Capt. John Jones
keeper, Isle of Wight Life-Saving Station · active 1898-
Keeper of the Isle of Wight Life-Saving Station, Fifth District, on the Maryland coast north of Ocean City, in the station's first season. In March 1898 he found a badly decomposed body washed ashore about two miles north of Ocean City, had an inquest held by the Berlin coroner, and buried the man on the beach; the Life-Saving Service's own account of the same incident notes that Isle of Wight had a keeper but no regular crew at that season.
In the record (13)
1898
The Life-Saving Service completes and commissions a new station at Isle of Wight, north of Ocean City — the station Congressman Miles's 1896 bill asked for.
The Annual Report of the United States Life-Saving Service for the fiscal year ending 30 June 1898 lists, under ESTABLISHMENT OF STATIONS: 'New stations have been completed during the year at Damariscove Island, Maine; Salisbury Beach, Massachusetts; Old Harbor, near Chatham Beach, Massachusetts; ISLE OF WIGHT, NORTH OF OCEAN CITY, MARYLAND; Lake View Beach, near Port Huron, Michigan; and Petersons Point, Grays Harbor, Washington. Of this number all have been put in commission except that at Petersons Point.' The Fifth District station list for 1898 accordingly runs Fenwick Island, Isle of Wight, Ocean City, North Beach, Green Run Inlet — with the Ocean City station described as 'just north of village.' The new station was already at work: on 30 March 1898 the Wilmington Evening Journal reported from Ocean City that 'Captain John Jones, of Isle of Wight life-saving station, found a drowned man washed ashore yesterday on the beach about two miles north of Ocean City,' badly decomposed, tattooed 'R. H. R.' and 'Z. B. R.' on the right forearm, buried on the beach about a mile south of Ocean City after an inquest by Coroner D. A. Mussey of Berlin. The service's own casualty narrative of the same incident notes that the Isle of Wight keeper had to be sent for because 'no regular crew [was] being employed at this season.' — 1898 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [reviewed]: Corrects the count of Maryland's stations and adds the federal wording. Maryland had THREE coastal life-saving stations before this one — Ocean City, North Beach and GREEN RUN INLET — and Isle of Wight is the FOURTH, not the third. (Assateague Beach is in Virginia and is never a Maryland station.) The Official Register of the United States for 1 July 1897 lists the Fifth District keepers north to south and prints exactly three "Md." stations; the FY1897 annual report's station list agrees and contains no Isle of Wight. The FY1898 report, p. 43, is the completion notice: "New stations have been completed during the year at Damariscove Island, Maine; Salisbury Beach, Massachusetts; Old Harbor, near Chatham Beach, Massachusetts; Isle of Wight, north of Ocean City, Maryland; Lake View Beach, near Port Huron, Michigan; and Petersons Point, Grays Harbor, Washington. Of this number all have been put in commission except that at Petersons Point." The same report records the keeper of Isle of Wight being called on for help with "no regular crew being employed at this season" — so it was commissioned but not yet fully manned in its first year. Later reports place it "three miles south of Fenwick light", i.e. between Fenwick Island and Ocean City, exactly as the authorising act of February 1897 described it.
This answers a question the 1896 pass left open: the station 'midway between Fenwick Island and Ocean City' that Congressman Miles's bill was reported out of House Commerce for was built, and it was in commission with a keeper — though not yet a crew — by the spring of 1898.
United States Life-Saving Service
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1898 · 1898-03-29
A drowned man with "R. H. R." and "Z. B. R." tattooed on his forearm washes ashore two miles north of Ocean City and is buried on the beach a mile south of the town.
From an Ocean City dispatch of 30 March 1898: "Captain John Jones, of Isle of Wight life-saving station, found a drowned man washed ashore yesterday on the beach about two miles north of Ocean City. He was badly decomposed, had 'R. H. R.' and 'Z. B. R.' on his right forearm in India ink, was about 45 years of age and about five feet in height. He was buried on the beach, about one mile south of Ocean City. Coroner D. A. Mussey, of Berlin, held an inquest. The body is supposed to have been in water about two weeks." Two things beyond the death. It is the earliest dated evidence the campaign has that the new Isle of Wight station was manned and working — in March 1898, months before the annual report recorded it commissioned — and it names its keeper, Captain John Jones, who was a surfman at North Beach on the federal payroll nine months earlier. And the burial is a fact about the coast: a man with tattooed initials and an inquest was put in the sand a mile below the town rather than in a churchyard.
United States Life-Saving Service
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1900 · 1900-11-25
A 506-foot British steamer mistakes Fenwick light for a passing ship and drives ashore beside the Isle of Wight station.
Before dawn on Sunday 25 November the British steamship Margaret Jones, Capt. Thomas Thomas, twenty-four days out of Cardiff for the Delaware Breakwater to load grain at Philadelphia, ran onto the Maryland beach about five miles north of Ocean City, within a hundred yards of the Isle of Wight Life-Saving Station. She was making about twelve knots in a dense fog with a strong easterly gale; the captain had turned in at midnight leaving the mate in charge; the mate took the Fenwick Island light for the light of an approaching steamer and altered course to pass to port of it, turning the ship straight at the shore. She "plowed a furrow through the sand twenty feet in length" and stuck so far up the beach that visitors walked to her bow at low tide. Capt. John Jones of the Isle of Wight station, with Capt. Long of Fenwick's and Capt. Dunton of Ocean City and their crews, boarded her; patrolmen South and Truitt of the Isle of Wight crew were near the spot when she came ashore. The tugs North America and Spartan raced from the Breakwater to claim the job and arrived together. The ship — 506 feet, 41 feet beam, steel, triple expansion, built 1893, owned by W. H. H. T. Jones of Wales — lay tight and easy while wreckers laid anchors and cables; "hundreds of visitors came from all directions to see the craft." By 28 November three tugs were readying "an extraordinary effort to float her on the high water to-night," and on Saturday 1 December the North America, the Spartan and the Somers N. Smith got her off: "She was found to be uninjured, and was towed" away, lying off Ocean City awaiting orders on the 3rd. Eight days ashore, and no lives lost.
Ocean City's biggest wreck of the year was a grain tramp beached by a mate who mistook a lighthouse for a ship, and the town treated it as an off-season attraction.
United States Life-Saving ServiceCapt. Joshua J. Dunton
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1904 · 1904-05-26
Three men left Ocean City for the New Jersey sturgeon grounds in a thirty-foot gasoline skiff and were never seen again; one body came ashore at Cape May.
'Capt. Isaac Jones, William Short, and William Jones left Ocean City Thursday, May 26th, bound for Holly Beach, N.J., to fish for sturgeon. The boat was a 30 ft. sea skiff and had a gasoline engine in it, and was also fitted with a sail. She was heavily loaded with part of a sturgeon-fishing outfit, and it is supposed she capsized in crossing the mouth of Delaware bay, as nothing has been seen of their boat or occupants since their departure until the body of Captain Jones was found at Cape May last Tuesday' — about 7 June 1904. The body was brought to Berlin for burial; the other two were never recovered. Capt. Jones left a wife and four children and had already lost a son aboard the United States ship Texas at Key West the previous Christmas Day. Short was unmarried. William Jones was eighteen, the son of Capt. John B. Jones, keeper of the Isle of Wight Life-Saving Station just north of Ocean City.
The keeper of the life-saving station three miles up the beach lost his own son to the sea that spring, and the station could do nothing about it — the boat went down eighty miles away, at the mouth of Delaware Bay, chasing sturgeon into somebody else's water.
United States Life-Saving ServiceCapt. Isaac Jones
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1908 · 1908-09-26
A Saturday-night fire burns the Oriental Hotel and two stores, and a bucket brigade led by a Washington girl saves the rest of the town.
"OCEAN CITY THREATENED! Hotel And Two Stores Burned — Women In Bucket Brigade. Little Insurance." The fire broke out about five in the afternoon of Saturday 26 September 1908 in the kitchen of the Oriental Hotel, between the Baltimore, Chesapeake & Atlantic Railway depot and the post office and near both the Atlantic and Seaside Hotels, and was under control in about an hour. The Oriental, the dwelling adjoining occupied by Capt. E. R. Cropper, and L. S. Brittingham's store and dwelling were destroyed. Rayne's Ocean Front Hotel, Cropper's grocery, Hamblin's photograph gallery and the Ocean View House all caught but were only slightly damaged; the railway depot took fire "a dozen times" and was saved by hard work, and two cases of dynamite were carried out of the freight shed while sparks fell. "The 'Bowery,' or lower portion, and the new pier seemed in great danger early." Capt. John B. Jones and his life-saving crew "gave signal service, as did the ladies" — the brigade was "composed of men, residents and many women, the women being led by Miss Christine Fox, of Washington," a long-time summer resident whose family cottage stood near the upper end of the boardwalk. The report is also the campaign's best description of the town's fire defences: "Ocean City has a water system supplied by a large tank more than 100 feet high, and the pressure from this is supposed to throw water over the tallest buildings in the town. The fire apparatus was gotten out quickly, considering the fact that there is no regular organized fire company. After the hose was connected to the fire plugs and water turned on from the main, several sections of the hose were found defective, couplings blew off and some burst. This caused serious delay." There was little wind, or the fire would have run up or down the beach. By 7 November Lambert Brittingham was rebuilding his store.
Baltimore, Chesapeake & Atlantic RailwayChristine Fox
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1909 · 1909-09-25
An exploding oil lamp at the town water works nearly takes the south end of Ocean City; the life-saving crew and a bucket brigade save it.
"Fire At Ocean City. Fire, caused by the explosion of an oil lamp at the Ocean City waterworks Saturday night, partially destroyed the building and seriously damaged the gasoline and steam pumping plants. A building belonging to Joseph Schaefer, adjoining the pumping station, was also destroyed. Several buildings, including the Sea Side Hotel, Glendale Hotel and the railroad station, were on fire, but with the water supply from the city tank and the work of a bucket brigade the flames were extinguished with little damage. The city will probably be without water for a few days while one of the pumps is being repaired. It looked for a while as if the entire south end of the city would be destroyed, and it was only through the hard work of the volunteer fire department, the bucket brigade and the Ocean City life-saving crew, headed by Capt. John B. Jones, that the city was saved. Everyone fought the fire, women and children joining the men in carrying buckets of water." Note that this report credits "the volunteer fire department" — the previous year's fire report had said flatly that "there is no regular organized fire company" — and that the accounts published the same week carry "T. J. Cropper, cleaning closets and Fire Co. rent 33.00" and $141.25 of ladders and hardware for the Fire Co.
Second fire in twelve months at the same end of town, and the second time it was put out by hand.
Joseph SchaeferThomas J. Cropper
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1948 · 1948-11-01
After two men were killed near Berlin within twelve hours, the county paper editorialised that "a hanging for each murder committed" would instil the fear of the law
Cleveland Jones was slain on the afternoon of Monday 1 November and a man the paper names only as "a negro man" was fatally stabbed at a beer joint that night. The Messenger put both deaths on page one beside the presidential returns and ran an editorial, To The Good People Of Worcester: "Never before in the history of our county has crime and vice been so wide open. Not even during Prohibition days … Both murders are the direct result of a growing laxity in law enforcement and an apparent disregard for strong prosecution by our vested officials. … To kill a fellow man only to draw a few years in prison, or even be set free by a jury, is an invitation to more killings. … Better still — a hanging for each murder committed would go a long way towards instilling the fear of the law into criminals. The handwriting is on the wall."
Source · checked 2026-09-02
1948 · 1948-12-23
Where 1947 had acquitted in three killings of four, 1948 called a special grand jury, put forty witnesses before it, and returned a life sentence by Christmas
A special session grand jury was called on 11 November 1948; forty witnesses went before it on the 18th; it sat again in December; the Jones trial was moved and set for 20 December; and on 23 December the paper reported life imprisonment for the slayer of a county man. In the October 1947 term the same county had tried four killings and acquitted in three of them, one jury taking five minutes.
Source · checked 2026-09-02
1981
The old Mount Vernon Hotel on Talbot Street reopens as Kate Bunting's Seafood House.
Kathryn Jones Brasher Bunting, who had bought the Mount Vernon Hotel property (lots 34 and 37, north side of Talbot Street between the Boardwalk and Baltimore Avenue) in 1973, redeveloped the hotel in 1981 into a restaurant, Kate Bunting's Seafood House. The Art League of Ocean City had run an art and cultural center in the old hotel from 1977 before relocating. The buildings later housed A.T. Lantic's Food & Spirits (from 1990) and were demolished in 2005 for the Belmont Towers condominium.
Source · checked 2026-08-05
1987 · 1987-02-02
A police officer brought the council petitions with close to 1,800 signatures asking to strike the charter clause that forbade collective bargaining
Officer Bill Jones of the Ocean City Police Department presented the petitions: "What the petitions hope to do is bring the question to a referendum vote and would remove wording from the Town Charter prohibiting collective bargaining … The Council shall provide by law a labor code for Ocean City employees … Nothing herein shall be deemed to authorize a strike by any employee(s) engaged in duties directly affecting the public safety." The clause he sought to delete, Section C-1005(b), read that "No union, association, club, etc., or other collective bargaining organization shall be recognized as a bargaining agent."
Source · checked 2026-09-02
1987 · 1987-06-15
The council refused a special ballot for the collective bargaining question, and relented only after the officer came back twice with outside legal opinions
Jones was first deferred to the October 1988 general election on grounds of cost and turnout. He returned with opinions from a Fraternal Order of Police labour attorney and from a lawyer retained by AFSCME Council 67. Councilman Feehley made the case for putting it up: "I would make the motion that we allow the public to vote on this particular issue … If they vote against allowing collective bargaining for the City employees we don't have to do anything else. If they vote for it, then we have the decision to make of how we would want to handle that." The City Solicitor did not change his opinion. On 3 August the request went onto the October ballot on a 4-3 vote, Hurley, Steckman and Trimper opposed.
Source · checked 2026-09-02
2021 · 2021-06-12
Viral videos of OCPD tasing and kneeing teens over Boardwalk vaping violations draw national scrutiny.
On June 6, 2021, officers enforcing the local ordinance banning smoking and vaping outside designated Boardwalk areas tased 18-year-old Taizier Griffin, who was visible on video with his hands up moments earlier; he was released on $3,000 bail on charges including assault and disorderly conduct. On June 12, near 12th Street around 8:30 p.m., four teenagers from Harrisburg, Pa. were arrested after one resumed vaping; video showed an officer repeatedly driving his knee into a pinned teen, and one arrestee was hogtied. Maryland House Speaker Adrienne A. Jones called the footage 'deeply disturbing,' saying 'Vaping on the Boardwalk is not a criminal offense... Vaping should not yield a hogtie.' The town said all uses of force would go through a multilevel review, and the state Office of the Public Defender publicly called for OCPD body-worn cameras.
Source · checked 2026-08-05
2025
Thirty-eight years after the voters rejected collective bargaining 446 to 1,171, the Mayor and Council ratified a three-year contract with the Fraternal Order of Police — unanimously
"Resolution 2025-17 Ratifying a Collective Bargaining Agreement with Ocean City Lodge No. 10 Fraternal Order of Police, Inc. (July 1, 2025, through June 30, 2028). Motion to adopt Resolution 2025-17. RESULT: APPROVED [UNANIMOUS]." In February 1987 Officer Bill Jones stood at this podium with close to 1,800 signatures asking to strike the charter clause that said "No union, association, club, etc., or other collective bargaining organization shall be recognized as a bargaining agent." The council refused him a special ballot, relented on a 4-3 vote, and the voters rejected it 446 to 1,171. One of the legal opinions Jones brought back was from the Fraternal Order of Police. The closed-session notices now routinely cite Maryland's authority "to conduct collective bargaining negotiations", and the IAFF firefighters appear alongside the FOP.
Source · checked 2026-09-02