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Close Call

On September 14, 1944, with a category 4 hurricane working its way up the Eastern seaboard, WHOI’s research vessel Atlantis was secured to the National Marine Fisheries Service dock in Woods Hole. The ship’s captain, Lambert Knight, and four other crewmen were on board when the mooring lines parted and Knight steered the ship toward a place he knew to be mud-bottomed. After the storm, Atlantis, foreground, and the USS Saluda rested on nearby Ram Island flats for three weeks. The storm caused over $100 million damage to the region, but there was no major damage to the Atlantis—though it cost the Institution $17,000 to raise and move the ship. (Photo by Mary Curtis Cobb Thayer, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Archives)