(
from the Outer Banks Sentinel) Benjamin Bowser, Jr., who served with the United States Life-Saving Service at the Pea Island Life-Saving Station from 1884 until his death in 1900, will be honored in a ceremony at his gravesite in Jarvisburg on Monday, June 11. Bowser was a surfman serving with the station's crew of six and Station Keeper Richard Etheridge when the rescue of the stricken three-masted schooner E.S. Newman occurred on Oct. 11, 1896. The heroic rescue of the vessel, which had run aground in a hurricane two miles south of the life-saving station, has become legendary in the annals of sea rescues for the crew's courage, determination and ingenuity - as well as for the fact that Life-Saving Station No. 17 was the nation's first and only station with an African American crew and commanding officer or Keeper.
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