Life-saving Station and the Humane Society Of the Commonwealth Of Massachusetts

Finally, I will finish off my blogs about my last trip photographing on Cape Cod.  I am going to give some facts about the life-saving stations that were present on the Cape and also about the Humane Society of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

The Old Harbor Life-Saving Station that is present near Race Point on the Province Lands, Cape Cod National Seashore was originally built in Chatham in 1897 and was moved to Provincetown in November 1977.  In the summer, breeches buoy rescue enactments a conducted every Thursday evening.  Inside the station are the boats that were used to help rescue ship wreck sailors and other people that may have been on the ships.

In 1785, a group of Boston citizens met in the Bunch of Grapes Tavern because they were concerned about the needless deaths resulting from shipwrecks and drownings.  They formed in 1786, the Humane Society of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, modeled on the British Royal Humane Society.  The resources of Humane Society finance a number of firsts in the country, including life-saving Hudson rescue boats along the coast, and funding to create the Massachusetts General Hospital, McLean Hospital and the Boston Lying-in Hospital

The model that Humane Society founded for life-saving huts and boats with a model for the United States Life-Saving Service which with the US Revenue Service was the foundation for the US Coast Guard.

At Horseneck Point, Westport, Massachusetts, before the causeway leading to Gooseberry Neck, the Westport Fisherman's Association still maintains the structures that belong to the Humane Society.