Exploring history is like crawling into a huge mine and chipping away at the stone mass around you hoping a gleaming nugget falls into your hands.
That’s what happened to me this week when the tragic story of the Moxie sinking caught my attention and demanded to be written. Thirteen Lynn men ranging in age from 18 to 24 years old boarded the pilot boat Moxie in Lynn Harbor on March 29, 1917 at 8:30 p.m.
Winthrop residents heard distress cries coming from the water two and a half hours later and the search for the passengers stretched into hours, and then days.
After a coat belonging to one of the men and a boat hatch cover washed ashore, people knew the searches were fruitless and no survivors were likely to be found. Lynn residents absorbed the news that a major tragedy had struck the city.
The late great Fred Goddard, in a 1967 Daily Evening Item article revisiting the Moxie sinking, described how 10 of the men belonged to the Biltmore Club, a youth organization with a clubhouse on Munroe Street.
Hudson Robertson, a 20-year-old Nahant resident and son of the Moxie’s owner, asked fellow club members if they wanted to ride the Moxie from Lynn Harbor to Nahant and take the trolley back to Lynn.
According to Goddard’s story, the weather was “reasonably mild” on the night of the sinking and the 23-foot Moxie was built with watertight compartments and a “self-bailing” cockpit.
Winthrop residents who heard the distress cries spotted lights flickering on the water and built a large fire on the beach to provide some bearings for the floundering vessel. Goddard wrote how distress cries lasted for an hour before fading away as the lights on the water flickered and were extinguished.
Martin Welch’s life jacket-clad body washed ashore on April 2. According to Goddard, the Moxie was outfitted with seven life jackets and the one Welch was wearing was the only life jacket recovered.
The discovery dropped a pall on Lynn as residents prepared for Holy Week observances and the search continued. Six bodies were recovered on April 6 and others surfaced over the following weeks.
“We kept going to one funeral after another,” Goddard quoted Biltmore Club member Leo V. Talamini.
Goddard theorized the Moxie ran out of gas or experienced engine failure and drifted into rocks that pierced her hull. The sinking cost Welch and Robertson their lives along with Thomas and James McQueeney, John Murphy, Allen Kelley, Anthony Scalla, Francis Girard, George Gaffney, Martin Brown, Mathew Pashby, Clarence Maloon and Lester McClearn.
Decades after the disaster, St. Mary’s Church continued to hold Requiem Masses remembering the lives lost.
