Wood Island Museum: Dream off Kittery coast comes true. How you can visit.

KITTERY, Maine — In their heyday, the rugged surfmen of the U.S. Life-Saving Service were the stuff of legend.

These “storm warriors,” so called by scribes of the era, would row out in wooden boats during the stormiest of seas to rescue mariners in peril. The starkness of their existence is reflected in the code by which they lived — “You have to go out, but you do not have to come back.”

In 1915, the Life-Saving Service was merged by President Woodrow Wilson with the Revenue Cutter Service to create what we know today as the U.S. Coast Guard. In the years following, as technology advanced pretty rapidly, the exploits of the storm warriors faded from the memory of the general public.

Now, after a restoration effort of several years and $6.8 million being raised, their legacy will live on at the former station at Wood Island , located just off the waterfront of Kittery’s Fort Foster.

On Friday, Aug. 9 — appropriately, the weekend of the Coast Guard’s official birthday — a long-awaited maritime museum will open its doors at Wood Island, which for decades housed crews of both the Life Saving Service and the Coast Guard. And it will kick off with a bang, featuring a fireworks display Saturday, Aug. 10 to commemorate the branch’s birthday.

Visitors will be able to read interpretive posters about such dramatic rescues as the frigate Oliver Dyer in 1888 and the Navy submarine S-48 in 1925, which included not only the crew but a good-luck terrier pup named Beans. They will learn about Capt. Silas Harding, who as keeper, or head surfman, of the Jerry’s Point station in New Castle, New Hampshire, directed the Dyer rescue which earned the entire crew the Gold Lifesaving Medal — the highest decoration awarded by the service.

Harding later went on to serve as superintendent of the agency’s First District, which included all stations in Maine and New Hampshire. In this capacity, he personally oversaw an even more remarkable mission — the 1905 rescue of the schooner Lizzy Carr near Wallis Sands in New Hampshire.

How 'a maritime museum' on an island was created after threat of demolition

It has taken a lot of effort to transform the long-neglected former station to the refurbished and pristine pearl-and-crimson facility it is today, but organizers hope this project will now help revive the memory of these heroic men.

Built in 1908, the Wood Island station remained in operation until after World War II. When the Coast Guard relocated its Portsmouth Harbor operations to the current site in New Castle in the 1950s, the island was eventually returned to the town of Kittery, which didn’t do much with it into the next century.

By 2009, the building had crumbled into such a state of disrepair Kittery officials were ready to simply demolish it. However, a group of concerned citizens formed the nonprofit Wood Island Life Saving Station Association, also known as WILSSA, in 2011 with the intention of refurbishing the station to its former glory at no cost to the town, even as the town retains ownership.

WILSSA and Kittery reached an agreement on the restoration project that included no funding from the town. The restoration project began in 2016. Reid said in addition to the $6.8 million WILSSA has raised for the project, he expects "a bit more ... for additional exhibits, furniture, curtains, etc."

Since that time, in addition to restoring the structure using many materials from the original site, the organization has also installed new sea walls on both the north and south sides of the island; a new pier; a unique training pole featured in a spectacular demonstration last September; and a restored marine railway, which may in the future actually be put to use.

Just as importantly, electricity is running, bathrooms are working, and exhibits are on display. In July, the town of Kittery issued a crucial certificate of occupancy, verifying all inspections had passed and the building could be opened for business. Reid said WILSSA has an operational contract with the town to operate the museum for 40 years.

“A maritime museum on an island. Only accessible by boat. What a remarkable thing,” WILSSA president Sam Reid recently noted.

The path that finally brought this project to fruition has featured remarkable collaborations and fortuitous occurrences. Here’s the way things have worked out for the restoration of the Kittery station:

More than a year ago, previous Wood Island visitor Steve Rogers (which also happens to be the true name of comic book superhero Captain America) came across a pair of small chests believed to have belonged to Seacoast surfman George Ricker. Somehow, they had wound up in the collection of a Florida antique dealer. Rogers initiated a chain of electronic correspondence that led to WILLSA board member Jake Winebaum, and the items eventually wound up back at Wood Island.

One of the pieces is a truly unique Life Saving Service medicine chest more than 100 years old, still containing bottles of brandy and snuff, as well as the agency’s directions “for using the medicines .... contained in this chest, in reviving persons taken from the water.” The second chest contained letters, photos and other personal items belonging to Ricker, who served at Wood Island in the early 1900s before later appointments as keeper at the Isles of Shoals and Rye Beach locations.

In another instance, the family of Hugh Snow, a former keeper of the Wood Island Station, donated an original Life Saving Service clock from the Fletcher’s Neck post at Biddeford Pool in Maine.

Fittingly, the man considered the father of the Life Saving Service was himself a native of Maine. Sumner Increase Kimball was born in Lebanon, raised in Sanford, attended Bowdoin College and represented Berwick in the state legislature. Trained as a lawyer, Kimball entered the U.S. Treasury Department as a clerk. He later created the Life Saving Service and then proceeded to head the agency as the only general superintendent in its history, from the 1878 inception to the 1915 merger creating the Coast Guard.

In fact, a February 1906 Portsmouth Herald article reports both Kimball and Capt. Harding personally inspected several sites before Wood Island was selected as the ideal home for a new station. Now the stories of both men will be shared at the museum there.

One of the more popular features likely will be the lookout tower sitting atop the station, which offers a majestic view of the harbor and neighboring Whaleback Lighthouse. The original wooden crew lockers also serve as a haunting reminder of the hardy men who called the station home. They tended to have spent their adult lives on or near the sea as fishermen, mariners, and the like.

M/V Utopia to bring visitors to Wood Island Museum

Initially, the plan is to open the facility on the weekends. Portsmouth Harbor Cruises will start running regular trips — two a day, initially, on Saturday and Sunday — from Portsmouth’s Ceres Street to Wood Island aboard the new 42-foot M/V Utopia. Tickets will be $30 per person, including both the boat ride and the museum admission. Reid said the M/V Utopia will be the primary provider of rides to the museum.

While the Utopia has capacity for 32 passengers, owner Drew Cole says he intends to carry no more than 25 people at a time.

“I think this will be a nice addition to our business,” he said of the new tour. “I bought Utopia with this in mind.”

Reservations can be made through the Portsmouth Harbor Cruises website. Departure times at 12:15 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. are being offered on Aug. 9, the museum's opening day.

More information for visitors: woodislandlifesaving.org . The museum is also booking private events.

Boat owners can transport themselves to Wood Island, Reid said.

National Register of Historic Places a goal for Wood Island

While the opening of the museum is a significant milestone, the work at Wood Island is far from over. One of the next key steps is securing recognition on the National Register of Historic Places.

The station was already ruled eligible for nomination to the register back in 2015, which was important in qualifying for certain protections during restoration, Reid said. Original window and door frames, baseboards and the like were tagged by room and location and then stored for seven years before they were stripped, cleaned and returned to their respective spot for preservation, he noted. But now WILSSA must submit the paperwork required for inclusion on the exclusive list.

“It will certainly be given the final thumbs up,” Reid said.

The training pole, constructed to resemble a ship’s mast, was traditionally used by surfmen during training drills to hone their prowess. Last September, a crew of surfmen reenactors from the Chicamacomico Life Saving Station in North Carolina journeyed to Kittery to provide a live demonstration of the exercise, which requires both ingenuity and sinew, as well as lines, pulleys and a small cannon-like gadget known as a Lyle gun.

At some point, WILSSA hopes to offer such demonstrations on a regular basis, as the reenactors do at the North Carolina station.

The marine railway installed at Wood Island is historically accurate, and the organization hopes to someday be able to allow visitors to slide down the rail into the water in surfboats similar to the ones used by surfmen during rescues. WILSSA maintains it is the only remaining life saving station with an operational railway. The museum already has a 1930s rescue boat called the Mervin Roberts, which was restored over a two-year process by wood boatbuilder Nate Greeley of York, Maine.

In the meantime, both seawalls protecting the facility on the tiny island now require repair following some recent brutal storms. The walls were built through a remarkable partnership with the Maine Army National Guard, but sustained substantial weather damage.

Fireworks event Aug. 10 invites community to celebrate and give back

But of more immediate concern is the upcoming fireworks display on Saturday, Aug. 10 at 9 p.m., hosted by Wood Island, to commemorate the recognized Aug. 4, 1790, birthday of the Coast Guard, based on the date the Revenue Cutter Service was officially created. The merger of this agency with the Life Saving Service in 1915 formed the Department of Homeland Security branch we know today.

For the third consecutive year, folks can view the fireworks from New Castle’s Great Island Common and also bring nonperishable food to donate to Gather, the Portsmouth-based food pantry. Last year, 1,000 people donated 800 pounds of food at the event, according to WILSSA.

The organization says this concept of “helping others, then and now” is a way of honoring the selflessness of the surfmen, whose very livelihood was based on saving lives.

An 1885 annual report of the service previously cited by author Dennis L Noble describes the storm warriors as “poor, plain men” who “took their lives in their hands, and, at the most imminent risk, crossed the tumultuous sea …. and all for what? That others may live to see home and friends.”

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Wood Island Museum: Dream off Kittery coast comes true. How you can visit.