The 643-ton barkentine Priscilla had sailed from Baltimore on August 12, bound for Rio de Janeiro under Captain Benjamin Springsteen. His wife, his 12-year-old son Elmer, and a crew of twelve accompanied him, including another son, William Nate. When the hurricane struck, the seas broke over the Priscilla with such violence that the captain's wife, young Elmer, and two crewmen were swept overboard and lost. An hour later the hull cracked in two. The surviving crew scrambled onto the aft section, which drifted toward shore and finally grounded roughly three miles south of Gull Shoals Station. The men were alive, but trapped on disintegrating wreckage in pounding surf, with no one to help them but a single surfman on a rain-soaked beach.

Midgett faced a choice that has defined his legacy. He could ride three hours back to the station for help, but by then the men would almost certainly be dead. Or he could attempt the rescue alone, knowing that if the sea took him too, no patrol would pass for hours and every soul on the wreck would be lost. He chose the surf. Waiting for each wave to recede, Midgett sprinted toward the water and shouted instructions to the stranded crew: one man at a time should jump and fight toward shore, where Midgett would grab him and haul him through the breakers. Seven men made it this way. The last three were too exhausted to swim. Midgett waded into the churning ocean and carried each one to the beach on his own back. He gave his coat to the battered Captain Springsteen, pointed the seven men who could still walk toward the station, and stayed with the three who could not until he was certain they would survive.

Rasmus Midgett was born Erasmus S. Midgett in 1851 on Hatteras Island, then part of Hyde County. Named for St. Elmo, the patron saint of sailors, he grew up in the small community of Southern Woods, now called Waves, where he proved a sharp student of arithmetic and handwriting before joining the Life-Saving Service. He was far from the only hero in his family. Seven members of the Midgett clan earned the Gold Lifesaving Medal, an extraordinary concentration of valor on one stretch of barrier island that earned them the nickname "the Mighty Midgetts." The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Midgett, commissioned in 2019, carries their name across the world's oceans. Rasmus lived in Waves for most of his life, fathered a son named Arthur, and had 13 grandchildren and 31 great-grandchildren before his death on Hatteras Island in 1926.

Lieutenant C. E. Johnston reviewed the station log, the keeper's wreck report, and the investigator's account of the lives lost that night, and recommended the highest honor the service could bestow. On October 18, 1899, the Secretary of the Treasury awarded Rasmus Midgett the Gold Lifesaving Medal, accompanied by a commendatory letter recounting his bravery. One side of the medal reads: "To Rasmus Midgett for rescuing singlehanded ten men from the Priscilla, August 18, 1899." The other: "In Testimony of Heroic Deeds in the Saving of Life from the Perils of the Sea." Today Midgett is buried in Waves on the west side of NC Route 12, five miles south of the Chicamacomico Life-Saving Station. His house has been restored and is being converted into a museum, a quiet monument to a man who chose, in the darkest hour of a hurricane, to walk into the surf alone.