FIRE ON THE BEACH

A jumbled and speculative—but also affecting—biography of the leader of the only all-black unit of the US Life-Saving Service, stationed at Pea Island, North Carolina, in the final decades of the 19th century.

Wright (English/Univ. of Illinois) and Zoby (English/Caspar Coll.) faced a daunting task—to chart the life of Etheridge, born a slave on January 16, 1842. As the authors note, the documentary record for slaves is slender even in the best of circumstances, and so they were forced to paint much historical background and give Etheridge’s story a colorful context, if not a sharp focus. And so they provide 100 pages of Civil War history, chronicling the exploits of Etheridge’s “African Brigade” (he enlisted in August 1863) but not of Etheridge himself, for his personal experiences are largely unknown. At times this material (published elsewhere in much detail) is superfluous. Once the war ends, however, and Etheridge returns to the Outer Banks, the authors are on firmer historical ground. The characteristic stormy weather in the region caused many shipwrecks, so between 1873 and 1874 the federal government established stations for the Life-Saving Service (or LSS—the agency that would one day be replaced by the Coast Guard). Etheridge, who had distinguished himself as an LSS surfman, earned an appointment as keeper of Station 17 in 1880. The whites on the crew promptly quit, so (with approval from his superiors) he appointed an all-black crew that became exemplary—largely due to Etheridge’s devotion to duty, his strict schedule of drills, and the enormous respect he enjoyed along the coast. Wright and Zoby are at their best when narrating some the exciting rescues—the one in the prologue is a gem of adventure-writing. But the story lacks a compelling organization, and the narrative occasionally drifts like flotsam. And the lack of end- or footnotes will retard subsequent scholarship.

At times clumsy, but nonetheless an important story of perseverance in the face of natural disasters and unspeakable racism.