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Samuel Marvin Cochran died , May 15, 1938, when he and two other fellows. one being his son, Ralph and the other a fellow named Walter Knapp, went to rescue a boat that had run aground off City Island, New York. The story, as told to me by an old gent from the City Island Museum and as reported in the New York Times,was that Sam and gone to rescue a boat called the Quita which had run aground on No Nations Reef. Sam , his son Ralph and Walter Knapp had boarded the stranded boat when a storm blew in , suddenly, and threw the men overboard. There was a total of seven men there trying to free the ship, one of whom was Sam's brother, Charles Everett Cochran. Charles held Sam's body afloat. When a life preserver was thrown into the water, it hit Charles in the mouth and knocked out his front teeth.When the storm hit, some of the men had lashed themselves to the main mast of the Quita. Sam ran a boat yard in City Island and was the son of John Samuel Cochran , brother to Hannah Elizabeth Cochran Arnow of Stamford, Connecticut. The Cochran's of City Island were the children of William Whitman Cochran Senior , who had come from Down Patrick, Northern Ireland and settled in City Island around 1860, as a shoe and boot maker on Main Street.

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