After his time, Wood End was witness to the most awfully protracted maritime disaster off Provincetown in the 20th century: the sinking of the submarine U.S.S. S-4 on Dec. 17, 1927. The station was demolished by the federal government in 1961.
My memory is that it was “torched” by the government!!!