“Turn!” Captain May shouted. “Those are breakers on the beach.”

Young Kanaby strained to make out the patch of beach that his captain had seen, but it was invisible through the snow. Instinctively, the youthful wheelsman turned the wheel, but there was no open water to be found. As the ship fought to respond to its rudder the men in the pilothouse could sense breaking waves all around. The motion of the deck was different beneath their feet. An instant later the ship’s forefoot struck the bottom, bounced once, then again. Suddenly, the violent motion of the storm disappeared. The Hawgood has hard aground.

Until he died, Edward Kanaby always told the story that he disobeyed his captain’s last helm command. Kanaby said he turned toward the beach in a young man’s frightened effort to escape the gale. Perhaps he did. It probably mattered little. The Hawgood was too close to shore to have been steered to safety. The ship was hard on the beach before the rudder could have had any effect.