History

Capt. Isaac Jones

Ocean City boat captain · d. 1904

Ocean City boat captain who left the town on Thursday 26 May 1904 with William Short and eighteen-year-old William Jones in a thirty-foot sea skiff fitted with a gasoline engine and a sail, heavily loaded with sturgeon-fishing gear, bound for Holly Beach, N.J. The boat is supposed to have capsized crossing the mouth of Delaware Bay. His body was found at Cape May about 7 June 1904 and brought to Berlin for burial; the other two were never recovered. He left a wife and four children, and had lost a son aboard the U.S.S. Texas at Key West on Christmas Day 1903.

In the record (1)

  1. 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. John Jones

    Source · checked 2026-08-06