The Amagansett Life-Saving and Coast Guard Station Museum, built in 1902 and opened as a museum in 2017 after a comprehensive restoration, opens for the 2025 season on Saturday at 11 a.m. with tours and a performance of sea chanteys, followed by a wealth of events continuing into the fall.
The station was operated by the United States Life-Saving Service until 1915. The Coast Guard then took over its operation, and it continued to be used until 1944. Once part of a network of 30 lifesaving stations on the South Shore of Long Island, the crew at the Amagansett Life-Saving Station kept watch from the lookout tower and by patrolling the beach. Discovering a ship in distress, the lifesavers would conduct a rescue by launching their surfboat or firing a line to the ship and taking people off with a breeches buoy. From 1902 to 1937, the crew of the Amagansett station, most of them experienced fishermen and shore whalers, kept watch over the beach and rescued sailors and passengers from several shipwrecks.
On Saturday, David Cataletto of the East Hampton Town Trustees will lead a tour of the museum, which is at 160 Atlantic Avenue. The Sea Shanty Crew will perform at 11:30, and docents will give additional tours from noon to 3 p.m.
A highlight of this season’s programs is the June 14 christening of a new Beebe-McLellan surfboat, 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.
Frederick Chase Beebe, who was born on Shelter Island, designed and developed the 27-foot Beebe surfboat in Greenport. After surf testing in Bridgehampton, Beebe won a U.S. government surfboat contract. Hundreds of the surfboats were put to lifesaving use along the eastern coasts of this country and Canada.
The Beebe-McLellan surfboat, built in North Carolina by Bobby Staab and displayed in last month’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Montauk, can be taken out on the water, and it is hoped that that will happen for demonstrations, said Francine Whitney, a trustee of the museum.
The Coast Guard will be represented at the June 14 christening, thanks to Derek Paulsen of the town’s Marine Patrol, a museum trustee who spent 20 years on active duty in the Coast Guard, during which he was stationed in Montauk twice.
Other highlights of the coming year include a guest speaker, Pat Mundus, a Montauk native, retired ship’s officer, and founder of the East End Classic Boat Society, on May 31 at 6 p.m. Ms. Mundus has contributed to the magazines WoodenBoat, Classic Yacht, and Soundings. She will discuss Beebe surfboats designed and built in Greenport, where she resides.
The day before, on June 13, the museum will mark the 83rd anniversary of the interception, by an alert 21-year-old Coast Guardsman, of Nazi saboteurs on the beach near the station, a small but important incident in World War II. On the night of June 12, 1942, a U-boat submarine approached Atlantic Avenue Beach, and 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 they could carry out their plan.
Included will be readings from The Star and letters to the F.B.I., and speculation as to what really took place.
This year’s lobster bake fund-raiser will take place on July 12 at 6:30 p.m.
The town trustees’ annual and always popular Largest Clam Contest happens on the museum grounds on Oct. 5. Clam chowder tastings and recipes, clams on the half shell, craft-making, boatbuilding demonstrations, and the crowning of the largest clam harvested from local waters will be featured.
The museum will close for the season with an Oct. 25 screening of “The Bonackers,” the story of the families who have fished and farmed here for almost 400 years, and a discussion of the project with Joanne Friedland Roberts, its director and producer.
A Christmas tree lighting is planned for the grounds on Dec. 13 from 5 to 6 p.m., with the public invited to come early to make decorations using clamshells and other items from the sea. The Sea Shanty Crew will perform holiday carols.
The museum, which is listed on the New York State Register of Historic Places, has a need for docents, which Michael Cinque, co-president of the museum’s board, called “a fun position for people to open the door and share our story.”
In addition, Ms. Whitney said, “We’d like to identify local families who might have a history with the Life-Saving Station going back before the Coast Guard,” or simply any history at all. “We’re just certain that somewhere, in somebody’s attic or garage, there’s something relating to the Coast Guard or prior to the Coast Guard.”
“It would be great to collect stories like that,” she said, “and then as we move the museum toward being more interactive, have voices speak about an object in the collection, or even have a character that could talk about relevant pieces that were on his ship.”
