First Pilots, Fishermen. Business Full of Peril. By John A. Heffernan. The recent death at his home, 640 Second street, of Captain George W. Beebe, at the age of sixty-six, ended the career of a pilot, and an authority on tidal conditions in New York Harbor. For forty years he had been a licensed pilot and he was one of the first, if not the first, president of the New York Pilots' Association. He was the author of "Beebe's Tides and Complete River Guide of New York Harbor," I do not recall having met Captain Beebe in the years that I spent at Quarantine, but it seems I must have done so since I met most of the pilots, and one of them, . Captain Van Pelt, gave me a pair of hip boots of rubber which served me well in a job where weather was a considerable element and the gales blew the biting rain athwart one's trouser legs and made an ordinary raincoat entirely useless. When I read the notice of Captain's Beebe's death in the Times, I picked up "Pilot Lore," a book that breathes the salt air of the sea and which was issued some years ago by the New York and Sandy Hook Pilots' Association. My first glimpse of the name Beebe was in the necrology of the association and read this way "Theophilus Beebe, died of heart disease, on the pilot boat Mystic, winter of 1866. Theophilus Beebe was the uncle of Captain George W. Beebe, and it was heart failure that struck him down as it was a cardiac ailment that terminated the life of his nephew. It is an interesting story, that of the pilots of New York Harbor. There was a time when they were not men who engaged exclusively' in the piloting of ships, but generally fishermen who accepted commissions to bring in the ships in connection with their business of fishing. This was generally the case in all countries, and it wasn't until 1784 that there was a licensed pilot of the State of New York. His commission reads, as follows: "The People of the State of New York, by the Grace of God, Free and Independent, to Zachary Rufler, mariner, Greeting: Know ye that we, being assured of the ability, skill, care and circumspection of said Zachary Rufler, we have nominated, constituted and appointed ... you, the said Zachary Rufler, to be one of the branch pilots of the port of New York, to and from Sandy Hook, from and to the said port." Captain Rufler was appointed under an act of the Legislature of that year for the direction and regulation of pilotage, and his commission is signed by "our greatly and well-beloved George Clinton, Esq., Governor of our said State, Governor and Commander-in-Chief of all the militia and Admiral of the Navy." .New Jersey also had an act regulating pilots, but it was not until 1837 that there was any system. Pilots cruised well off the shore and fought for ships, and frequently ships that needed pilots couldn't find them and had to cruise under their sail for days or run the risk of going ashore. The winter of 1835-6 was a particularly hard one on shipping. Our immigrants were being carried in sailing ships at that time, and two immigrant packets had worked in close to Sandy Hook. There was a gale blowing hard from the east-southeast, and they hove to off the lightship and hoisted signal for pilots at the same time firing guns to attract attention. The captains, .having worked in so close were unable to make the open sea again, and lacking pilots were driven on the Long Island shore, one east of the Rockaways and the other at Jones' Inlet. Each ship had several hundred passengers on board and every soul on board perished that night. , This catastrophe led $o acts regulating pilotage so as to insure greater efficiency and under the new law, in 1837, the first group of the modern pilots was appointed. It consisted of Theophilus Beebe, a fisherman who was running a smack out of Fulton Market; Lyman Beebe, Clinton Beebe and James Chapman, all of whom were appointed as full branch pilots, and Nicholas Van Gelder, Robert Pease, McKnight Smith and two others who were deputies. The men at first worked in a fishing smack, but the State of New Jersey built them a pilot boat and soon there were twenty-three pilots using four pilot boats, one of which acted as a station boat anchored near the lightship, while the other three cruised about off shore. The business grew with the commerce of New York and was always hazardous. More than one pilot boat has gone down in a wild storm, her crew perishing. Several pilots have been drowned when boarding vessels in a rough sea. During the Civil War two pilot boats, the James Funck and the William Bell ran alongside what seemed to them a vessel looking for a pilot about seventy miles off Sandy Hook and were amazed to find themselves prisoners on the Confederate commerce destroyer, Tallahassee. The commander in an article later published said he had picked up the Bell in the hope of finding a pilot who would take her up the East River and put through Hell Gate into the Sound. "It was now near the full moon," he wrote. "It was my intention to run up the harbor just after dark, as I knew the way in by Sandy Hook and then go on up the East River, setting fire to the shipping on both sides and, when abreast of the Navy Yard to open fire, hoping some of our shells might set fire to the buildings and any vessels that might be at the docks, and finally to steam through Hell Gate into the Long Island Sound. I knew from the daily papers which we received when only a day or two old, what vessels were then In port and that there was nothing then ready which could oppose us. But no pilot could be found who knew the road or who was willing to undertake it." It was a hazardous calling Captain Beebe followed, and still is. Captain James H. Van Pelt, who presented me with the rubber boots, was drowned while boarding a Standard Oil tanker on September 5, 1915.

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