A Mystery Oar at Ditch Plain

A mystery oar has found its way to the beach at Ditch Plain, Montauk, evidentially from out of the past. It was found two weeks ago by a reporter walking his dog in the fog, the waterlogged oar stranded by the tide on a pile of rocks at the foot of a bluff less than 100 yards from where the Ditch Plain station of the U.S. Lifesaving Service, founded in 1878, was located. The service was a precursor to the modern Coast Guard. "You have to go out, but you don't have to come back," was the surfmen's official motto. There were 30 stations on the South Shore from Coney Island to Montauk Point.

An oar is an oar, of course, but this one is short, about eight feet long, and branded on each side of its blade with the letter and numbers SO2875 - or 802875. Years spent underwater have eroded the brand.

"I know we had numbers on the oars. They was heavy oars. Wouldn't take much for them to sink," said Milton Miller, a former member of the Lifesaving Service from Springs, now living in Florida. He was stationed at the Ditch Plain station, as was his father, who spent 38 years in the Lifesaving Service-Coast Guard. His duty years began during the Spanish-American War and ended after World War II.

Mr. Miller said he was very familiar with oars, having put his back into them while rowing the service's lifeboats before they were motorized after World War II. Before the U.S. entered the war, he crewed on other motorized craft as well. "I went out on the first sinking of a tanker off Block Island - torpedoed by a U-boat before we entered the war. Another was torpedoed off Shinnecock somewhere. Never forget that one."

"I was never on a self-righting boat before. We went through waves that day. A northwest wind. We were strapped down. It was all right once we got around the point." Later in the war, Mr. Miller was transferred to a 365-foot L.S.T. landing craft in the South Pacific. The lifesaving stations were either moved or torn down after the war.

"The Lifesaving Service was tied in with whaling," Mr. Miller said. "My father was in Amagansett and lived across from the station. . . . The people did other things, but they had duty days, watches. They knew how to handle different boats. They were the best oarsmen they had," he said, going on to distinguish the "Up-street" whale boat captains, of the Hedges and Loper families, from the "lifesaving men" who manned the oars.

Mr. Miller said he reckoned the mystery oar was made of ash. "Very possible it is ash. The best were ash oars. The best you can get." The dense wood was easily waterlogged and liable to sink, he said. "The sand covered it up, and then uncovered it," he said, postulating how the oar might have found its way to shore.

Mr. Miller said the oar was shorter than the 12-footers used in the regular surf boats. Ralph Carpentier, who helps curate the East Hampton Town Marine Museum on Bluff Road, Amagansett, suggested the short oar might have been cut down from a broken long oar. Mr. Miller said it was unlikely a private boater would number the oars of his or her tender.

"All government issue has names and numbers on it. Ditch Plains had a number and a platform 25 by 50 feet square with the numbers on it for the airplanes to tell. We didn't have radio communications. We had a branding iron alright. Had names and numbers. Each side of the blade, yeah, that's right."

But the numbers don't correspond to the lifesaving service's designation given station Ditch Plain in the 1920s. It's number was 65, according to Barbara Forde of the Long Island Maritime Museum in West Sayville, which has a permanent display of Service memorabilia. The numbers could refer to the oar's place on the station's equipment inventory. Perhaps it's not military issue at all, but was lost from a freighter instead. Or, the oar might have washed down from Amagansett where it was lost, in 1942, by the Nazi spies that rowed ashore from a U-boat before hopping on a train to New York City.

The mystery remains. A Star baseball cap will go to anyone who knows where oar number SO2875 or 802875 came from.