Benjamin Sparrow

Benjamin Sparrow. Lifesaving Heritage of Orleans. , All nine of the Cape Cod Lifesaving Stations were a part of the USLSS District 2. In 1872, Sumner I. Kimball, then Chief of the Treasury Department’s Revenue Marine Division, appointed Orleans resident Benjamin Sparrow as Superintendent of District 2, which encompassed all of Massachusetts. Sparrow’s appointment was a part of Kimball’s successful effort to professionalize the USLSS and address the inefficiency and corruption that had existed in other parts of the country. , Sparrow was a direct descendent of Richard Sparrow, who arrived at Plymouth Colony in 1623 on the ship Ann. As a boy, Benjamin Sparrow is said to have accompanied his father, a volunteer lifesaver and salvager, to the scene of numerous shipwrecks off the Cape’s shores. He was educated in Orleans schools, and taught school in Eastham. He entered Phillips Academy to prepare for a career in law, but when the Civil War broke out, he enlisted in the regular Union Army and was assigned to an engineering battalion in the Army of the Potomac. , He was captured in 1862 and was held prisoner by the Confederates at Belle Isle Prison in Virginia until he was released in a prisoner exchange. Sparrow resumed his service in the army and served until 1864 when he returned to Orleans where he resided for the rest of his life. , Sparrow was known for what we now call “hands-on-management,” personally attending many of the rescue operations in his district. When telephone lines were installed to connect stations in his district, he had his home connected as well. His qualities are summed up in a 1908 report to Congress by Sumner Kimball: , He was a thorough beachman, and no man on Cape Cod was more familiar with the shores of that dangerous projection than he, a fact to which he probably owes his life. He resided in East Orleans , near the shore, and I believe that no wreck occurred during the thirty years of his incumbency within a distance which would admit his reaching it that he did not attend. At such times his skill and advice have been of the greatest value. On some of these occasions, he endured the severest hardships, and in one instance nearly lost his eyesight and barely escaped with his life. , This display was made possible through Orleans Community Preservation Funds . This historical marker was erected by Orleans Community Preservation Committee. It is in Orleans in Barnstable County Massachusetts