DAN’S PAPERS
Page 24 December 7, 2012
danshamptons.com
MTK (Continued from page 20) and crashed through two days before it was expected and it came through very fast. The storm packed 110-mile-an-hour winds, blasted through at 60 miles an hour, which added to its rage, and as it came it brought a huge storm surge with it, that, here in Montauk, swept through the little town and ripped it to bits. Ten miles to the west, the storm flooded through Napeague, even putting the railroad tracks underwater. Montauk was now an island, inaccessible, and it was to remain that way for the next two days. On the day that it hit, Perry Duryea, the Town Supervisor, was in East Hampton. Though much damage came to that town, Duryea’s first concern was for his family and friends at the Fishing Village.
He could not get in touch with them. The telegraph office at the railroad station was not working. The phone lines were down. The trains were not running. There was nobody getting in or out. On the third day after the storm, he and some other officials requisitioned a tractor and a driver and spent several hours getting through to Montauk, where he found most of the village destroyed, washed away or torn off its foundations. He also found his family, who rode out the storm in their home, which remained intact. Other residents of that village had abandoned their homes, run across the tracks and taken shelter inside the heavy railroad cars parked there. From there, they could watch their village die. Other Montauk fishermen trudged
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An attempt was made to put some of the houses back on their foundations. Some succeeded. Some didn’t. up the hill Montauk Manor and took shelter in the rooms there. Supervisor Duryea sent out the following telegram to the Red Cross: “Montauk fishing village practically destroyed. Number of boats lost. Residences destroyed, several lives lost and missing. No water, lights or phone connections. Fishing industry wiped out. Immediate and necessary.” An attempt was made to put some of the houses back on their foundations. Some succeeded. Some didn’t. Most of the residents vowed not to return. The village was too open, too vulnerable to storms. People re-settled, bringing their families and fishing boats to Lake Montauk, where a new inlet had been blasted. And then, in 1942, it was over. World War II had broken out. The U. S. Navy decided to seize this broken property and on it build a Naval base where torpedoes, fresh from factories in Long Island City, could be brought out and tested. The residents were given a deadline, and soon thereafter there came the Navy bulldozers and construction crews. Today, there are still a few remains of the former Montauk Fishing Village. Perry B. Duryea & Son, Inc. is still there, of course (now also a lobster house with an attendant outdoor café.) Along the paved road between Duryea’s and what is now the condominium called Rough Riders Landing (built on some remains of the village), you will see two or three tiny homes on cinder blocks behind some fencing and hedges. Those were homes moved off from the fishing village. But that is it. On the other hand, there is an entire diorama of the Montauk Fishing Village as it was around 1920, built and on display on a large table at the East Hampton Marine Museum on Bluff Road in Amagansett. It was built, in miniature, by a team led by Springs artist Ralph Carpentier in 1968 after that man and others conducted dozens of interviews with former residents of the village to discuss things such as whether this house was green or red or whatever. To build this model took years of painstaking effort. It is a great accomplishment. You owe it to yourself to go see it. I said, early on in this article, that there were lessons to be learned from what happened to the Montauk Fishing Village in 1938. I think you know what these lessons are. But I think what with insurance policies, help from government agencies and declarations of state disaster areas, a lot of homes will be rebuilt right in the teeth of what can happen again. Let us hope for the best. Who made the greatest full length documentary about the Hamptons, but never was able to market it to the mainstream movie theatres?
STILL ST TILL IN THE HAMPTONS by Dan Rattiner
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