Pipe From the Past

Chris McDonald went winter-surfing at East Hampton's Main Beach last week and was leaving the water when he looked down to see an unfamiliar piece of flotsam - a clay pipe.

The pipe looked old and sanded, but otherwise in good shape. Given East Hampton's long and documented history, Mr. McDonald suspected there was an explanation between covers somewhere, and turned to Jeannette Edwards Rattray's chronicle of eastern Long Island shipwrecks, "Ship Ashore!" There on page 113 was the probable answer.

On June 3, 1871, the ship Pacific, bound from Glasgow to New York, went ashore at East Hampton. "She went on the beach with all sails set, a beautiful sight, so old people used to recall," Mrs. Rattray wrote. No lives were lost, and the ship's cargo of tiling and clay pipes was taken off at high tide with the help of Nathaniel Dominy.

This occurred on a Sunday morning. "The one church in East Hampton at the time - Presbyterian - never had such a small congregation," Mrs. Rattray reports. "Everybody was at the beach, and everybody got a 'beach pipe.' "

Now Mr. McDonald has his.