(This story was taken from The Sunday Capital, Annapolis, Maryland, August 20, 1995) Unlike Shy Felix, a hurricane in 1955 did make its way up the bay. A pleasure boat sank; 14 bodies washed ashore.
		The sinking of the MARVEL by MICHAEL CODY South County Staff Writer

But 40 years ago on August 12, with drenching rain and wind gusts of up to 50 mph from the northeast, bay front residents weren't aware that the Levin J. Marvel had sunk until the bodies of 14 who drowned began washing ashore.

"All I remember is they had life preservers on them," said James K. Jackson, now 76 and a charter-boat captain in Deale. He and others held the dead on shore at Chesapeake Beach so chest-high surf wouldn't reclaim them.

"Everybody was wondering, 'How could they drown with a life preserver on?' But they did."

A converted 128-foot schooner that was on a week-long pleasure cruise, Marvel left Cambridge the day before. With 23 passengers and a crew of four, it was bound for West River or Annapolis.

Although a storm warning was posted at a U.S. Weather Bureau station in Cambridge, a hurricane alert had been lifted at 2 p.m.

Hurricane Connie apparently had stalled near North Carolina's Outer Banks, just as Hurricane Felix did last week.

"We had them bang-bang," Annapolitan Lester Trott, 77, said of successive hurricanes Connie and Diane, which hit the Atlantic coast in late summer 1955.

"This hurricane (Felix) was coming up very similar to the hurricane that sank this boat," said Mr. Trott, who promoted Marvel's cruises until the early 1950s.

Capt. John H. Meckling was in his second summer of ownership when he steered Marvel out of Cambridge — in fine weather — on Aug. 11.

A hurricane alert on the Atlantic had been lifted, while storm and small-craft warnings on the Chesapeake had not.

Winds increased overnight, and Capt. Meckling sought shelter in the lee of Poplar Island, but Marvel was beaten back.

"We saw him as he was sailing west, toward our shore. Then he turned north. I'm not so sure what he was trying to do," said Vernon Gingell, now 75, who had been swimming in Herring Bay with friends.

"We thought, at that time, maybe he was trying to make port. We assumed he felt discretion was the better part of valor."

Seas rose to 5 or 6 feet as the storm became more intense, and Mr. Gingell lost sight of Marvel.

"When the rain hit us ... it made the skin red. That's when we decided to go in." When he awoke the next day, police officers and firefighters were combing the beach for bodies.

Capt. Meckling had dropped regular and emergency anchors at the mouth of Herring Bay, near a shallow area known to mariners as Long Bar.

He reported later that the anchors were ripped loose. Marvel "porpoised" into the waves, then turned broadside to the wind and was capsized, Capt. Meckling said.

Passengers told of their captain's bravery — first in freeing a woman trapped beneath a yardarm, then in adding members to a group that had linked arms.

"I would never even see them, but he would go get them," a 34-year-old survivor told The Capitol in 1955.

Capt. Meckling, who reportedly could not swim, finally lifted several people onto a duck blind hundreds of yards offshore. They were rescued there by men in small boats.

Those who died included a woman from Raleigh, N.C., who urged Capt. Meckling to wear a life jacket, and a family of four from Brooklyn, N.Y. Their autos remained in Annapolis, home port to Marvel, for days.

In the ensuing weeks and months, Baltimore's top Coast Guard officer led an inquiry into the sinking. Because Marvel sometimes relied on a motorized yawl for power, it should have been inspected before cruises were allowed, Coast Guard Capt. A.W. Kabernagel said.

"Discontinue operation of the vessel carrying passengers for hire until ... submitted for inspection," he had written in a September 1954 letter to Capt. Meckling.

Capt. Kabernagel was overruled by officials in Washington, who said the Coast Guard had no jurisdiction over boats lighter than 700 tons. Marvel weighed 183 tons.

Capt. Meckling, who had not insured his boat, remained in Annapolis after hearings on the catastrophe were concluded. He eventually was divorced from his wife and left the area.

"I know he felt very, very bad — and of course there was the trial," said Euretta Meckling, who lives in the home they shared.

"It was a terrible experience, of course (but) naturally, he had to go on."

Built in 1891 in Bethel, Del., Marvel was a 24-foot-wide "ram schooner" designed especially for crossing the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal. The rams were businesslike boats able to crowd their way into locks without fear of damage.

Marvel carried fertilizer and lumber up and down the bay until rendered obsolete by trucking in the 1940s. Herman Knust, who had retired from the railroad business, conceived "dude cruises."

"Meet and enjoy the association of new friends as you start on your adventure cruise," reads a brochure Mr. Trott produced. "Help us hoist the sails as we get underway."

Mr. Knust bought and renovated Marvel and another ram schooner, Edwin & Maud. After gutting the boats from stem to stern, he added 17 cabins, a shuffleboard court and a lounge to each.

"This one, Levin Marvel was laying up in Curtis Bay and he bought her for a song," Mr. Trott said.

Mr. Trott, whose wife, Gerri, was Mr. Knust's local business manager for a time, years later was offered Marvel for free.

But he was appalled at the boat's condition.

"I was down in Salisbury by daybreak," the day after Mr. Knust offered Marvel, he recalled. "When I looked at that boat, I was like a limp rag. Everything drained out of me.

"I couldn't get enough money to get her in shape, enough to put her out."

Capt. Meckling, on buying Marvel, took the boat to the same shipyard in Baltimore that Mr. Knust had used.

"What we did as a temporary job was satisfactory," Elias Bartholomew Jr. of Booz Brothers testified at the Coast Guard hearings.

Still, in the disaster's aftermath, Mr. Trott felt a mix of sorrow and relief.

"I was devastated that 14 lives had to be lost. Then I said, 'Thank God it wasn't me'."