History

Surfmen's Mutual Benefit Association

association · active –1903–

A mutual-aid body of U.S. Life-Saving Service crewmen, roughly 350 strong in 1903 across the Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina districts. It held its annual meeting at Ocean City, Md., on 10–11 June 1903, in the theatre of the Atlantic Casino — its first meeting in the Sixth District — with an exhibition breeches-buoy drill on the strand, a rigged 'stranded vessel' of three masts set two hundred yards offshore, and addresses promised from the Service's general superintendent and members of Congress.

In the record (1)

  1. 1903 · 1903-06-10

    Three hundred and fifty surfmen convene at the Atlantic Casino in June 1903 and stage a wreck off the beach — and their notice records that Ocean City, Md., is a SIXTH District station, not a Fifth.

    The Surfmen's Mutual Benefit Association held its annual meeting at Ocean City on 10–11 June 1903, in the theatre of the Atlantic Casino. The Messenger's advance notice of 30 May: "As this is the first time the Association has met in the Sixth District the members of the Life-Saving Service in Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia are desirous that this year's convention shall be the most interesting in the history of the Association. There will be addresses by the General or Assistant General Superintendent of the Life Saving Service, members of Congress and other noted men. There will be exhibition drills of the Service on the afternoon of June 10th." The report of 13 June counted "about 350 members of the life[-saving] service of the Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina [districts]," brought in part by a government steamer, and described the drill: "Three long poles, representing masts, were settled in the ocean about 200 yards from shore and rigged to represent a stranded vessel, and from this men were brought ashore in the breeches buoy." Berlin's column adds that the town "was well represented at Ocean City on Wednesday" for it. **The district number matters.** This campaign has carried a standing warning that Ocean City, Md., is Station No. 4 of the FIFTH District; by 1903 that is wrong. The U.S. Life-Saving Service annual reports for FY1903 and FY1904 both place Ocean City, Md., in the "SIXTH DISTRICT — COAST BETWEEN DELAWARE AND CHESAPEAKE BAYS," and put the FIFTH District wholly on the coast of New Jersey — where a different Ocean City station sits. A Maryland newspaper and two federal volumes agree.

    The best free show on the beach in 1903 was the government drowning a pretend ship twice a day.

    United States Life-Saving ServiceAtlantic Casino CompanyCapt. Joshua J. Dunton

    Source · checked 2026-08-06