Don Wilding
There aren’t many people who have been aboard a sinking vessel 390 miles at sea, then stayed adrift in stormy conditions for eight days and nights, and lived to tell about it.
Not only did Ulah Deer of Chatham achieve just that, she and the crew of the Fred Richards managed to get back to land just in time to celebrate Christmas in 1890.
According to a letter that she wrote to her mother on Dec. 23 that year (published in 1947 by The Cape Codder), Deer (who died in 1960) and her then-husband, Captain William E. Reed, were aboard the vessel Fred Richards when the stormy seas overcame the ship and forced them to flee in a lifeboat.