Life-Saving Museum expansion to enhance visitors' experience

Fifteen miles off Sankaty Head, the cargo vessel H.P. Kirkham caught up on the Rose and Crown shoal on Jan. 19, 1892, but the surfmen of the Coskata U.S. Life-Saving Service Station rescued all on board in 24 hours.

PETER B. BRACE/The Independent That dramatic rescue - and three more of the most challenging in Nantucket history by Life-Saving Service personnel - will form the basis of a revitalized Nantucket Life- Saving Museum through a 2,000- square-foot addition to the museum, the Egan Maritime Foundation announced last week.

The foundation hopes to build the addition next winter, with plans for a grand re-opening in late June or July 2008. The addition will give the museum more space for a children's gallery off the west side of the museum, and add footage to the front of the building for visitor orientation and greeting, said Egan Maritime Foundation Executive Director Jean Grimmer.

"One of the things we did, way into this project, is we looked at our visitor experience, we looked at the use of this space," she said. "Our storyline is going to carry our visitors through the story of Life-Saving on Nantucket through organizations such as the Massachusetts Humane Society and the U. S. Coast Guard."

Rather than move its existing display of artifacts and exhibits back into the new space upon its completion, Nantucket Life-Saving Museum Curator Jeremy Slavitz said the plan is to draw museum patrons into the existing exhibits and the more than 4,000 artifacts by using the rescues of the four shipwrecks as examples of gear and techniques used, the lives of surfmen at their station and of their families on island.

"It's a very human story: what was it like to work in one of these stations? What was it like to get up and realize that you had to do your beach patrol in nasty weather?" Slavitz said.

This reorganization of the museum's exhibits into a more tangible, comprehensive flow of information will come from the experiences of Life-Saving crews engaged in the rescues of the H.P. Kirkham, the T.B. Witherspoon (off Surfside in singledigit temperatures), the W.F. Marshall, the first rescue performed by the U. S. Life-Saving Service from the Surfside station, and a 36-hour rescue of six wrecks on Tuckernuck Shoal.

"In some respects, if you walked into the museum today, it's more of a jumble of old artifacts; what we hope to do is tell the story better because right now they don't really tell the story, they tell inklings of the story," Building Committee Chairman Eric Holch pointed out.

All of the iconic objects of the existing collection will be incorporated into the new display. For instance, said Slavitz, the nine-foot-by-eight-foot wall of shipwreck stories will get its own gallery, and with the newly opened space from the floor up to the top of the cupola, the museum's surfboat, which will be restored during construction, can then be fully rigged with mast and sail.

The idea behind the addition and reconfiguration of the museum's collection is to generate more awareness for the history of the Life-Saving Service on Nantucket and present it in a more accessible and interactive way.

"I would have to say that 95 percent of this island has never heard of the wreck of the Kirkham, whereas 90 percent of the island knows about the Essex," Holch said. "It's an awesome story, so when you go out to the museum the artifacts will be in the context of the story."

According to Grimmer, the Nantucket Life-Saving Museum was founded by Robert Caldwell, Edouard Stackpole, Charles Sayle, Robert Mooney, Doc Kynett and Richard Deutsch. Built in 1971, the building is a replica of a U. S. Life-Saving station. A new heating and cooling system will not only keep the climate inside the museum at the right temperature and humidity year-round to preserve the artifacts, it will also enable the off-season use of the building.

Original plans for a wart off the northwest side of the building were drawn by designer D. Neil Parent in 2003, but were put on hold for two years while the Egan Maritime Foundation completed its acquisition of the museum. The Foundation reconnected with Parent in the winter of 2005 and new plans were drawn. Since then, the Foundation has secured a new HDC permit and permits from the Conservation Commission and the Zoning Board of Appeals. Building contractor bids will be going out in May.

"Basically, I don't think the Life-Saving Museum is really on everybody's radar," said Grimmer. "It's a pretty building when you drive by it, but what we're thinking

is people will be getting more involved with it." I