Midgets from coast to coast
By
U.S. COAST GUARD MK3 Daniel Hockaday is shown next to a portrait of John Allen Midgett Jr. which is shown just above the silver loving cup presented to him personally by the British government. It remains the personal property of the Midgett family who have graciously allowed Chicamacomico to display it at the station.
THE U.S. COAST GUARD CUTTER MIDGETT, homeported in Seattle, Washington, is shown here. It is named for the famous John Allen Midgett Jr. who with his men of the Chicamacomico Lifesaving Station, saved most of the crewmen of the SS Mirlo, a British tanker that caught fire after Germans attacked it in August of 1918..
SURFBOAT NO. 1046 is shown here with Coast Guard MK2 Daniel Hockaday standing beside it. This is the actual boat, built in 1910, used in the famous 19188 SS Mirlo rescue led by Keeper John Allen Midgett Jr.
MK3 Daniel Hockaday of the U.S. Coast Guard recently visited his service’s history at the Chicamacomico Lifesaving Station Historic Site & Museum in Rodanthe on Hatteras Island. On the U.S. west coast is the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Midgett, whose homeport is Seattle, Wash. She was the twelfth and last of the 378-foot high endurance cutters in the Hero Class. Appropriately classed, for her namesake was CWO John Allen Midgett Jr., officer in charge of the Chicamacomico Station in Rodanthe. He was born and raised in a home still standing just a stone’s throw from the 1911 lifesaving station. His men affectionately referred to him as “Cap’n Johnny.”
On Aug. 16, 1918, after a six-and-a-half-hour ordeal, Midgett led his USCG rescue crew of five in their 26-foot Surfboat No. 1046 on a 14-mile offshore odyssey to save the crew from the British tanker SS Mirlo. The tanker was carrying over 6,500 tons of gasoline and petroleum products and had been torpedoed by German submarine U-117. The ensuing inferno was indescribable, and an ordinary rescue would have been impossible. But the “Mighty Midgetts of Chicamacomico” were far from ordinary and did the impossible by rescuing 42 of the 51 crewmen of the SS Mirlo. It became the most highly-awarded maritime rescue in the history of our nation.