Two commemorations of local history will happen this weekend at the Amagansett Life-Saving and Coast Guard Station Museum.
Friday at 6 p.m., the 83rd anniversary of the landing of Nazi saboteurs at the ocean beach near the station will be observed. Late on the night of June 12, 1942, a U-boat submarine approached Atlantic Avenue Beach after having overshot East Hampton because of weather. Four men came ashore with explosives and plans to blow up factories and other sites. Seaman John Cullen from the Amagansett Station came upon them on his patrol, and there ensued a chain of events that culminated in the capture and military tribunal of the four men — and four others who had landed off Florida — before any damage was done.
The commemoration will feature a narrative based on a trove of documents donated to the East Hampton Historical Society and from there to the museum, including letters to the government and the F.B.I. There will be readings from The Star, as well. “You’re going to hear things that have never been heard before,” said Hugh King, East Hampton Town’s historian, who will narrate.
It will also include the screening of a short film based on a Movietone newsreel from 1942 that depicts Cullen being honored for his crucial contribution to national defense, and an excerpt from the 1943 film “They Came to Blow Up America,” starring George Sanders as a German-American sent by the United States government to infiltrate the Bund, the Nazi propaganda organization.
A christening ceremony for the museum’s new replica Beebe-McLellan surfboat will be held on Saturday at 1 p.m. The surfboat is a more refined version of the museum’s 1908 Beebe surfboat, the last surviving vessel of the type used at the station and which is on loan from the National Park Service. Both types were built between 1879 and 1918 at the Beebe Boat Shop in Greenport. The museum’s slightly smaller replica was built in North Carolina by Bobby Staab.
