"The Last Watch"
of the U.S. Life-Saving Station at Indian River Inlet, Circa 1962
"THE LAST WATCH" of the Indian River Life-Saving Station, Circa 1962
40" x 36" oil on canvas by Ellen Rice (sold)
Museum quality archival giclee prints available on paper and canvas
"The Last Watch" is a portrait of the U.S. Coast Guard Station at Indian River Inlet, Delaware, on the day it was decommissioned in 1962. The painting was created to raise funds for the station's restoration at the request of Milton Cooper.
The original oil oil was painted by Ellen Rice over an eight-month period from a photo provided to her by the late Milton W. Cooper, then the last living commander of the station. Along with Milton, Ellen was one of 10 founding members of the board of directors of the Delaware Seashore Preservation Foundation, the entity charged with restoring the station.
At right, despite his years, Milton insisted on climbing the narrow, vertical ladder to the station's lookout tower where he'd spent countless hours decades earlier. Ellen captured this special moment, his first lookout since the infamous "Storm of ' 62" closed the station.
The building had just been moved onto a new foundation a few hundred feet west of the place it had witnessed countless storms and rescues since the late 1700s.
"Remembering"
The story of "The Last Watch" of
the U.S. Coast Guard Station at Indian River Inlet
by Ellen Rice
It is March 1962, the end of a day and the end of an era, as US Coast Guard Commander Milton W. Cooper, BMLC, stands with hands in pockets, taking a final look out to sea from the Coast Guard Station that had been in his command.
The station is abandoned, its crew lifted out by helicopter during one of the East Coast's most devastating storms. It is an odd twist of fate for a building that had been the site of so many lifesaving efforts over the last century.
In the wake of the storm, the evening glow of sunset begins to shed its light over the station. More than two feet of sand is piled around and inside the building. Decades later, when the station is lifted off of it's foundation in order to be put on a higher foundation farther away from the water, still more sand was found inside the walls of the battered building, so fierce was the imfamous "Storm of '62."
Ellen pauses for a photo as she works on shading on "The Last Watch."
The dunes surrounding the station, from Lewes, Delaware, to Ocean City, Maryland, are flattened. The tracks of bulldozers, a half covered snow fence and two sets of foot prints leading toward the station, one human, the other animal, are all that mar the sand.
Looking around, an upstairs window in what for nine decades was the surf crew's bunker room, the windows of a door that once was the entrance to the boat room and later a pool room, and the boat room window behind the commander are blown out. The frame of one lies against the ocean side of the station under the roof of what remains of the back porch. There, the porch screens are blown away. The screen door still hangs, though crookedly, creaking with the breeze.
No flag flies, for the station has just been decommissioned. The weather vane atop the flag tower indicates a light northeast wind, but never again will a watchman make his four-hour log notation of the wind's direction. The days of service of the Indian River Station have come to a close.
The station at Indian River Inlet was built and commissioned as a U.S. Lifesaving Station in 1876 and is the second oldest Life Saving Station in its original position in the United States and one of the nation's most important maritime landmarks. It became a U.S. Coast Guard Station in the early 1900s and as such served mariners along the Mid-Atlantic until the Storm or '62.
Today, the past touches the future. The station's doors are open once again, serving in a new way, as the Indian River Lifesaving Station Museum.
