![]() The life-saving crew of the Cape Lookout Station, though hampered by antiquated and outworn equipment, did everything possible to save them. A heavy gale blew up and several vessels were partly wrecked. The relationship between Roosevelt and Coles had actually started eight years earlier, in the summer of 1908.īuilt in 1916, the Cape Lookout Coast Guard Station still stands today. Roosevelt, my crew and myself will live very roughly in camp and have no visitors, in order that entire 3 weeks may be devoted to savage bloody fighting.” The Cape Lookout Life-Saving Station 11, 1917, Coles assured Barton Bean at the Smithsonian that he and Roosevelt would put aside political ambitions and social niceties while they were in their camp on Captiva Island.īy that, he meant that they would not entertain any of Florida’s elected officials or influential political donors while they were in Florida. ![]() ![]() “The one thing I most desire to do is to harpoon a devil-fish, and I am pleased down to the ground, that everything is to be subordinated to that one consideration-until I get my harpoon into one.”Īt the time, Roosevelt was still a leading candidate to be the Republican Party’s presidential nominee in 1920 (for what would have been his third term). ![]() In one of the letters that Vera and I read at Coles Hill, dated Feb. At the time, Roosevelt was in the midst of a bramble of political issues related to the First World War, but he seems to have been unable to think about anything but the prospect of killing a giant manta ray– or, as he called it, “a devil-fish.” Only a few weeks later, the two men were engrossed in planning the details of a trip to Punta Gorda, the town on the Gulf Coast of Florida where Coles had hunted giant manta rays twice previously. Coles quickly invited the ex-president to join him on a new manta ray hunting expedition. He immediately got in touch with Coles, who, at the age of 51, was only a few years younger than Roosevelt. Roosevelt’s health never fully recovered, but he was undaunted when he read Coles’ sensational account of his adventure in Florida. Roosevelt and the rest of the explorers only survived because a group of rubber workers stumbled onto them in the jungle and rescued them. Three of his fellow explorers died on that trip. On that expedition, he had nearly died from starvation, a wound to his leg and tropical fevers. Courtesy, Walter Coles, Sr., Chatham, Va. Charlie Willis, Russell Coles, Teddy Roosevelt, Capt. The manta ray hunting crew (left to right): Roland Phillips, Capt. His legacy is complex: Native American activists and other protestors, for example, recently convinced New York City’s leaders to remove his statue at the American Museum of Natural History because of his strong belief in white supremacy and in the right of whites to rule over other races. The image of his face appears on Mount Rushmore, next to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. He was a politician, naturalist, conservationist, big-game hunter, explorer and writer. Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt was of course the 26 th president of the United States, having served from 1901 to 1909. Coles at Cape Lookout.įor many students of American history, the letters between Russell Coles and Teddy Roosevelt would be the most important historical documents that my daughter Vera and I found at Coles Hill. This is chapter 10 of Shark Hunter: Russell J. Russell Coles and Teddy Roosevelt with the carcass of a giant oceanic manta ray on Captiva Island, Florida, in 1917.
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