New York Herald/1890/Half A Century of Piloting

Half A Century of Piloting. The Late Joseph Henderson's Extraordinary Record Of Disasters, Accidents and Lucky Escapes. Joseph Henderson, the brave old salt who died last Wednesday, was a most remarkable man in the Sandy Hook pilot service as well as the oldest. His record an a pilot is set down as forty-five years, but some men on South street remember him in 1845 as a pilot of some standing even then, so it must have been nearly half a century that do was taking vessels in and out of the harbor. He had been in more accidents than any two other pilots in the service. In his earlier days he was always getting smashed up. Pilots say he must have had most of the bones in his body broken at one time of another. When he was just beginning his career he was up at the masthead of the old George W. Blunt one day when he saw a ship. Up went both his hands as be hailed the deck and down went Henderson from the masthead. It was a wonder be wasn't killed. He struck the stays and was sheared off from the anchor, which was under him. He hit a yawl, had both legs broken and his front teeth knocked out. They carried him to New York, and about the time his brother pilots were going up to his house to see if he needed anything he appeared at the boat ready for duty. A Violent Death Predicted. One day not long after he was putting a ship into her berth at Brooklyn and running about the deck to direct the tug, got tangled up in the tow hawser. The tug started up, the hawser straightened out and Henderson was slung overboard. A leg and some ribs wore broken that time. When be went over the side no one expected to see him end up alive, but in a few weeks he was at work again. He got into some such misfortune as this about once a year. Pilots were always predicting his death in one of these accidents. He took the most amazing risks when he was out cruising for steamers. He would heave to in a gale and a thick fog, and turn in and sleep like a rock while everybody else on board was expecting every minute to be sent to the bottom by an invisible steamer. He was an admirable seaman, as brave as a man could be and quick as thought in an emergency. Four or five times he just snatched his boat out of destruction by quick judgment and section. One time a French steamer went by him in a fog so close she bagged the pilot boat's main boom. It was Henderson's turn to take in a steamer and he made the Frenchman stop for him, although it was as thick as mush with a tremendous sea on. Another time a steamer took the bowsprit out of his boat. Hauled Up The Side. Of recent years he had been so portly that be could not well climb up a vessel's side, so he made the vessel men rig a bow line and hoist him in with a snatch block. He took the bight under his shoulders, held to the rope with his hands and was drawn on board like a barrel, annually to the great amusement of passengers. One day last spring when he boarded a German steamer in this way the sailors hoisted him about six feet out of his boat and for some reason belayed him there. Whenever the steamer rolled in the heavy sea about half of the pilot went under water. The more he yelled the more the sailors couldn't understand him, and he was only rescued from his plight wan the men in the yawl made the captain understand what was the matter. His able services to the government during the war, when he served an a pilot in Southern waters, were well rewarded, and laid the foundation of a considerable fortune. For the last twenty years there was no reason why he should not live at ease. He insisted upon going out on every cruise, from pure love of work and the sea. No weather was ever too bad for him to stand his watch. Even when be was wrecked in the Pet, at the entrance to Newport Harbor, last fall, he went calmly to another boat and started out on her next cruise. He had been run down by steamers, bit by telling spare, tumbled overboard, dragged around by hawsers, ridden out blistering gales and lain night after night in the utmost peril of foggy weather in steamer tracks off the banks, and lived to die in his bed.