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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/75918-0.txt b/75918-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9fde6fc --- /dev/null +++ b/75918-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2290 @@ + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75918 *** + + + + + + STORIES + OF + CAPE COD + + _by_ + JACK JOHNSON + + [Illustration] + +A “DISCOVERY BOOK”... + +Romantic Facts of All +the Cape Cod Towns + + + + + Copyright 1944 + by JACK JOHNSON + + Designed and printed by + THE MEMORIAL PRESS + Plymouth, Massachusetts + + Cover design by + Leo Schreiber + + First Printing August 10, 1944 + Second Aug. 25, Third Sept 11, Fourth Oct. 1, 1944 + Fifth June 4, 1945 + + _For additional copies of this book write_: + Jack Johnson, Yarmouthport, Cape Cod, Mass. + + + + + _CONTENTS_ + + Bourne 1 + + Sandwich 5 + + Falmouth 9 + + Mashpee 13 + + Barnstable 17 + + Yarmouthport 21 + + Dennis 25, 29 + + Brewster 33 + + Harwich 37 + + Chatham 41 + + Orleans 45, 49 + + Eastham 53 + + South Wellfleet 57 + + Admiral Nimitz 61 + + Truro 65 + + Pioneer Trans-Atlantic Steamship Service 69 + + Provincetown 73 + + Cape Cod Fishing 77 + + Cape Cod Beacon 81 + + First Glider Flight in United States 85 + + + + +BOURNE---- + + _300 Years Ago The Pilgrims + Visioned Cape Cod’s $50,000,000 + Canal_ + + +Myles Standish, the Pilgrim’s engineer, first conceived the idea +for the Cape Cod Canal in 1624. Governor Bradford wished for the +development in order that his fellow pioneers could better carry on +their fur trade with the Dutch in New York. He craved to “avoyd the +compasing of Cap-Codd, and those deangerous shoulds, and so make any +vioage to ye southward in much shorter time, and with far less danger.” + +But, the actual building of this eight-mile waterway was delayed for +300 years. August Belmont took over in 1909, and the job consumed five +years and $13,000,000. Later the Government acquired the Canal--to date +the total cost, including periodic dredging and other improvements, is +said to be around $50,000,000. + +The Canal has proved to be Cape Cod’s greatest contribution to the +winning of the war. + +George Washington saw its military value. In 1776, when he was in +Boston, planning to send troops to New York, Washington observed that +this “interior barrier should be cut in order to give greater security +to navigation, and against the enemy.” + + +BUILT TO PREVENT SHIPWRECKS + +Often the military angle is mentioned in the long and hectic history of +planning the project, but primarily the Canal was visioned to safeguard +shipping in an era when shoals and fogs off this coast took a great +toll of vessels and lives. Also, by speeding up traffic, the Canal was +intended to help in the development of New England commerce. + +Prophetic words were uttered by Belmont’s survey engineer while the +construction was under way. These are found in some interesting +material passed on to me by Bill McLaughlin of the Hotel Onset. “The +Canal as planned,” said Engineer Parsons, “is quite sufficiently deep +to take all the smaller vessels of the Navy, even to cruisers.... There +might, however, arise a contingency when the Canal would be of the +greatest value to the country in time of war.” + +On the shipwreck problem hereabouts in that day, Parsons noted: “Of all +the wrecks occurring on the whole Atlantic coast from Eastport, Maine, +to Key West, Florida, one-quarter take place in the short stretches +between Chatham and Provincetown.” + +Numerous costly attempts were made to put through the waterway, and +failed, before Belmont entered the scene. As the story goes, the +financier was moved largely by sentiment, for when he functioned with +a silver spade at the ceremonious opening of operations it was on land +that once belonged to his ancestors. + +Prospects looked bright for another promoting group just before the +Civil War. It appeared the Government would provide a large portion of +the necessary funds. But negotiations halted when the war started. +At a later stage some 500 Italian laborers were imported to Sandwich +from New York and they began work scooping out the ditch, using shovels +and wheelbarrows. This lasted only a few weeks. Another means employed +was a dredge with a chain of buckets, 39 in all, operated by two steam +engines. Lack of capital halted this venture; the dredge was burned and +sunk in the Canal at the spot where operations had started. + + +FAITH TRIUMPHED IN CRISIS + +August Belmont’s engineer found quicksand in the borings when he began +his survey. He was about to write a report to his boss and recommend +that he save his money. But another engineer whose heart was in the +Canal dream argued warmly that the quicksand was confined to the +center and not over the entire bed of the proposed canal. A glacier +had ploughed its way into the waters of Cape Cod Bay, cutting a furrow +through the valley between Sandwich and Buzzards Bay. + +The quicksand came of this glacier, declared this authority, and he +added it was not general enough to be a serious detriment. His advice +was taken, he was proved correct, and Belmont’s engineer submitted a +report that was favorable. + +On the south bank of the Canal, in Bourne, is a replica of the trading +post, “Aptucxet”, which rests on the very foundation stones that were +laid in 1627. Here the first business between New York and Eastern +Massachusetts was carried on by the Pilgrims who then were intent upon +getting money together to settle with their backers in London who had +financed their voyage to the New World. + +Meanwhile, Governor Bradford was observing the Indians paddle their +canoes up Manomet River, then portage them over a stretch of land to +Scusset Creek and finally navigate on into Cape Cod Bay. It caused him +to think of the advantage of having a Cape Cod Canal. + + + + +SANDWICH---- + + _Joe Jefferson Described It As + “The Handsomest Town Out of + England”_ + + +Joseph Jefferson, great actor of his time, called Sandwich, Cape Cod, +“the handsomest town out of England.” And even today it is interesting +to note that Sandwich--the first town settled on Cape Cod--imparts more +of the nostalgic feeling than any other community on the Cape. + +Massive trees shade her quiet streets, with their beautiful old homes, +and the stranger is conscious of a serenity that places her apart from +the modern world. But, Sandwich, founded in 1637 and with a present +population of less than 2,000 has much to talk about. + +The ancestry of President Franklin D. Roosevelt is traced to the +historic Freeman Farm, at a junction on Route 28. Alvin Page Johnson +of Swampscott, Mass., an accredited genealogist, definitely connects +the President with Cape Cod ancestry and beyond to John Howland, a +Mayflower passenger. Edmond Freeman was among the ten men who came +from Saugus and settled Sandwich. He, according to data discovered by +this genealogist in 1934, was found to be one of the early American +ancestors of our President. Back of the Freeman Farm are boulders with +bronze tablets marking the graves of Edmond and his wife, Elizabeth. + + +DANIEL WEBSTER’S HAVEN + +“Rip Van Winkle” lies in another Sandwich grave. Joe Jefferson +had a strong desire to live in Sandwich. Both he and his friend, +President Grover Cleveland, negotiated to buy houses there, but were +unsuccessful. Historians drop the hint that this might have been +because the righteous Puritans of the community did not want an actor +in their midst. At any rate it is recorded on good authority that +Jefferson remarked to a friend: “They wouldn’t let me live in Sandwich, +but they can’t prevent my burial there.” + +Daniel Webster, great statesman, spent some of his pleasantest hours +on annual fishing and hunting excursions to the streams and marshes of +Sandwich. Daniel Webster Inn, the first stagecoach stop for Cape Cod +travellers of yore, and still providing food and good cheer, was named +for him. Webster put up there. He drank his rum straight and when he +was not engaged in camaraderie with the townsmen in the inn’s quaint +little taproom, the jug was delivered by a lift direct to his room. + +Millions of American kiddies of this and past generations can feel +indebted to Sandwich, for here, also, is the birthplace of one of their +favorite authors. Thornton W. Burgess was born in Sandwich in 1874 +and here he discovered the beloved little characters of his animal +kingdom, whose adventures he put into print and which have lulled many +a child into slumberland. Thornton Burgess had to put a little boy of +his own to bed after his wife’s death, and that’s how he first began +discovering his delightful little characters of the woods and fields. + +The great meat packing industry, Swift and Company of Chicago, stemmed +from the brain and tireless toil of Gustavus Franklin Swift, who was +born in Sandwich in 1839. Gustavus’ ambitions came to light in early +boyhood when he bought hens from his grandfather at 40 cents each, then +sold each hen at a profit. At 16 he bought a heifer, slaughtered it +and peddled the meat. At his death Swift and Company was capitalized +at $25,000,000. Building the foundation for the business on Cape Cod, +Gustavus would drive pigs through the streets of Hyannis, aided by a +well-trained Collie dog. A housewife would come to the door, single +out the porker she wanted, and the dog and master would then thread +through the procession and work together to corner the pig until +the transaction was completed. The Swift family moved to Barnstable +in 1861. Tools used on Cape Cod in the beginning of the great meat +business were collected in Barnstable some years ago and now form a +prized collection at the Swift plant in Chicago. + + +FAME OF SANDWICH GLASS + +Sandwich, herself, was in the big industry bracket. Indeed, the +products of the Boston & Sandwich Glass Company have given the +community national fame, and this fame lives on today. Sandwich +glass, by virtue of design and distinctive colorings, is prized by +collectors all over the country. Here the largest glass-works in the +country flourished in 1850, with 500 master-craftsmen and a weekly +output of 100,000 pounds. There is the legend that the first skilled +glass blowers were from England and were smuggled into this country in +barrels at a time when they were forbidden to enter this country. The +famous plant is in ruins now. It closed down after a strike in 1888, +though, at that time, machine-made glassware, turned out in Pittsburgh +and Chicago, was entering into competition with the wares fashioned by +the original Sandwich artificers. + +Humor and curious laws and prejudices lighten the pages of Sandwich +history. A story that always gets a chuckle is that of “Seth the +Peddler” who, in 1669, was ordered out of town “lest he might become +a public charge.” Seth Pope shook the dust of Sandwich, but before he +left he announced he would be back and he would “buy up the town.” +Which is exactly what he did. Thirty years after making his bitter +departure, Seth, no longer the humble peddler, strode back into +Sandwich and proceeded to purchase nearly all the land in the town. He +built two houses and gave one each to his sons, Seth and John. Then +Seth Pope left Sandwich for good after letting it be generally known +“he would not live in the damn town.” + +And, romancing was decidedly different in those olden days of Sandwich. +Richard Bourne, minister to the Mashpee Indians, lost his wife, +Bathsheba. Not long after, he wrote to a widow who was to be his second +wife: “I have had divers motions since I received yours, but none +suits me but yourself, if God soe incline your myndie to marry me ... +I doe not find in myselfe any flexableness to any other but an utter +loatheness.” + + + + +FALMOUTH---- + + _The “Marrying Town” For + New England’s Greatest + Military Camp_ + + +When New England’s greatest military camp was developed almost on +Falmouth’s doorstep, this very picturesque old community, with its rich +store of whaling lore and seafaring color, became the busiest and most +exciting center on all Cape Cod. + +Falmouth has had a notable number of wartime marriages in the New +England area. Many and many a Camp Edwards soldier, before embarking +for foreign duty has been joined in wedlock. And, these young people +who made the most of a few fleeting hours have come from widespread +parts of the country. + +The time factor also was precious in Falmouth romances of olden days. +There’s the story of the sailing-ship master of the last century. His +wedding plans were all arranged when he received orders to sail out +of New Bedford to Germany with a cargo of oil. A friend arranged to +have his beloved and the parson ready at the hour when the vessel would +arrive off Falmouth. + +No time was lost. The skipper rowed ashore and sped to the new house +he had built for his bride. The ceremony was performed, he kissed his +bride farewell and an hour later was over the water again, resuming a +voyage to Bremen. + + +OUTSTANDING IN HISTORY + +Falmouth is one of the most interesting places, historically, on the +Cape. The first house was built in 1685; the town meeting custom was +established in 1686; the first church was erected in 1796. The Village +Green, most attractive feature of the town, is linked with the colorful +course of Falmouth history. + +Opposite the Green is the old meeting house; in its spire is a bell +cast by Paul Revere. An inscription reads: “The living to the church +I call; And to the grave I summon all.” A faded receipt is in a local +bank, bearing the date 1796 and giving the purchase price as $338.94. +The Green had its whipping post. Not many years ago the top of the post +was found in the attic of a house facing the Green and was removed to +the Public Library to go on exhibition. + +Outstanding in Falmouth’s story is her rich fund of whaling lore. The +Town’s Museum has a generous assortment of articles reflecting the +great activity in this line: navigation instruments, revolvers used to +put down mutinies, logbooks, handcuffs, harpoon and many ship pictures. + +Elijah Swift, who began as a carpenter, is rated the most useful +citizen in Falmouth history and he is credited with first bringing +prosperity to the town. Elijah Swift knew wood, hence his services +were highly valued when he was engaged to supply live oak for the +shipbuilding program of the American Navy after the War of 1812. He +recruited a large number of Falmouth men to go South on the live oak +operation and, incidentally, he was successful in fighting the dreaded +“yellow jack” disease in the swamp country. This business was destined +to run into the millions. + + +INTERESTING PERSONALITIES + +A living reminder of Elijah Swift’s works are the beautiful, tall trees +surrounding the Village Green. He was permitted by the town, in 1832, +to plant, at his own expense, the saplings that developed into these +giants. The first summer after the planting was unusually dry. Elijah +Swift hired a man to carry water daily from Shiverick’s Pond to keep +life in the saplings, and this loving care he gave at the outset makes +this scene today “a glory to the community.” + +Falmouth has had, and still has, many people who have done distinctive +work in their lifetime. Katherine Lee Bates, who wrote “America, the +Beautiful,” was Falmouth-born. Edward Herbert Thompson, great American +archaeologist, who did some of the most important work of bringing to +light the facts of ancient American life and culture, was a Falmouth +native. + +Coonamessett Ranch, in the township of Falmouth, is said to be the +largest ranch east of the Mississippi. Charles R. Crane of Chicago +started cultivating it in 1915, to demonstrate the agricultural +possibilities of Cape Cod. But he had an idealistic aim that was +thwarted by the outbreak of the last war. The great acres were to have +been settled by carefully selected families of the Russian peasantry, +and the owner was intent upon carrying through his ideas for developing +the possibilities of the less fortunate Russian folk. + + + + +MASHPEE---- + + _Where the Wampanoag + Indian Tongue is Still + Chanted_ + + +Mrs. Dorcas Gardner, of Wampanoag Indian descent, sits in a low-ceiling +little room mellowed from many years of simple living, and she speaks +with the wisdom of her 74 years. + +“Why? I come up against the word Why so often I have to let it go by. +The Lord knows best. It should be a better world after this war. When +you go to the lowest, there must be an uplift somehow. We’ve seen so +much of the bad we’re bound to have some good come out of it.” + +Mashpee (originally Massapee) is steeped in Indian lore. Here is Cape +Cod’s smallest town. It has a population of 405. George Perlot proudly +points to the town’s remarkable service record. + +From the tent days Camp Edwards has had close ties with little Mashpee. +Indeed, 90 per cent of its airport is on Mashpee land. But this +historic settlement has always had more than a local reputation, as far +back as 1658 when Richard Bourne began his evangelistic work among the +Indians. Mashpee election returns are watched for and featured in the +city newspapers, because they are the first to be announced in every +State or Federal polling. + + +OLDEST CAPE COD CHURCH + +The Indian Church, oldest house of worship on Cape Cod, is a rare +landmark; likewise the Indian burial ground, whose oldest gravestone +marks the resting place of Chief Popmonnett, who died in 1770 at the +age of 51. The fame of historic Hotel Attaquin, a whaling skipper’s +enterprise, is such that someone, in 1910, filched the register which +bore the signatures of Daniel Webster, Joseph Jefferson, Charles Dana +Gibson, Grover Cleveland, John Drew and Finley Peter Dunne. + +Two men survive in Mashpee who still speak the Wampanoag +tongue--Ambrose Pells and William James. One or the other intones the +primitive language over the grave when a Mashpee resident of Indian +descent is given to the earth. + +In 1711, the Rev. Daniel Williams of London left a fund in charge of +Harvard University for the religious education of Indians. Mashpee +became the beneficiary of this largesse. Richard Bourne taught the +Indians here to govern themselves; they were authorized to hold their +own courts, try criminals and pass judgment. Further, Bourne caused a +law to be invoked whereby “No land could be bought by or sold to any +white person without the consent of all the Indians, not even with the +consent of the General Court.” + +A Provincetown preacher, one Mr. Stone, appeared before the Mashpees +long ago and, in his sermon, laid particular stress on the evils of +alcohol. One of the Indians was asked how he liked the sermon. He +answered: + +“Mr. Stone is one very good preacher, but he preach too much about rum. +Indian think nothing about it; but when he tells how Indian love rum, +and how much they drink, then I think how good it is, and think no more +’bout the sermon, my mouth waters all the time so much for rum.” + + +ANCIENT RITES RE-ENACTED + +Another in the line of preachers who occupied the Indian Church pulpit +was Rev. Phineas Fish of Sandwich. He annoyed his early American +parishioners, because, while accepting a salary, he held church for the +whites and discouraged attendance by the Indians. At a meeting of the +elders some strong sentiments were expressed and ultimately Mr. Fish +was forcibly ejected, after which “the lock on the door of the chapel +was changed.” + +Mrs. Gardner many years ago originated the Richard Bourne Day ceremony, +in celebration of the ordination of the pioneer missionary. In August +of each year the colorful pageantry of braves in their great feather +head-dresses, their squaws with beaded buckskins, tom-toms, tepees and +even papooses was witnessed at the Indian Church. The Indians came +from Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and other parts. Their +ancient rites were re-enacted and they exchanged reminiscenses of their +family lines, while large crowds of white visitors looked on and let +their imaginations roll backward. The war came and the curtain was +drawn--for the duration, at least--on this picturesque ceremony at the +257-year-old Indian Church in Mashpee. + + + + +BARNSTABLE---- + + _Revival Of A Great Cape Cod + Tradition Is Taking Place + In Hyannis Village_ + + +In olden days New England’s great clipper ships had a world reputation. +Fortunes of the American merchant marine were at the crest in the +1850’s, when, also, Cape Cod’s memorable pageant of clippers and +stalwart shipmasters were in full lustre--notably, the famous Red +Jacket, which made the record crossing of the Atlantic on her maiden +voyage in 13 days and one hour. + +Today the spirit of this great tradition is revived here with a new, +even more widespread, sort of drama. The historic Massachusetts +Maritime Academy has established a “permanent shore base” at Hyannis, +Cape Cod, to school officers for wartime duty in our merchant marine +and Navy and--after the war--to train young men for technical jobs at +sea or ashore. + +This is definitely the most newsworthy and promising wartime +development in Cape Cod affairs. + + +OLD SEAFARER GIVES ADVICE + +The 100th class of this old school which had its beginning in the era +of wooden ships and iron men was graduated in 1944 with colorful and +impressive ceremonies. A full dress drill by a battalion of midshipmen +on the Academy parade grounds provided a stirring scene for some 500 +fathers and mothers and relatives. The graduating class was the largest +in the 51 years of the institution. Governor Saltonstall, Rear Admiral +Robert A. Theobald, U.S.N., Commandant of First Naval District, and +other notables bid Godspeed and counselled the new officers who were to +join Academy comrades scattered over the world in all theatres of the +war. + +Particularly interesting was the meaty advice Admiral Theobald offered +the new officers out of his own 40-odd years of seafaring experience. +He said: + +“You’re going to have to spend endless days and months in the sameness +of only a cloudless sky above you and a smooth sea beneath you. +Don’t get in a seagoing rut. Get an avocation as soon as you can. I +would suggest that you develop the habit of doing heavy reading on +international relations. Your nation is in the middle of world politics +now and will never recede again from world relationships.” + +“We, as a nation, have been too prone to accept the notion that other +nations have the same psychological reactions as ours. You will find it +a very interesting avocation to get books and study other people of the +world. You must go back to find out what makes them tick. And, also, +this reading will enable you to determine whether your own statesmen +are doing a good job.” + +He made a point of impressing the graduates that a man in war never +gets over fear. In a crisis of danger they would be afraid the first +time, and the hundredth time, although each time they would learn more +of what to expect. + + +GOVERNOR SEES FUTURE + +Governor Saltonstall spoke of America’s plans for a great merchant +marine fleet, and said, “I congratulate you on the opportunities that +lie ahead of you.” + +Capt. Walter K. Queen, U.S.N.R., Ret., chairman of the Academy’s board +of commissioners, announced that the total number of Massachusetts +lads trained for officer duty since the Academy was founded now was +2,277. In keeping with a long-time custom, the Boston Marine Society, +established in 1742 and the oldest marine society in the world, +presented its prize to Vincent Francis Leahy of Brookline as “the +graduate excelling in those qualities making for the best shipmaster.” +Prizes were presented also to other outstanding students by the Society +of the War of 1812 and the Massachusetts State Society. + +Cape Cod, pioneered by men of the sea, is an appropriate setting for a +modern school of shipmasters. The future looks extremely promising and +the Academy, hardly established on the new site, is steadily expanding. +Its erstwhile students are in the thick of action in this war, and many +of them saw the worst of it while “delivering the goods” to Murmansk. +Some have been killed, some wounded and some decorated for valor. + +Cape Cod and New England at large will hear much about the +Massachusetts Maritime Academy as time goes on, for the signs point to +increasing heights of achievement by the American merchant marine after +peace is won. + +Capt. Claude O. Bassett, U.S.N.R., is the Academy superintendent. A +mild and good-humored veteran and thoroughly schooled and seasoned in +the profession of the sea. + + + + +YARMOUTHPORT---- + + _Ichabod Paddock, Whaling + Instructor--and “Wes” Baker, + Guadalcanal Hero_ + + +Tom Baker is mail carrier for the Yarmouthport, Cape Cod, postoffice. +An elderly man, wiry, with quick-moving gait, he makes his appointed +rounds in fair weather and foul. A younger man who held the job is in a +war plant. + +When Guadalcanal was taken, Tom Baker’s son--19-year-old Pvt. 1st Cl. +Thomas Wesley Baker--raced up the beach in the first invading wave of +Marines. + +I talked with him when he came home--an invalid, with jungle malaria in +his system. His Guadalcanal experience had cost him 40 pounds. + +It was 3 o’clock in the morning when the Japs advanced up the beach. +Wes Baker was taut and scared, because this was to be his first +experience in actual combat.... “We saw them first. They came in +columns of four. The highest ranking officers were right out in front. +Later, we found that none of the Japs was less than corporal and in +their clothing was a lot of American and English money. They were +picked troops and the biggest Japs I ever saw, all of them close to +six feet tall. They came through a little lagoon, waist high in water. +There wasn’t any barbed wire up, so they kept coming on. They were no +more than 200 yards away when we opened fire. There were 1500 of them +and they were all killed. We lost 29 and 80 were wounded. We’d charge +and they’d go into the water, trying to swim out of range. We picked +them off like ducks. When their officers were killed, they didn’t know +what they were doing.” + + +HOME FRONT CHARM + +More advanced in years than mail carrier Tom Baker are Miss Saidee M. +Swift and her sister, Mrs. Caroline Burr, of the Home Front. They are +in the candy-making business. + +A large and pleasant old house stands at the bend of the road just as +you enter upon the beautiful vista of great elms in Yarmouthport. A +weather-worn sign--Saidee Swift’s Candies--is on a tree out in front. +For 20 years Saidee Swift has turned out fine candies and travellers +from all parts of the nation have knocked at her door. Her chocolates +have gone to China. Governor Saltonstall is one of her best customers. +Her trade has included judges, society folk, artists, writers and +countless prominent individuals who have visited the Cape. Each +Christmas she makes about 200 pounds of candy for faithful customers in +distant parts. + +Saidee Swift’s technique includes a close watch on the weather and +sometimes she waits four or five days for just the right temperature. +She says, “In a northeast storm, I can dip splendidly.” + +Whaling captains lived in the great houses facing the Yarmouthport +elms. In 1691, Ichabod Paddock was engaged to go to Nantucket to +instruct men “in the art of killing whales by the employment of boats +from the shore.” Not far from Saidee Swift’s is the former domicile of +Asa Eldredge, commander of the famous clipper Red Jacket, who made a +record voyage from New York to Liverpool in 13 days. + +Regular packet service to Boston contributed to the naming of +Yarmouthport. There is still an old timer or two who can recall the +fierce competition between the Yarmouthport and Barnstable sailing +packets and the frequent races to Boston. + + +WOMEN MOULDED BULLETS + +Yarmouthport is a part of the township of Yarmouth, which is +considerably spread out, from shore to shore, across the Cape. Not so +many years ago some stray bullets were found under the bricks of the +hearthstone of an old house that was being demolished. The find was +reminiscent of the story of Joshua Gray and his fellow soldiers of +Yarmouth. Joshua Gray was captain of the early Yarmouth Militia and an +officer in the Revolution, who marched with his men to help Washington +defend Dorchester Heights. The night before their departure, women of +the town worked in his home until sunrise moulding bullets for the +soldiers. + +In great grandfather’s time Yarmouthport was the trading center in +this section of the Cape, and people came over from Hyannis to do +their shopping. Tom Baker’s mail delivery job was first held by John +Thacher, who rode horseback and made his rounds once a week. His pay +was $1 a day, and some citizens considered this an extravagance. Total +postoffice receipts in the town of Yarmouthport for the year 1795 +amounted to $26. + +The first daily newspaper on Cape Cod was founded in 1893 in +Yarmouthport. George Otis operated the _Cape Cod Item_. On the +same site the _Yarmouth Register_, weekly newspaper, continues to +record the local life, as it did 108 years ago. + + + + +DENNIS---- + + _The “Smoky Gold” Craft Thrived + When America Was Young_ + + +The “smoky gold” story of Cape Cod gives a rare picture of the +pioneering spirit and richness of America’s founding days. + +Smoky gold was the local name for lampblack, an indispensable base for +paints and printer’s ink in the olden days. The little town of Dennis, +once a great clipper ship port, was known in those days as one of the +world’s greatest sources of lampblack and her precious shipments were +in demand in England and on the Continent. + +A modern summer visitor, the Rev. Ernest G. N. Holmes of Bethlehem, +Pa., brought the story of the great Cape Cod industry to light. While +clearing a Dennis farm he had bought for a summer home, the clergyman +discovered a stone arch two or three feet above the ground; adjoining +it was a stone floor and around its edges the soil was as black as +night--a very unusual color for Cape Cod earth. + + +AN INGENIOUS OPERATION + +Subsequent investigation revealed that this was the remnant of a +lampblack manufactory, known to the old timers as a Funn. Today this +section of Dennis is called Funntown. The Funn was a lamp chimney +on Gargantuan lines. Anyone who has used a kerosene lamp knows how +annoying it was to have the lamp smoke and smudge the glass. The Funn, +however, was erected for just that purpose, only there was no glass +and the lampblack formed on the ceiling of the Funn thick enough to be +scraped off in layers. Thus, smoky gold was produced. + +The relic was found knee-high above the ground, but when the Funn was +in working order it stood 18 feet above the ground and over a circular +area 20 feet in diameter. It was of stone and brick construction, the +top like a great inverted cone. There was an opening on each side. The +winds were important to the industry. So, the Funns were always built +in pairs, the hearth of one facing due east and the other due north. +The prevailing wind on Cape Cod is southwest. The idea was to keep the +smoke from escaping outside the Funn. + +The smoke first came from fires of pine knots gathered in the +surrounding woods. Next, after this supply was cut down, resin was +sailed to Dennis from the Carolinas and Virginia. A fuel problem +arose when, in 1860, a Civil War blockade cut off this supply. The +Funn operators then looked to the coal regions of the Pennsylvania +mountains; naphtha, a by-product, was shipped in and this was used up +to the last days when the Funns operated. + + +OXEN CARTED SMOKY GOLD + +After the fire was quenched, a man would enter the Funn with a 12-foot +pole and a board at the end, somewhat like a hoe. For protection +against the showering soot he wore a straw hat with a brim that went +beyond his shoulders, and with his long scraper he would reap the heavy +coatings of smoky gold. It would be poured into boxes, then taken to an +adjacent packing shed, where the boxes would be sealed for shipment. +Oxen then would cart the smoky gold to the East Dennis shore, where +crews of the clipper ships that sailed the seven seas put in. It would +go to Boston by sail, a trip of 10 to 11 hours if the wind was good. +On the oldtime Boston docks Cape Cod lampblack would join the company +of spices and silks from India, the teas from China, Java’s coffee and +sugar from the West Indies and become a part of the adventurous world +commerce of the clipper days. + +“Time moves on to ever new discoveries,” wrote Edna Cornell, telling +the story of smoky gold in a bulletin of The Society for the +Preservation of New England Antiquities. “The wonder of yesterday is +the forgotten glory of today. The Funns were new and amazing a century +ago; but industry, always in a hurry, outstripped them long ago, and +they are now only a few scattered bricks, a few garden walks and a +fireplace. Nevertheless, like all big and influential things, no matter +of what antiquity or deep obliteration, they have left a footprint +behind them that time has not yet erased nor witchgrass on a Cape Cod +farm completely hidden.” + + + + +DENNIS---- + + _“Sleepy John” Sears’ + $2,000,000 Idea_ + + +Some remembrances of an old Cape Codder: + +“Salt works! Yes, I have seen many of them. There were rows and rows +of them on my grandfather’s farm. And my grandmother! Well, she wore +herself out taking care of them. She had only 14 children. Generally +three of them were in arms. Many a time when grandfather and the boys +were at the flats (the shore) and a rainstorm came up, grandmother +would walk half a mile, carrying one child, leading another, and the +three-year-old toddling behind--to the salt works to cover them before +the rain came on. Rain freshened the salt, you know.” + +Salt-making by the solar evaporation process was developed into a +$2,000,000 business on Cape Cod in the early 1800’s, according to +one estimate. Today, in an age when the Cape lives on the summer +vacationist trade and Camp Edwards revenue, you rarely hear a mention +of this once great, now extinct, industry. The originator was a +retired skipper who had ideas and ever a weather eye for an extra +dollar--Capt. John (“Sleepy John”) Sears of Dennis. + + +CAPE COD STICKTOITIVNESS + +People thought him whacky when they first learned he was trying to make +money from the sun and the salt water all around him. But, Sleepy John +(an ill-chosen sobriquet, if there ever was one) had the last laugh and +rolled up a nice fortune meanwhile when he demonstrated that it is not +only a good idea to have ideas but, also, to carry them through. For, +salt was a lot more important in his era; it was needed then as now to +go with ones’ vittles, though the greatest value was its indispensable +use in the curing of fish. + +Dubbed “Sears Folly”, the first salt-making plant got off to a merry +start in 1776. Skipper Sears built a vat, or “water room”, that was a +crude affair, 100 feet long, 10 feet wide. There were shutters over +the top so that the vat containing salt water could be covered when +it rained, or exposed to the full rays of the sun. As the hot sun +poured down on the water, salt began to crystallize and the Dennis +idea man must have danced a ’76 jitter jig, conjuring up pictures +of what he would do with all his wealth, amassed from just a simple +contraption and no expense whatever. At the end of the sunny season, +however, Captain Sears had produced only eight bushels of salt, and the +neighbors were laughing louder. + +The old sea dog wasn’t in the habit of quitting when the going got +rough. Having discovered that production was held down by leaks in the +vat, he persevered and found a way to make the vat tight as a drum. The +second year he crystallized 30 bushels of salt. But, a labor problem +was slowing his progress. The salt water had to be poured into the vat +from buckets, a tedious and time-consuming handicap, for John soon +learned that for every 350 gallons of water he poured only one bushel +of salt formed. He kept plugging and, meanwhile, he was doing some tall +scheming. The neighbors were still laughing. + + +FINALE OF A GREAT INDUSTRY + +On the fourth year Sears Folly was improved with a pump worked by hand. +Production was stepped up. The pump continued in use until 1785, then, +at a suggestion of Capt. Nathaniel Freeman, John Sears, with the help +of others, contrived a pump worked by wind. This really turned the +trick and set the skipper off full sail to become the local Croesus. + +Salt sold at $8 a bushel ($8 was $8 in those times) and the bushels +piled higher and higher at the Sears works. By this time the neighbors +had gotten sober and interested and other salt-making windmills were +erected and their creaking and whirring were familiar sounds throughout +the village. The men who assisted John Sears with his windmill +improvement eventually reassigned to him their right and title and +finally the founder of the salt industry obtained a Government patent. + +The production of salt spread in other parts of the Cape, notably +Provincetown, a great fishing port and, earlier, a whaler’s haven. +Salt-making began there in 1800; in 1837 the tip of the Cape had 78 +salt works, each employing two men and producing a total of 48,960 +bushels of salt. The manufacturing developed even to a higher plan when +Glauber Salts, made from boiling brine, was valued by physicians and +came into brisk demand. + +Development of the salt springs of New York, and manufacturing +improvements and cheaper operating costs elsewhere, marked the +beginning of the end of Cape Cod’s great salt industry. + + + + +BREWSTER---- + + _Thanks to Pioneering Here, + Millions of American Soldiers + Wear Good Shoes_ + + +Quiet little Brewster, Cape Cod, offers a rich tapestry of Americana. + +Many a U. S. soldier slogging over the world battlefronts is wearing +brogans turned out by patented machines of the great United Shoe +Machinery--which started from a one-man cobbling business in oldtime +Brewster. + +West Brewster, dubbed “Factory Village” by the old timers, was a +bustling scene, with spinning, fulling and grist mills, tannery and +iron works, and the still-present Flax Pond, where flax gathered in +surrounding fields was put to soak in the water-retting process of +making linen. + +The sheep growers would trek here, over the fields and ragged roads, +with their bags of wool. The going was hard on their footwear, it was +noted by the Winslow brothers, one of whom operated a fulling mill +and the other, a grist mill. So, to maintain good will, the fulling +mill Winslow verged into a sideline of cobbling the shoes of his wool +producers. + +But, a teen-age son--who gave the lie to common gossip of that day, +that the younger generation was swiftly going to the dogs--was actually +the one who transformed the humble cobbler’s tapping into a nationwide +whirr and, incidentally, founded the Great Winslow fortune of today. + + +A CROSS-ROADS GENIUS + +The lad was uncommonly ingenious and tenacious. Recruited by the +fulling mill operator to assist in the cobbling work, the boy grew +impatient at the tediousness of the task. He conceived a time-saving +and labor-saving machine. Then he dreamed up another and another. He +wrote to Washington and obtained a patent on each new invention as fast +as it took shape. + +These same patents are in use today in the big shoe plants of America, +and the earnings from them continue to flow handsomely to the present +Winslow heirs. Thus, the mighty United Shoe Machinery Company got its +first breath of life on old Cape Cod. + +Brewster is named for Elder William Brewster, a crusader for religious +freedom, who sailed to Cape Cod on the Mayflower and acted as pastor to +the church at Plymouth. He is described as having been “tender harted, +and compassionate of such as were in miserie.” Further, “none did more +offend him and displease him than such as would haughtily and proudly +carry and lift up themselves, being rise from nothing, and haveing +little els in them to comend them but a few fine cloaths, or a little +riches more than others.” On his death, we are told, Elder Brewster’s +complete estate consisted of 275 books, of which 64 were “in the +learned languages.” + +Quaint names are associated with Cape Cod lore. Fear Brewster was one +of Elder Brewster’s daughters and he had sons named Love Brewster and +Wrestling Brewster. + + +SEA ADVENTURES OF OLD + +When Brewster town history is recounted there is always talk of the +colorful seafaring oldsters and their great sailing craft. Outstanding +is the Pitcairn Island story. Captain William Freeman of Brewster +landed at the bleak hiding place of the Bounty mutineers in 1883, +and brought his daughter Clara along with him. Clara cultivated the +friendship with Rosa Young, daughter of Edward Young, who survived the +hardships and bloody conflict among the mutineers after they found +refuge on the island in 1790. Later, they corresponded. Today, in the +Brewster Public Library, there is the original manuscript of Rosa +Young’s letters, extending over a period of six months. + +In one of these letters, Rosa tells of her meeting with the chaplain +of the man-of-war Constance, who landed at Pitcairn. All descendents +of the mutineers, including Rosa, were intensely religious. Thus, she +described the visiting chaplain to her Brewster friend: “Whether he +experienced the same feeling that I did I cannot tell, but I certainly +thought that a more un-chaplain-looking man was hard to find, and if +words and manner are an index to a man’s character, he certainly did +not seem rightly fitted for a sacred office.” And then, as though to +show how shocked she was, Rosa Young concluded, “as we were about to +leave ship he said, ‘Now, we will have to sing, _The Girl I Left +Behind Me._’” + +The house in Brewster where Joseph C. Lincoln, writer of Cape Cod +character stories, was born still bears a For Sale sign. Conrad Aiken, +noted American poet, has a Summer place in a tranquil spot in the hill +country. Chester Slack, an artist of reputation, lives there year-round +and takes a sympathetic interest in local affairs. In recent times +a Brewster craftsman, with a resourceful spirit reminiscent of the +Factory Village pioneers, has been weaving fine tweeds to fill +individual orders. + +Brewster today reflects mostly upon her memory-book, for there is +no longer any of the teeming industry of the Winslow founders. The +exciting spring herring run annually draws attention to the town. +Brewster has one vestige of the hallowed past that is distinctive: +It is the site of the only water-power grist mill on Cape Cod where +countless modern summer visitors have watched the ancient process of +grinding corn--and captured a bit of stirring reality of the vigorous +Founding Days of our nation. + + + + +HARWICH---- + + _A Liberator of Slaves, Immortalized + by the Poet Whittier_ + + +“The boys all want the town paper. It’s like getting a letter from +home, they write.” + +Harry Albro, friendly and kind country editor, gives particular +attention to his servicemen’s mailing list. He served under MacArthur +in the last war, was gassed at Argonne and came back with six battle +stars. He has held the post of a State Guard commanding officer and has +had other Home Front duties. His homey weekly newspapers mean a lot to +people in war service now far removed from their beloved Cape Cod. + +When the Revolutionary War clouds loomed, Ebenezer Weekes of Harwich +said to his son, “Eben you are the only one that can be spared; take +your gun and go; fight for religion and liberty!” + + +“HARRICH” IN ENGLAND, “HAR-WICH” HERE + +“Harrich” is the way it is mouthed in the seaport town of Essex County, +England. The Harwich of Cape Cod is pronounced Har-wich. This Harwich +was founded in 1694 and it is said that one of her ardent townsmen, +Patrick Butler, walked all the way to Boston, a trek of 100 miles, to +obtain the incorporation. + +In modern times Anthony Elmer Crowell of East Harwich achieved fame +as one of America’s great craftsmen. Mr. Crowell, remote from the +beaten path, admirably proved the better mousetrap adage. He carved and +painted images of birds so realistically that they came into demand +for museums and private collections and travelled even to Australia. +At first Mr. Crowell was a gunners’ guide, commissioned to fashion +some duck decoys that would be more convincing to Cape Cod ducks than +the wood-butcher jobs that other decoy-makers had sold the sportsmen. +Then the East Harwich genius branched into making robins, bluejays, +sanderlings and the many, many other species of the feathered tribes. + +Word of his skill got around fast and he profited handsomely. His +quaint craft was put into Joseph C. Lincoln’s Cape Cod book, “Queer +Judson”. And, “It is not unlikely that a day may come when a ‘Crowell +bird’ will be as much sought as a genuine bit of Sandwich glass or a +slender piece of Sheraton furniture,” prophesies Arthur Wilson Tarbell +in “Cape Cod Ahoy!” + +Religion was a strong point of Harwich’s early days. A variety of +fifteen denominations once functioned within the town’s borders and +at times emotions ran high. It is recorded, for example, that the +Rev. Edward Pell of Harwich left a request for his burial to be in +the North Precinct, or present-day Brewster, for, “if left among the +pines of the South Precinct (Harwich) he might be overlooked at the +resurrection, that the Lord would never think of looking in such an +un-Godly place for a righteous man.” + + +MAN WITH “THE BRANDED HAND” + +In 1743 came the “Great Awakening” evangelical movement and with it +the all-out sects known as “New Lights” who “made the pine woods of +Harwich ring with Hallelujahs and hosannas, even from babes!” Moreover, +there was “a screeching and groaning all over, and it hath been very +powerful ever since.” Touching on activities of the New Lights, Henry +C. Kittridge, Cape Cod historian, narrates that “when under the spell +of their mania, they walked along the tops of fences instead of on the +sidewalks; affected a strange, springing gait, and conversed by singing +instead of ordinary speech, in the distressing manner of characters in +light operas.” Could it be that author Kittridge was spoofing us a bit? + +A native of Harwich--recorded in history as the first liberator of +slaves--is eulogized in verse by Whittier. Capt. Jonathan Walker in +1844 put out from Pensacola with seven runaway slaves aboard his +vessel, having responded to their appeals to be taken to the British +West Indies, where they would find freedom under the Union Jack. The +Cape Cod skipper was captured, he was imprisoned in irons and thence +the brand, “S.S.” (slave stealer) was seared into his right hand. +Captain Walker is hailed by Whittier: + + “Hold it up before our sunshine, up against our Northern air; + Ho! Men of Massachusetts, for the love of God, look there! + Take it henceforth for your standard, like the Bruce’s heart of yore, + In the dark strife closing round ye, let that hand be seen before.” + +The culture of cranberries on Cape Cod--a source of revenue that runs +into the millions--was begun on a commercial scale in Harwich in 1845, +though it was Henry Hall of Dennis who was the pioneer grower in 1816. +Fishing was on the decline and a retired harvester of cod spoke the +sentiment of his salty brethren: + +“I put up my chart and glass, and took to raising cranberry sass.” +Before then the cranberry was regarded as only food for the cranes. +Crane-berry was the original name the pioneers gave this famous Cape +Cod product. + + + + +CHATHAM---- + + _The First American to Fly + The Atlantic “Hopped Off” Here_ + + +“You don’t say hum and eggs, do you?” chided the old native. + +So, the proper pronunciation for the town of Chatham is--Chat-ham. With +the accent on the hind end. To the native this is important. And so it +is on the opposite side of the nation where the true citizen of San +Francisco winces when you say “Frisco” and would prefer to have you +articulate the whole name of his fair city. + +Chatham, with some 50 miles of shoreline, is one of the most beautiful, +unspoiled seashore places on Cape Cod. Architecture of great seafaring +days, the primitive, lonely cry of the seagull, the home-spun shell +fisherman, a history crowded with drama, bright little Yankee streets, +art and literature and here and there a touch of international +fame--this is Chatham. The writer is prejudiced, because this is the +place where, 18 years ago, he spent his first night on Cape Cod. And +met his first artist acquaintance, a dear friend for two decades, +Harold Dunbar. + + +PEOPLE OF DISTINCTION + +The late Joseph C. Lincoln was a widely known Chatham resident. The +writer of many fiction-novels about Cape Cod folk contributed more +than any other person to make this peninsula known to the nation at +large. Arthur Wilson Tarbell of Chatham, a modern historian, wrote +an outstanding book, “Cape Cod Ahoy!” Sinclair Lewis did some of his +early writing here. Alice Stallknecht Wight got on the Associated Press +wires as a result of the excitement caused by her mural painting in +the Chatham Congregational Church. “Christ Preaching to the Multitude” +is its title. The multitude consists of well known Chatham faces and +Christ, depicted as a fisherman, is shown addressing them from a boat. +For a companion piece Mrs. Wight later painted “The Last Supper”, +showing Coast Guards, sea captains and other Chathamites as the +disciples. + +And in a pleasing, secluded spot the late Supreme Court Justice Louis +D. Brandeis had his summer home for many years. + +The tiptop spire of the Congregational Church is fashioned from a +spar on the bark R. A. Allen, wrecked on the Chatham shore in 1887. +Lightning damaged the church in the same storm. And the Cape’s toy +windmill industry, that has waxed fat from the summer trade, started +in Chatham. The humble carver of the first shop is romanticized in +Lincoln’s novel “Shavings”. But a Coast Guard station skipper is given +credit for making the first toy windmill. The art spread to other +stations and business got so brisk the Government issued an order, +forbidding the guardians of the deep from engaging further in the +profitable sideline. + + +LINKED WITH OLD ENGLAND + +Chatham is named for the County of Kent town in old England. Before the +Pilgrims came to the Cape, Champlain, the French explorer, arrived +here in 1606. He planned to establish a French colony in Chatham, but +a fight with the Indians drove him off. In 1658, William Nickerson of +Norfolk, England, appeared on the scene and gave the sachem Mattaquason +a shallop for the sea-girted acres. Complications developed; Nickerson +was called to Plymouth Court and ultimately he had to pay 90 pounds as +a fair purchase price. In 1712 Chatham was incorporated as a town. + +The Mayflower, her passengers looking to a settlement below the Hudson, +barely escaped being wrecked on the Chatham shoals. Here she turned +back to enter Provincetown Harbor. + +Three hundred years later a Navy flier repaid this visit, wafting down +from the heavens onto Plymouth, England. + +Lieut. Albert Cushing Read of Hanson, Mass., was the first man to +fly the Atlantic, and he took off from Chatham. He competed in a +trans-ocean contest of the Navy “Nancies” in 1919, the N-C’s 1, 2, 3 +and 4. The original takeoff point was Rockaway Beach, Long Island. Read +rode the N-C 4, which was disabled far off this shore, but managed +to get into this port, where, as luck had it, a Navy air station was +located for the training of large numbers of fliers for the last war. +A new motor was installed, the N-C 4 winged off to the Azores via +Trepassey Bay, New Foundland and the pioneering flight was completed +with fifty-two and a half hours having been spent in the skies. Read +flew on to Plymouth, perhaps for sentiment’s sake, having the Mayflower +in mind. + + + + +ORLEANS---- + + _The World’s Insomnia + Champion Lived Here_ + + +The late Joseph C. Lincoln of Chatham gained national fame with his +stories of Cape Cod. The quaint characters he wrote about were, for the +most part, taken from life. Some other old-timers, however, have been a +bit too unconventional, even for Mr. Lincoln’s yarn-spinning purposes. +“Bill-Ike” Small, for example. + +Bill-Ike--or, Isaac Wilbur Small, a name that no one would have +recognized--claimed he never slept. He was the insomnia champion of +the world until he passed on in Orleans a few years ago. And, he made +it so real a Boston paper printed pages about him. The paper sent down +its crack feature writer and he and Bill-Ike went off to New York to +tour the night clubs--the idea being to determine whether Bill-Ike’s +story would stand the test during two or three night of skylarking and +sitting up in a hotel room. + +Bill-Ike made good, we were told, for the newspaperman observed him +every blessed minute of the sleeplessness, nor did he, himself, fall +off a chair. + + +HE GAINED WEIGHT, TOO + +“I close my eyes for a little while, just to rest ’em, but I don’t +sleep. I haven’t used a bed for over five years,” Bill-Ike would tell +me. Then the gentle old man with a flowing white beard would add that +he had gained 38 pounds in the past year. + +He would just “set” in a decrepit old chair by the stove or putter +about the house long winter nights. He’d while away the tedious hours +reading sea stories and cowboy yarns and go through three or four +magazines in a night. But, his mother’s glasses didn’t serve him as +well toward the end and time became more of a burden. Around 3 a.m. he +would brew a pot of tea and make himself a sandwich. Moonlight nights +in the spring and summer were welcomed, for then he was able to get +outdoors and do a few chores. + +Bill-Ike said he first discovered the capacity to go without sleep when +he was a youth working in the cranberry bogs during a rush season. He +worked night and day for three months that time and discovered that +he could get along with only an hour’s snooze in the morning before +breakfast. But, he didn’t really begin to make a habit of staying awake +until 1928. + + +HOW HE “EXPERIMENTED” + +That year Bill-Ike happened to read in a magazine, “Nobody can go 80 +days without sleep.” Just to prove this wasn’t so, the old gentleman +began by denying himself sleep for a continuous stretch of 83 days. +In 1929 he “experimented” again, keeping awake 147 days. Then the +sleeplessness became more of a habit. But, each year he bettered his +own record and in 1933 he rounded out his first full year of going +without sleep. Finally, Bill-Ike achieved the amazing five-year record, +and he was going into his sixth year when he passed on. + +He was in fine fettle almost to the end, a firm believer in the gospel +of hard toil. During vacation seasons he kept busy tending the gardens +and being the handyman for summer cottagers. A bachelor--“always +been willin’ but the right gal ain’t ever showed up”--Bill-Ike lived +with his brother, Fred, in a century-old house in a spot remote from +the town. Fred would have his regular eight or nine hours in bed, +undisturbed by Bill-Ike’s poking about the house at all hours of the +night. + +“Sure, I could enjoy a full night’s sleep,” was the old insomnia +champion’s mournful comment. “But, I just can’t, that’s all. Doctors +say it has something to do with my nerves.” + +There were people in Orleans who took Bill-Ike’s sleepless story with +a pinch of salt. But Bill-Ike got the publicity just the same, and the +New York excursion and ballyhoo didn’t change him a bit. And, at the +peak of the newspaper excitement, another oldster of the community +bobbed up with a new and original claim. He slept, all right, but his +eyelids never seemed to come down. All of his sleeping was done with +eyes wide open. He just lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling, all +night long. + + + + +ORLEANS---- + + _The First German U-Boat + Attack On American Soil_ + + +In the last war, the one and only attack on American soil by the +Germans was at Orleans, Cape Cod. + +On a quiet Sunday morning, July 21, 1918, the submarine, U-156, rose +from the ocean waters a few hundred yards off the Orleans shore. In +full view of numerous cottagers, the enemy sub leisurely began shelling +the defenseless tug Perth Amboy and her three barges. + +Exactly why these craft, of no particular military value, were chosen +for attack has never been made known. It may have been an impulsive act +of bravado by the Kaiser’s marauders or, possibly, a scare stunt to +give Americans at home the jitters. + +The Americans attacked, managed to get ashore in dories, while +the firing continued. “One observer counted 147 shots.” There +are conflicting versions, naturally, but it is agreed there was +considerable shooting, and the U-boat operated throughout without +meeting resistance. + + +FIRED ON COAST GUARD + +At least one shot was aimed directly at the tower of a Coast Guard +station. It missed by a small margin and landed in a marsh, according +to the description given me by a former Coast Guardsman who was +standing the tower watch at the time. The three barges were sunk. The +Perth Amboy, while badly burned, was subsequently towed in for repairs, +and she may even be in service today. + +A Cape Cod man, strange as it may seem, was skipper of the Perth +Amboy--Capt. Joe Perry hailed from Provincetown. Another Provincetown +man, Henry J. James, son of a fishing captain in that old port at the +tip-end of the Cape, was moved to write a significant book after the +Orleans attack. + +Of interest even today, this book--“German Subs in Yankee Waters”--came +out not long before Pearl Harbor, though James (when I last heard from +him he was superintendent of schools in Simsbury, Connecticut) had +negotiated with publishers for a long time to get it into print. + +Many American developments for defense in the present war coincide +with suggestions made by James--small, fast boats for coastal defense, +beam-trawlers for minesweeping, the registering of all small craft for +coastal protection and other aids lacking in the last war. + +The Cape Cod attack and its implications made a strong impression upon +James in his youth; this spurred him on to devote many years of patient +research to complete his book. + +He relates that in 1918, during the final action of the last war, +Germany had six U-boats operating in our waters and these alone sank 91 +ships and took a toll of 368 lives. All this happened within a brief +six months. + +These half-dozen underseas boats operating along the Atlantic +shore--3400 miles from their base at Kiel, Germany--all got away +safely after their destructive work. All but one--this struck a mine in +the North Sea, not far from Kiel--got back to the home base. + + +STRANGE MEETING AT SEA + +A complete, authentic record of the Cape Cod U-boat attack is still +lacking. Occasionally, however, a new bit of information is added to +the story by one who was at the scene. One of the best anecdotes was +told me by a physician who had a cottage on the shore and sat with a +telephone in his hand, observing the shelling and giving a running +account of the attack to the _Boston Globe_. + +After the war this gentleman made a crossing on the Leviathan. He fell +into conversation with a German steward, mentioning that he was from +Cape Cod. The German asked if he had, by chance, ever heard of a U-boat +attack there during the war, and then proceeded to give an accurate +description of the Orleans attack. Thus, the doctor-reporter, who +had scored the biggest newspaper scoop in Cape Cod journalism and an +erstwhile member of the U-156 crew met in mid-Atlantic. + +The German chuckled: “Yah! we had some fun on that cruise. You didn’t +know, did you, that some of us went ashore one night in a rubber boat +and attended a movie in your Beverly, Massachusetts!” + +The only effort to repulse the attacking U-boat was made by a lone +flier from a Naval station at nearby Chatham. He lacked ammunition and +had to resort to bold bluffing. After diving a couple of times over the +submarine, he made a final low swoop and let fly a monkey wrench at the +heads of the crew standing on deck. + +Some time ago an article I wrote about the Cape Cod attack was +reprinted in a digest magazine. A retired navy officer, in a little +town in Pennsylvania, read it. He wrote me: “Well do I remember that +dull overcast Sabbath morning, as I was the fellow who threw the monkey +wrench.” And, he invited me to drop in, if I ever got around his way, +and he’d tell me “the whole story.” + + + + +EASTHAM---- + + _Local Boy Makes Good On + First Bombing of Tokio_ + + +Eastham, Cape Cod, has a real claim to present-day fame. This +unexciting, though historic little settlement, near the outer end of +the sickle, is the home of Master Sgt. Edwin W. Horton, Jr., member of +the Doolittle party on the first bombing of Tokio in World War II. + +On his return to this country, Horton, at the first opportunity, +hastened back to little Eastham for a quiet visit. And brought his +bride to introduce to the home folks. + +Eastham is small but historically she is important. The original name +was Nauset. Here the Pilgrims, exploring after their arrival on the +Mayflower, had their first encounter with the Indians. The forefathers +focused particular attention on the fertile soil, Thomas Prence, +Governor of Plymouth Colony, describing it as the “richest soyle, for +ye most part a blackish & deep mould, much like that wher groweth ye +best Tobacco in Virginia.” Today Eastham is still outstanding as a +farming place, noted especially for her asparagus production. + + _Provincetown for beauty, + Wellfleet for pride, + If it wasn’t for milk cans + Eastham ’d’ a died._ + +Thus the sing-song went when, later, the lush Nauset dairy herds +provided milk for a good part of the Cape. And Eastham, truly +farming-minded, would fling back these better known lines: + + _The Cape Cod girls they have no combs, + They comb their hair with codfish bones; + The Cape Cod Boys they have no sleds, + They slide downhill on codfish heads._ + + +PILGRIM’S TREE STILL BLOSSOMS + +Life still springs from at least one of the plantings of those far +distant days of the forefathers. Thomas Prence, who first set foot +on the Cape in 1621, subsequently built a house for himself and his +bride near Fort Hill. He planted a little pear tree there; it had been +brought over from England. + +Each Spring a pear tree blossoms on this site. Thoreau, in the book +on his Cape Cod travels, refers to the planting by Thomas Prence and +states the tree had been blown down a few months previous to his visit +to the scene. A modern historian, however, records that Thomas Prence’s +pear tree is still bearing, a sapling having been planted after the +old tree had been swept down in a gale. Thoreau quotes the following +tribute by a Cape Codder, a Mr. Herman Doane: + + “_That exiled band long since have passed away, + And still, old Tree! Thou standest in the place + Where Prence’s hand did plant thee in his day,-- + An undersigned memorial of his race._” + + +THE LAST WORKING WINDMILL + +The lone workable windmill on Cape Cod is located in Eastham. Before +Pearl Harbor there would be a ceaseless trek of Summer visitors to the +Seth Knowles’ windmill and Miller John Fulcher would demonstrate its +ancient workings with true professional eclat. He’d set her sails, +swing her into the wind, give the lift wheel a deft spin, and, in jig +time, Miller John would turn out a bushel of ground corn before the +eyes of the intrigued city folk. Those who seemed to know asserted +that Miller John had the “miller’s thumb”. Dipping his thumb into the +trough, he would decide just when the corn was properly ground. + +The story of the old windmill is vague. Some say it gave service +originally in Plymouth and then was “flaked” across the Bay to be +re-erected in Eastham. The date 1793 is nailed inside, but this still +leaves unanswered the point as to when and where its story begins. + +There’s a tablet near a stretch of Eastham beach that memorializes +the “First Encounter.” The event is described in William Bradford’s +narrative: + +“But, presently, all on ye sudain, they heard a great & strange crie, +which they knew to be the same voyces they heard in ye night, though +they varied their notes, & one of their company being abroad came +runing in & cried, ‘Men, Indeans, Indeans’; and withall, their arrowes +came flying amongst them. Their men rane with all speed to recover +their armes, as by ye good providence of God they did.... The crie of +ye Indeans was dreadfull, espetially when they saw ther men rune out of +ye randevoue towourds ye shallop, to recover their armes, the Indeans +wheeling aboute upon them. But some runing out with coats of malle +on, & cutlesses in their hands, they soon got their armes & let flye +amongst them, and quickly stopped their violence.” + +Bradford’s narrative reveals, also, why the redskins were in a +war-making mood. + +Six years previous “one Hunt, a mr. of a ship” had visited this scene. +Hunt had seized 24 of the Nauset Indians and taken them to Spain in +slave chains and, it is elsewhere related, he “sold these silly savages +for rials of eight.” + +What changes are wrought by the years! Where slavery was introduced in +the early 17th century, a native son now is ranked with America’s great +heroes in a global war for freedom. + + + + +SOUTH WELLFLEET---- + + _Our World Communications System + Began with Marconi’s Triumph + On a Lonely Ocean Bluff_ + + +How many Americans know that our world radio system was given birth on +Cape Cod? + +Guglielmo Marconi achieved his great goal on the oceanside of South +Wellfleet, out near the end of the Cape. Here, on the Sabbath night +of January 19, 1903, he got through the first trans-Atlantic wireless +telegraph message. Modern radio developed from that beginning. + +The overseas wireless message was a greeting from President Theodore +Roosevelt to King Edward. It read: + + + White House, Jan. 19, 1903 + + His Majesty Edward VII + London, England + + In taking advantage of the wonderful triumph + of scientific research and ingenuity which has been + achieved in perfecting a system of wireless telegraphy, + I extend on behalf of the American people, + most cordial greetings and good wishes to you and + to all the people of the British Empire. + + Theodore Roosevelt + +King Edward’s response came several days later--proof that Marconi had +completely succeeded in his long work of experimenting. + + +THE FIRST-HAND STORY + +Then Charlie Paine, gaunt Cape Cod native, entered the scene. He had +been engaged to get the King’s message to the Wellfleet telegraph +office, whence it was to be dispatched to the White House. But, +Marconi’s horse-and-buggy courier, holding to an old Cape Cod trait, +showed not a twitch of emotion--“he wasn’t goin’ to kill his horse for +nobody.” Old Charlie Paine passed on about two years ago in his native +South Wellfleet. This is how he related his part in the big day of +excitement: + +“The first message Marconi ever got through from the other side of the +ocean I took from his hand to carry to the telegraph office. I’d waited +about six days to get it, with Black Diamond hitched up in the buggy +most of the time. We jes stayed there, ready to go any minute. + +“It was winter and colder’n Greenland. Dimey had two blankets over her +and I was wearin’ Steve Paine’s wolf coat that he shot up in Alaska. +All of a sudden I see Marconi come rearin’ out of the plant with both +hands full of tape. He was jes like a crazy man. + +“‘You wait there, Paine, and I’ll be with you in a minute,’ he shouted, +and started for his office. I got my buggy turned around ready. The +nearest telegraph office was Wellfleet, four miles away. When he came +out again he had two big envelopes in his hand. They were messages to +be telegraphed to Washington and New York. I found out later that it +was a message from King Edward to President Theodore Roosevelt, for one +envelope was addressed to the White House and the other to a New York +newspaper. + +“‘Drive like the wind!’ says Marconi. ‘If you kill your horse I’ll buy +you another.’ + +“Well, I started off for Wellfleet as fast as I could make Dimey go. +But when I got over the dunes, out of sight, I slowed down. I couldn’t +see any need of goin’ crazy over a telegraph message. ’Twas four miles +of hard goin’ and I wasn’t goin’ to kill my horse for nobody. Jim Swett +was telegraph operator at Wellfleet railroad station then and I gave +him the two envelopes. And that’s all there was to it.” + + +MARCONI WAS JUST 29 + +Marconi was not yet in his 30th year. First he had proved wireless +practicable by communicating across the French channel from his +native Bologna in 1899. Working at Cornwall, he made contact with +Newfoundland. His Cape Cod transmission of President Roosevelt’s +message was the crowning achievement of his career. Thereon the +Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America became absorbed in a +brisk overseas business. The _London Times_ received part of its +American news through this Cape Cod station. + +The term Marconigram became familiar to American ears. Marconi’s system +was adopted by the British and Italian navies. He took charge of +wireless operations of the Italian government during the last war. He +was awarded the Nobel prize for physics in 1909, and the J. Scott medal +for the invention of wireless telegraphy on June 5, 1931. + +The pioneering was done on a high bluff overlooking the endless +sweep of the Atlantic. Work was started in 1901. Twenty immense +spars, 200 feet high, were erected in a circle. The station proper +was a one-story bungalow. Marconi and his crew slept and ate in a +cottage a few paces away. The big poles hadn’t been up long when a +nor’easter howled down on the exposed spot. They were knocked over +like matchsticks. Ice contributed to the damage and the loss ran into +$50,000. Then four towers of steel and wood, rooted with blocks of +cement and cables were erected, and they stayed put. + + +FAMOUS SITE UNMARKED + +Mrs. Eliza J. Doane of South Wellfleet cooked for Marconi and his men. +She said: “Mr. Marconi could play the piano something grand, and he had +a pleasing voice. He was especially fond of ‘Old Black Joe’. He and the +others would sing that almost every time they got around the piano.” + +A few years ago, when I last visited the scene, only the twisted ends +of cable, the broken cement blocks, studded with bolts, and a few +heavy timbers, revealed the historic scene. Unless the storm-lashed +tides have crumbled the embankment, the important debris is still +there. There was talk of establishing a “Marconi Park,” with a suitable +tablet. Prof. Frederick C. Hicks of Yale Law School led a group of +summer cottagers sponsoring the project. But, something stymied the +plans. + +During its commercial career, the South Wellfleet station had a +range of about 1600 miles. At night, under favorable conditions, it +transmitted messages to a distance of 3500 miles. The government closed +this and other wireless stations for the duration of the last war. When +peace came the Chatham station of the Radio Corporation of America, a +few towns up the Cape, took over the Marconi commercial business. + + + + +ADMIRAL NIMITZ---- + + _Cape Cod’s Most Famous + Summer Resident_ + + +Cape Cod’s most distinguished summer visitor--Admiral Chester W. +Nimitz--plans to resume his summer vacationing in Wellfleet, Cape Cod, +after the war. + +The great Naval leader who is directing the defeat of Japan manages +to keep up correspondence with his sister-in-law, Miss Elizabeth E. +Freeman of Wellfleet. Miss Freeman, who is Mrs. Nimitz’s sister, says +he has written her how he misses the Cape and that he looks forward to +his return. + +For many years the Admiral and his family have vacationed in Wellfleet. +Their haven is deeply secluded in the woods on Gull Pond Road. The +inaccessibility of the place is the reason why, perhaps, so few people +are aware of the Cape Cod ties of one of the illustrious figures of +modern world history. + +The Admiral’s efficient and courageous son, Lieut. Commander Chester W. +Nimitz, Jr., who has been twice decorated for heroism, calls Wellfleet +his home. He has done so in making out his personal Naval records ever +since his graduation from Annapolis, Miss Freeman informed me. As late +as last summer Commander Nimitz managed to get in a Wellfleet visit, +and his wife and child spent all the summer there. + + +FISHING HIS RECREATION + +The last time Admiral Nimitz and Mrs. Nimitz vacationed at Wellfleet +was in April, 1941. Members of his family, however, continue to +visit there at least once or twice every year. The two older Nimitz +daughters, Catherine, who is head of the music division in the +Washington, D. C. Library, and Nancy, who is in the Information +Division of the library, were at Wellfleet for a week last spring--they +brought with them some Navy friends and people of the musical world. +Catherine and Nancy plan to return next September and spend a month. + +A Cape Cod story on Admiral Nimitz reflects the same quiet dignity and +staunchness of character that folks at home vision when they read of +him in the great war dispatches out of the Pacific. Fundamentally, he +is a man of simple tastes. He has done nothing on the Cape to cause a +personal headline in the newspapers and, from summer to summer, has +moved among his less gifted Wellfleet neighbors practically unnoticed. +Which is the way he seems to like it. + +“Most of his time in Wellfleet is spent walking in the woods and +fishing. These are his chief pleasures. He reads of course, but he +doesn’t spend as much time at it as he does roaming in the outdoors. He +is a good fisherman,” relates Miss Freeman. + +The Admiral and Mrs. Nimitz, nee Catherine Vance Freeman, daughter of +the late Richard R. Freeman, a Boston ship broker, were married in +1913. She was born in Wollaston, Mass. Since birth she and others of +her family have summered at Wellfleet. After her marriage, however, +she travelled far to be with her husband, living on the West Coast and +in China, Germany and other foreign places. + +At first the Nimitzes spent their summer visits at the old Freeman +family house, outside Wellfleet, on Route 6. During the last war the +family summer home was re-established in the remote Gull Pond section, +one of the most primitive and lovely spots on Cape Cod. Here Mrs. +Nimitz’s sister makes her year-round residence. The former residence is +now owned by Edmund Wilson, literary critic of _The New Yorker_ +magazine. + + +ADMIRAL KING’S JOB HERE + +Some time ago a large picture was on the front page of the _New York +Times_, showing Admiral Ernest J. King, Commander-in-Chief of the +United States fleet, presenting the second Distinguished Service medal +to Admiral Nimitz. Forming an admiring audience were Admiral William F. +Halsey, Mrs. Nimitz and 13-year-old Mary Nimitz. It is an interesting +coincidence to set down in a Cape Cod story that Admiral King also is +no stranger to Cape Cod. He used to take many a long walk to stretch +his sea legs on Provincetown’s Commercial Street when he was a Captain +in the Navy and in charge of salvaging the tragic submarine S-4, sunken +outside Provincetown harbor with a loss of 40 lives. + + + + +TRURO---- + + _The “Blond Norseman”--Cape + Cod’s Most Ancient + Ghost Visitor_ + + +Ten years ago, approximately, the Blond Norseman came out of his spirit +world to re-visit Cape Cod. That is the latest report on this most +ancient member of Cape Cod’s gallery of wraiths. + +The setting is the wild, beach-grass country of Corn Hill, Truro. Here, +close by the far-flung shore of Cape Cod Bay, where only the seagull’s +lonely cry breaks the silence and sand peeps skitter to and fro on +their ceaseless foraging, stands a weather-battered, sprawling frame +structure known as “The Fish House.” For a long time the sea harvesters +used it for a headquarters; later it became the loved dwelling of a +large family who would remain there as long as the winds and the rains +of late fall would permit. + +On one of these late fall nights, the lady of the household was +awakened abruptly from a sound sleep. Sitting up, her gaze was drawn +to the door that faced the noisy surf of the bay shore. The door was +flung wide. A “startling blue light” illumined the figure of a tall, +distinctly blond man, so powerful of stature and awesomely erect, that +he filled the door frame. The apparition did not move, its presence +was only momentary, for, in the next instant, the lady was staring at +the gaping door. She got up, closed the door and spent the rest of the +night in wakeful wonderment. But, to this day, the vivid impression of +the brief visit of the Blond Norseman remains with her. + +The following day she mentioned it to a friend. He was not greatly +surprised, for he recalled a nighttime stroll along the beach some +weeks previous and related how he had discovered a bright light that +loomed up not many yards ahead of him. Thinking it was a man with a +lantern, the stroller called out. He got no answer, and the light +disappeared instantly. He was sure, that night, he had witnessed +something supernatural. + + +ANCIENT GRAVE MAY BE CLUE + +Then the lady mentioned the incident to the owner of a large fish +business, whose plant is two or three miles up the beach. He, too, was +sympathetic. “Oh, yes,” he responded, “that’s the Blond Norseman. My +men have talked about him often. It’s an old story to them.” + +Commander Donald B. MacMillan, the Arctic explorer, of Provincetown, +likewise gave a respectful ear and even suggested that the grave of +the Norse warrior who had returned to this hurly-burly world might +be located near the Fish House. Norsemen colonized along the North +Atlantic coast. Historians say that Leif Ericson and his men were the +earliest settlers on the Cape and that Thorwald died from an Indian’s +arrow in Yarmouth on the Bay side. It is said that as he lay mortally +wounded, Thorwald told his men, “Bury me here; place a cross at my +head, another at my feet, call it ‘Crossness’ forever more.” + + +DIGGING PARTY UNCOVERS SKELETONS + +The grave that might be that of the Blond Norseman was found by a +Mayflower party of explorers, according to Mourt’s Relation. The +discovery was made after the Pilgrims found the Indians’ cache of corn +on the lofty eminence now called Corn Hill. Two skeletons were turned +up by the second digging party, one a man’s and the other, possibly +that of an Indian child. The man’s skull “had fine yellow hair still on +it.” Norse scholars have shown much interest in this grave and there +has been considerable conjecture concerning it. But, little of real +factual value on the Blond Norseman has turned up thus far. + +It might be assumed that this daddy of all Cape Cod ghosts merely +returned to this earthly world to go over scenes dear to his heart. For +it is generally established that spirits that have stalked the Cape are +not the vengeful kind, but rather companionable and of a comradely mood +for returning to places fragrant in their memories. + + +A FRONT-PAGE GHOST + +This reporter once covered a dramatic spook-story in the early part +of his Cape Cod newspaper career. The incident was unusual because it +involved a trouble-brewing spook and made unhappiness all around. + +A lady from New York had rented an old house facing the highway in +North Truro and had paid $200 down, intending to operate a summer tea +room. But her uneasiness grew following each night she spent alone in +the old house. There would be the slamming of a door at an eerie hour +after midnight, or the frequent tread of creaking footsteps up and +down the narrow little front staircase. Finally there came the morning +when a blanket-fog came down into the valley and enveloped the quaint +old house. + +The New York lady sat chatting in the kitchen with a Portuguese +neighbor and as they talked the weird thing happened. A big, sturdy +rocker that stood in a corner of the room began to rock. Back and +forth, with an even motion, just as though someone was in the seat, the +rocking continued. + +Spellbound, the two women watched the strange business for at least two +or three minutes. It was the last straw for the lady from New York. +She made the door in two bounds and didn’t even bother to grasp up a +handbag on the table that contained a sizeable sum. She forfeited the +$200 rental payment and returned to Manhattan the next day after a more +courageous neighbor had ventured into the haunted house to retrieve the +abandoned handbag. + + + + +A CAPE CODDER---- + + _Pioneered Our + Trans-Atlantic Steamship Service_ + + +Truro, Cape Cod, looks out over the heaving Atlantic to the horizon, +and beyond lies Spain. Great romance colors the adventures of Truro’s +seafaring men of long, long ago. There is also, in consistent fashion, +the darkest tragedy. + +Truro is the birthplace of Edward K. Collins, who established the first +trans-Atlantic steamship service from the American shore. His elegantly +equipped paddle-wheel steamer, “Atlantic”, embarked on the first +crossing on April 27, 1850 and completed the voyage within 11 days. + +The story of Edward Collins’ career has all the elements to make an +exciting novel or a Hollywood movie--for the lad of 15 who went to +New York to become the nation’s mightiest ship operator--launching +“the most ambitious and spectacular attempt of the American merchant +marine to challenge British supremacy”--finally ended up as a hum-drum +land-bound provision dealer, yet “rosy, hearty and not careworn as when +he had those mighty American steamships resting on his shoulders.” + +Seafaring was deep-rooted as the trade of the Collins family. Edward +began with his father in the shipping and commission business; they +operated a service to Vera Cruz and New Orleans. The father died, then +the E. K. Collins & Co. firm was founded and its sign was prominent +on the New York waterfront for almost a half century. Associated with +Collins was a Count Foster of New Orleans. + + +CALLED “THEATRICAL LINE” + +The spectacular Cape Codder and his partner established the Dramatic +Line, to run packets between New York and England. Capt. Lorenzo D. +Baker of Wellfleet, Cape Cod, was scoffed at when he announced he was +going to popularize the banana in the United States and so was Collins +when shipping men heard he was building ships of 1000 tons. His critics +argued there would not be cargoes large enough to fill them, nor +would merchants trust their goods in them. So, in their hoots, they +coined a name for the Dramatic Line. They called it the “Theatrical +Line” because Collins named his vessels for famous authors and actors: +Shakespeare, Siddons, Garrick, Sheridan and Roscius, to mention a few. + +Collins had become one of New York’s richest men when the curtain +raised on the era of steam. He visioned the possibilities and watched +closely after England gave Samuel Cunard a subsidy mail contract in +1838. The Cunard Line berthed its first ship at this shore on July 18, +1840. Collins, according to the record at this point, saw a challenge +in the British enterprise. He barged into a financing spree, determined +“to drive the Cunarders out of business.” + +Collins went to the nation’s capital for the money he needed. There +he began on a grandiose scale and gradually descended with a series +of headaches to ultimate ruin. His first triumph was the granting of +a government subsidy of $385,000 a year for a period of ten years. +He and his associates were pledged to build five steamers in the +Collins-style, which would make twenty round trips annually, carrying +the mails. In 1852 fortnightly service was established and the subsidy +was increased to $858,000 annually. + +The Collins Line prospered for two years. Then the clouds began to +gather. + + +THE TRAGIC DECLINE + +On Sept. 27, 1854, off Cape Race, New York, a Collins steamer, the +Artic, collided with a small French steamer, the Vesta. The Arctic went +down with a loss of 233 passengers and 135 members of the crew. Among +the victims was Edward Collins’ wife, the former Mary Ann Woodruff, +and his son and his daughter. The master of the Arctic, Capt. James C. +Luce, of Martha’s Vineyard ancestry, held his own child in his arms +through the awful scenes of panic. As he was about to launch a raft, +some debris from the paddlebox struck and killed the child. + +Then came the second blow. The steamer Pacific of the Collins Line put +out from Liverpool on January 25, 1856, with 45 passengers and a crew +of 141. She was never heard from again. No clue to her fate was ever +turned up. + +Meanwhile Collins had been having his troubles in Washington, and now +they were piling up. A public clamor was on; the general theme was +that the Cunard Line competition was too keen. Congress withdrew the +second subsidy. A contract was made with the rival line of Cornelius +Vanderbilt. Gradually the Collins Line sank to failure and the panic of +1857 put a period to its glorious adventuring. Fortunes were lost by +investors in the line. + + + + +PROVINCETOWN---- + + _Its Town Seal Reads, + “Birthplace of American Liberty”_ + + +Millions of Americans do not know the complete story of the founding +of our nation. Many history books and most orators fail to begin at +the beginning when the pioneering of the Pilgrim Fathers is related. +Plymouth Rock is the accepted symbol and the starting point. The +important, earlier events on Cape Cod are passed up, particularly the +contribution the Pilgrim Fathers made to our form of free government +during their Cape Cod stay, before sailing across the bay to establish +their settlement at Plymouth. + +If you began at the beginning of the Pilgrims’ story on this continent, +you would find that the Mayflower did not sail direct to Plymouth, +as is the common impression. She first put in at the outer end of +Cape Cod on Nov. 11, 1620, (O. S.), after a violent, 63-day voyage +from Holland, and it was on the sands of what is now Provincetown +that her weary passengers first set foot on American soil. Here they +found haven for a full month, here they signed the historic Mayflower +Compact, establishing their system of self-government. They began their +reconnoitering, found their first drinking water, their first corn and +had their first encounter with the Indians on Cape Cod. + + +HOW OUR FREEDOM BEGAN + +But, all this is not to deny Plymouth her fame, even though the town +seal of Provincetown does bear the words, “Birthplace of American +Liberty.” That claim has been a bone of contention for a long time. +And, when a Massachusetts State official was asked some years ago why +the Provincetown phase in the story of the founding of the nation +had received so little attention, he could only suggest, “Perhaps it +happened that way because Plymouth was 300 years ahead of Provincetown +in her advertising.” + +Actually, however, the signing of the Mayflower Compact was not the +first step taken to establish free Government in the New World. Our +democratic government was first introduced at Jamestown Colony the year +previous to the Pilgrims’ arrival on Cape Cod. There, on June 30, 1619, +America’s first legislative body convened. + +John Quincy Adams said of the Mayflower Compact: “This is perhaps the +only instance in human history, of that positive, original social +concept, which speculative philosophers have imagined as the only +legitimate source of government.” + +In Mourt’s Relation there is Governor Bradford’s simple, though +picturesque description of Provincetown Harbor and ancient Cape Cod as +the Pilgrims discovered the scene: + + +WHAT THE PILGRIMS FOUND + +“It is a good harbor and pleasant bay, circled round, except in the +entrance, which is about four miles from land to land, compassed to +the very sea, with oaks, pines, juniper, sassafras, and other sweet +wood. It is a harbor wherein a thousand sail of ship may safely ride. +There we relieved ourselves with wood and water, and refreshed our +people while our shallop was fitted to coast the bay, to search for an +habitation; there was the greatest store of fowl that we ever saw. And +every day we saw whales playing hard by us, of which, in that place, if +we had instruments, and means to take them we might have made a very +rich return, which to our great grief, we wanted. Our master and his +mate, and others experienced in fishing, professed that we might have +made three or four thousand pounds worth of oil; they preferred it +before Greenland whale fishing and purposed the next Winter to fish for +whale here.” + +The first of the exploring Pilgrims “were forced to wade a bow-shoot or +two in going aland, which caused many to get colds and coughs, for it +was many times freezing cold weather.” Much sickness developed in the +first harsh Winter and some deaths occurred later in Plymouth. + + +WILL ROGERS ON THE PILGRIMS + +Some years ago Plymouth and Provincetown engaged in a harmless tiff +over the rightful ownership of the title, “Birthplace of American +Liberty.” The late Will Rogers, cowboy humorist, who was of Indian +descent, was drawn into the controversy via the radio. Said Will: + +“What makes my Cherokee blood boil is that the Pilgrims were allowed to +land anywhere. As a race the Pilgrims could never be compared with the +Indians. I’m sure that it was only through the extreme generosity of my +ancestors that the Pilgrims were allowed to land at all. + +“Anyhow, Provincetown says the Pilgrims found some corn buried there, +and that this saved them from starving to death. Then they shot the +Indians. That was because they had not stored any more corn. + +“Next they prayed. You know one thing the Pilgrims always did was to +pray, but you never saw a picture of a Pilgrim who didn’t have a gun +beside him. That was to see that he got what he was praying for!” + + + + +CAPE COD FISHING---- + + _Excitement of Catching Tuna + In The Traps_ + + +A hefty axe is the main implement of a trap-fishing crew when the tuna +run is on in Cape Cod waters. A tuna may weigh 50 to 1,000 pounds and +often a net is crowded with them. A crew of five men, operating a +50-foot boat, have their hands full when they move into the confines +of a big pole-net to take the clumsy and frantic fish. So, the +stout-handled axe is brought into play before the tuna are brought +aboard. + +The killing technique is a thoroughly gory business. The axe-swinger, a +seasoned hand, rarely misses when he aims a lusty blow at the lump that +is atop the tuna’s head. One expert blow on this vital spot usually +kills the fish instantly, but, the process of maneuvering the tuna for +the kill is highly active, calling for a nimble foot and split-second +judgment. Thereon the blood flies freely and profusely. + +Sometimes, in these wild jousts, a man goes overboard. Occasionally an +arm or a leg is broken during the topside excitement. But the tuna, +for all its size, does not attack. The fisherman has only to keep a +weather eye peeled to keep clear of its mighty tail. + +A trapper relates an experience he had when he tried “a new way” of +dispatching a tuna. “I shoved the gaff down his mouth with everything +I had. A few minutes later I woke up in the bottom of the boat with a +big goose-egg on my head.” Another trapper was dragged overboard, gaff +and all, and the tuna towed him clear out of the trap. He let go as the +tuna dived under and escaped, gaff and all. + + +FIND WHALES, TOO + +Once in a while old leviathan himself stumbles into one of Cape Cod’s +fish traps. He’s usually a finback whale, valueless to present-day +fishermen, and just a nuisance. His great, threshing flukes threaten +death. The trap has to be partially dismantled so that the crew, +working at a safe distance, can shoo him out. Then follows a whole +day’s work of repairing the damage. + +In Cape Cod waters there are more pole-traps, or weirs, than in any +other section of the Atlantic coast. Most of them are off Provincetown, +and part of the large profits they yield help enrich the town +government coffers. Long poles of tough hickory are shipped in from +Connecticut. Seventy of these are needed to drape the nets of a single +trap. First in the structure of a trap is the “leader”, a 900-foot +subterranean fence. This fence begins in shoal water and extends +offshore to the main body of the trap. When fish swim into it, they +do not turn inshore. As a rule they follow along the fence and swim +offshore. + +Thus, the schools obligingly move into the mouth of the trap. From +there they go into the trap “heart”, which is the first stage of their +captivity, and thence into the “bowl”. Once inside the bowl the +baffled finny tribes are completely hoodwinked and rarely escape into +open water. Here they swim around and around until the trapping crew +pays the morning visit and the net is hauled up and pursed for the +bailers to go into action. + +Commercial fishing in Cape Cod Bay provided the means for establishing +Massachusetts’ public school system. The Pilgrims appropriated the +profits to public uses. Portions of the fishery fund were allocated to +various towns. Barnstable, Cape Cod, being one of the beneficiaries in +1683. + +When the Pilgrims went to King James to get his consent for the +Mayflower voyage to America, the King, according to Edward Winslow’s +narrative, inquired, “What profit might arise?” A single word was the +Pilgrims’ response: “Fishing.” James was satisfied: “So God have my +soul, ’tis an honest trade, ’twas the Apostle’s own calling.” + + +ROMANTIC EARLY DAYS + +Subsequently, Captain John Smith, after he had pocketed a profit of +$7500 on a shipment of dried Cape Cod fish to Spain, is credited with +the statement that the richest mine in Spain was not as valuable as the +Cape Cod fisheries. + +Whales first were caught in these waters. When they became scarce +vessels were fitted to go out in search of them. On one voyage, Capt. +Jesse Holbrook of Wellfleet, active in the Revolutionary War period, +killed 52 sperm whales. His skill was so good a London company employed +him for 12 years to give instruction to their employees. + +Franklin Atkins was a Cape Codder who had a rare experience while +whaling in West Indies waters. Leviathan’s flukes struck the small boat +he was in and sent the boat kiting from the sea. In his descent Mr. +Atkins fell directly into the whale’s gaping mouth. He was gashed and +bruised, but managed to free himself. A boat crew picked him up and he +lay in a critical condition for four weeks. In later years Mr. Atkins +would boast, “Jonah and me were the only two persons that have been in +a whale’s mouth and come out alive.” + +Ambergris, a secretion found in the intestines of an occasional sperm +whale, and worth more than its weight in gold, was a prize the old +whalemen always were on the alert for. The story is told of how a Cape +Cod crew, jittery with excitement over an ambergris find in a whale +they were spading alongside the vessel, lost it. In their eagerness of +hauling up the treasure they fumbled. The ambergris chunk slipped from +the slings. The crew stared with blank dismay as they watched the prize +worth $25,000 slowly vanish in 60 fathoms of water. + +It’s small boat, inshore fishing in these modern times. Yet there +is a constant yield of millions of pounds of fish taken by net or +hook. There are whiting, mackerel, cod, haddock, herring, butterfish, +bluefish, squid, sea bass, pollock and many other species. + + + + +ON CAPE COD---- + + _Is the Second Most + Powerful Beacon on + the Atlantic Coast_ + + +The second most powerful beacon on the Atlantic coast is located on the +far end of Cape Cod. Highland Light is situated near the edge of a high +bluff on the ocean side of North Truro. Its nightly beam, revolving and +flashing to all points of the compass, has guided mariners for almost +150 years. + +The champ of all beacons on this coast is Neversink Light, at Sandy +Hook. + +Countless summer visitors would look over Highland Light in peacetime, +but now, of course, visitors are barred. They came from every state +in the union and from foreign places, for this faithful landmark has +always been a standard attraction for the Cape Cod sightseer. Chief +Boatswain’s Mate William Joseph, who has been in charge of the light +for a long while, recalls they asked some odd questions. For example: + +“Is the light lit in the wintertime?” + +“Do you stay here year ’round?” + +“Does the fog start up the foghorn?” + +“Why do you keep ‘blankets’ on the lenses in the daytime?” + +“Does the tide ever come over the banking (the edge of the banking is a +mere 140 feet above the shoreline)?” + +“Did you ever help catch rum-runners with the light?” + +“How do you keep awake all night long?” + + +COVER LENSES TO PREVENT FIRES + +But, the lightkeeper, his assistants and their womenfolk take it all in +stride with cheerful patience. + +The mighty lenses are covered up in daytime, but not with “blankets”. +The lightkeeper gives the reason for this: “Every morning we put a +linen covering over the lenses and over that a covering of starched +linen. There is no covering on the north side of the light because the +sun doesn’t hit there. + +“The coverings are necessary to protect surrounding property. The +lighthouse lenses, if they were left uncovered, would set afire a +building 25 feet away, or anything else that would burn.” + +There have been numerous other lamps before the present electrically +operated one, with its $30,000 French glassworks and four revolving +bullseyes. The original light, established in 1797, was stationary and +burned whale oil in wick lamps, much like the old-fashioned sitting +room lamp. The light has always stood on the present site. + +Ashore the great beacon is always referred to as Highland Light. “But,” +remarks the keeper, “if you were lost out there and tried to locate +Highland Light on the chart, you’d be plum out o’ luck. The official +name is Cape Cod Light and that’s the name all the mariners go by.” + +Highland Light has cast its flash over many a dramatic event in its +long lifetime. Almost within its shadow, the first piece of wreckage +that revealed the fate of the Steamer Portland--New England’s most +appalling sea tragedy to this day--was washed ashore in the terrible +gale of November, 1898. Countless rescues by the breeches buoy, and +the foundering of old-time sailing ships were witnessed there. Mighty +gales, 75 to 80 miles an hour, have belabored the lighthouse, but it +has breasted them all. + + +A MARKER FOR ZEPPELIN + +The German Zeppelin, burned at Lakehurst, N. J., made a practice of +pointing its course directly over Highland Light on its return trips to +Germany. + +The light has one implacable enemy--fog. When the heavy vapor banks +roll in, the beam is practically invisible. In a real thick fog not +even the glow of the lamp can be seen by one standing at the base of +the tower. + +Many visitors, noting the close proximity of the lighthouse to the edge +of the shore embankment, have inquired whether there is danger the sea +will some day undermine Highland Light. Keeper Joseph has never worried +about this. When, in 1796, the Government purchased the tract of land +for the erection of the lighthouse, the reservation comprised ten +acres. Storms and pounding surf have swept six acres of the original +site into the sea. + + + + +FIRST REAL GLIDER FLIGHT IN U. S.---- + + _Witnessed Over Cape Cod Waters_ + + +The invasion of Sicily was begun with glider transports. And, the +beginning of glider-flying in the United States was witnessed on Cape +Cod. Sixteen years ago the first extended glider flight in America was +demonstrated by a German expert. + +On July 29, 1928, at Corn Hill, Truro, near the outer end of this +historic peninsula, Peter Hesselbach of Darmstadt, Germany, was +catapulted over the brink of a 100-foot bluff in a Darmstadt-made +glider. He remained aloft for four hours and five minutes. A few days +before this, Hesselbach smashed Orville Wright’s record of soaring nine +minutes and forty-five seconds. A group of helpful American citizens, +hauling on a rope, snapped him into the ether on the ocean side of +Truro. He maintained a motorless flight for 55 minutes. + +Glider flying has progressed a great deal since those pioneering +flights. Soon after a school was established at South Wellfleet, +but it didn’t last long. Much activity developed in California and +in the East. Elmira, N. Y., became the headquarters of motorless +flying enthusiasts. Before our entry into the war, Parker Leonard of +Osterville, Cape Cod, was the chief glider experimenter in this area. +Now he is serving his country as a glider specialist. + + +STUDIED THE GULLS + +Peter Hesselbach and his German comrades who accompanied him to this +country were a companionable lot and popular with the Summer folk +that Summer of 1928. Corn Hill is situated in a primitive setting, +with unbounded spaces of hills, marsh land, and beach, and faces the +great sweep of Cape Cod Bay. It is a lofty hill and on its top is a +bronze tablet attesting that here the reconnoitering Pilgrims found +the Indians’ cache of corn which enabled them to survive the first +hard year in Plymouth. And, looking out over the waters one discerns +the outline of Provincetown Harbor where the Mayflower was anchored +and where the Pilgrim fathers signed their Compact, the genesis of +our American form of free Government. A group of rude cottages are +perched atop Corn Hill. Two of them were occupied by the German glider +experts. A haus frau, brought in from somewhere, served up hearty +German dishes and all in all it was a very pleasant Summer. For +recreation, the visitors whizzed into Provincetown for ice cream cones +and gingerale--“gingeraley” they called it. Often they would sit for +long periods at the end of a Provincetown wharf, studying the soaring, +wheeling, dipping flight of the gulls. + +Sometimes their American neighbors would pull on a rope and lift the +glider into the air on the numerous practice flights. Setting off on +his four hours and five minutes-flight, Peter Hesselbach was propelled +over the edge of Corn Hill by a rubber slingshot and a tail-tripper +arrangement that was clamped to a planking and worked by a lever. +Several hundred Summerers and natives from surrounding towns witnessed +that epochal event. A good representation of Boston newspaper cameramen +took pictures of the 55-minute flight. Newsreel men also made a +recording. + +It was a beautiful, bright day when Hesselbach got off on his long +flight at 9:55 A. M. He was hoping to be able to beat the world record +for a soaring flight at that time--14 hours, 23 minutes. A series of +bonfires stretching for two miles along the beach would have guided him +on the nocturnal part of his adventure. For sustenance he took with him +a few sandwiches and some coffee. + + +TRAVELLED 120 MILES + +Spectators exclaimed at the graceful serenity of the fine glider craft, +wafting silently with the air currents over their heads against a blue +and cloud-flecked sky. The Darmstadt wafted northward and southward on +a one to two miles’ course, going back and forth over the white-capped +bay or surrounding hills and banking gracefully over Corn Hill on each +return trip. + +Once, as Peter Hesselbach circled Corn Hill, Captain Paul Roehre, a +gliding comrade, roared up to him: + +“Are you hungry?” + +With a wave of his hand, Hesselbach responded, “What’s the use?” + +Finally he landed at Wellfleet, an adjoining town. The writer picked +him up at a crossroads and brought him back to Corn Hill. These were +his first words: + +“I came down because I could not fly for the hills and gain altitude +after the wind changed more to the north. I went off my course +purposely. I wanted to study air conditions. This territory is ideal +for soaring. It has much better possibilities than Rossiten, which is +one of the best soaring places in Germany.” + +“My altimeter shows I reached a maximum altitude of 350 feet. The wind +velocity was about 30 miles an hour. I soared a total of 120 miles.” + +It’s a far cry from Cape Cod to Sicily. But that’s how glider flying +actually got its springboard start in America. + +[Illustration] + + + + + Transcriber’s Notes + + Perceived typographical errors have been silently corrected. + + Colloquial spelling in dialog has been retained as in the original. + + Inconsistencies in hyphenation and compound words have not been + standardized. + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75918 *** diff --git a/75918-h/75918-h.htm b/75918-h/75918-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..34c4659 --- /dev/null +++ b/75918-h/75918-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,2603 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html lang="en"> +<head> + <meta charset="UTF-8"> + <title> + Stories of Cape Cod | Project Gutenberg + </title> + <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover"> + <style> + +body { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + + + h1, h3 { + text-align: center; + clear: both; +} + +h1 small { + font-size: small; +} + + h2 { + text-align: left; + clear: both; +} + + + +p { + margin-top: .51em; + text-align: justify; 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+} + +.transnote {background-color: #E6E6FA; + color: black; + font-size:small; + padding:0.5em; + margin-bottom:5em; + font-family:sans-serif, serif; +} + +.illowp20 {width: 20%;} +.x-ebookmaker .illowp20 {width: 10%;} +.illowp40 {width: 40%;} +.illowp50 {width: 50%;} +.x-ebookmaker .illowp50 {width: 30%;} + + </style> +</head> +<body> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75918 ***</div> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp40" id="i000_cover" style="max-width: 100em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/cover.jpg" alt=""> +</figure> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<h1> +STORIES<br> +<small>OF</small><br> +CAPE COD</h1><br> + +<p class= "center"><i>by</i></p> +<p class= "center">JACK JOHNSON</p><br> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp20" id="i000_title" style="max-width: 25.3125em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i000_title.png" alt=""> +</figure> +<br> + +<p>A “DISCOVERY BOOK”...</p> + +<p>Romantic Facts of All<br> +the Cape Cod Towns</p> + + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + + +<div class="chapter"> +<p class="center"> +Copyright 1944<br> +by JACK JOHNSON<br> +<br> +Designed and printed by<br> +THE MEMORIAL PRESS<br> +Plymouth, Massachusetts<br> +<br> +Cover design by<br> +Leo Schreiber<br> +<br> +First Printing August 10, 1944<br> +Second Aug. 25, Third Sept 11, Fourth Oct. 1, 1944<br> +Fifth June 4, 1945<br> +<br> +<i>For additional copies of this book write</i>:<br> +Jack Johnson, Yarmouthport, Cape Cod, Mass.<br> +</p> +</div> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + + +<h3 class="nobreak"><span class="smcap"><i>Contents</i></span></h3> +</div> + +<table class="autotable"> +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><a href="#BOURNE">Bourne</a></td> +<td class="tdr">1</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><a href="#SANDWICH">Sandwich</a></td> +<td class="tdr">5</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><a href="#FALMOUTH">Falmouth</a></td> +<td class="tdr">9</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><a href="#MASHPEE">Mashpee</a></td> +<td class="tdr">13</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><a href="#BARNSTABLE">Barnstable</a></td> +<td class="tdr">17</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><a href="#YARMOUTHPORT">Yarmouthport</a></td> +<td class="tdr">21</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><a href="#DENNIS">Dennis</a></td> +<td class="tdr">25, 29</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><a href="#BREWSTER">Brewster</a></td> +<td class="tdr">33</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><a href="#HARWICH">Harwich</a></td> +<td class="tdr">37</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><a href="#CHATHAM">Chatham</a></td> +<td class="tdr">41</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><a href="#ORLEANS">Orleans</a></td> +<td class="tdr">45, 49</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><a href="#EASTHAM">Eastham</a></td> +<td class="tdr">53</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><a href="#SOUTH_WELLFLEET">South Wellfleet</a></td> +<td class="tdr">57</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><a href="#ADMIRAL_NIMITZ">Admiral Nimitz</a></td> +<td class="tdr">61</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><a href="#TRURO">Truro</a></td> +<td class="tdr">65</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><a href="#A_CAPE_CODDER">Pioneer Trans-Atlantic Steamship Service</a></td> +<td class="tdr">69</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><a href="#PROVINCETOWN">Provincetown</a></td> +<td class="tdr">73</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><a href="#CAPE_COD_FISHING">Cape Cod Fishing</a></td> +<td class="tdr">77</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><a href="#ON_CAPE_COD">Cape Cod Beacon</a></td> +<td class="tdr">81</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><a href="#FIRST_REAL_GLIDER_FLIGHT_IN_U_S">First Glider Flight in United States</a></td> +<td class="tdr">85</td> +</tr> +</table> + + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="BOURNE">BOURNE——</h2> +</div> + +<p> +<span class="lpad"><i>300 Years Ago The Pilgrims</i></span><br> +<span class="lpad"><i>Visioned Cape Cod’s $50,000,000</i></span><br> +<span class="lpad"><i>Canal</i></span><br> +</p> + + + +<p>Myles Standish, the Pilgrim’s engineer, first conceived the idea +for the Cape Cod Canal in 1624. Governor Bradford wished for the +development in order that his fellow pioneers could better carry on +their fur trade with the Dutch in New York. He craved to “avoyd the +compasing of Cap-Codd, and those deangerous shoulds, and so make any +vioage to ye southward in much shorter time, and with far less danger.”</p> + +<p>But, the actual building of this eight-mile waterway was delayed for +300 years. August Belmont took over in 1909, and the job consumed five +years and $13,000,000. Later the Government acquired the Canal—to date +the total cost, including periodic dredging and other improvements, is +said to be around $50,000,000.</p> + +<p>The Canal has proved to be Cape Cod’s greatest contribution to the +winning of the war.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</span></p> + +<p>George Washington saw its military value. In 1776, when he was in +Boston, planning to send troops to New York, Washington observed that +this “interior barrier should be cut in order to give greater security +to navigation, and against the enemy.”</p> + + +<p>BUILT TO PREVENT SHIPWRECKS</p> + +<p>Often the military angle is mentioned in the long and hectic history of +planning the project, but primarily the Canal was visioned to safeguard +shipping in an era when shoals and fogs off this coast took a great +toll of vessels and lives. Also, by speeding up traffic, the Canal was +intended to help in the development of New England commerce.</p> + +<p>Prophetic words were uttered by Belmont’s survey engineer while the +construction was under way. These are found in some interesting +material passed on to me by Bill McLaughlin of the Hotel Onset. “The +Canal as planned,” said Engineer Parsons, “is quite sufficiently deep +to take all the smaller vessels of the Navy, even to cruisers.... There +might, however, arise a contingency when the Canal would be of the +greatest value to the country in time of war.”</p> + +<p>On the shipwreck problem hereabouts in that day, Parsons noted: “Of all +the wrecks occurring on the whole Atlantic coast from Eastport, Maine, +to Key West, Florida, one-quarter take place in the short stretches +between Chatham and Provincetown.”</p> + +<p>Numerous costly attempts were made to put through the waterway, and +failed, before Belmont entered the scene. As the story goes, the +financier was moved largely by sentiment, for when he functioned with +a silver spade at the ceremonious opening of operations it was on land +that once belonged to his ancestors.</p> + +<p>Prospects looked bright for another promoting group just before the +Civil War. It appeared the Government would provide a large portion of +the necessary funds. But<span class="pagenum" id="Page_3-4">[Pgs 3-4]</span> negotiations halted when the war started. +At a later stage some 500 Italian laborers were imported to Sandwich +from New York and they began work scooping out the ditch, using shovels +and wheelbarrows. This lasted only a few weeks. Another means employed +was a dredge with a chain of buckets, 39 in all, operated by two steam +engines. Lack of capital halted this venture; the dredge was burned and +sunk in the Canal at the spot where operations had started.</p> + + +<p>FAITH TRIUMPHED IN CRISIS</p> + +<p>August Belmont’s engineer found quicksand in the borings when he began +his survey. He was about to write a report to his boss and recommend +that he save his money. But another engineer whose heart was in the +Canal dream argued warmly that the quicksand was confined to the +center and not over the entire bed of the proposed canal. A glacier +had ploughed its way into the waters of Cape Cod Bay, cutting a furrow +through the valley between Sandwich and Buzzards Bay.</p> + +<p>The quicksand came of this glacier, declared this authority, and he +added it was not general enough to be a serious detriment. His advice +was taken, he was proved correct, and Belmont’s engineer submitted a +report that was favorable.</p> + +<p>On the south bank of the Canal, in Bourne, is a replica of the trading +post, “Aptucxet”, which rests on the very foundation stones that were +laid in 1627. Here the first business between New York and Eastern +Massachusetts was carried on by the Pilgrims who then were intent upon +getting money together to settle with their backers in London who had +financed their voyage to the New World.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, Governor Bradford was observing the Indians paddle their +canoes up Manomet River, then portage them over a stretch of land to +Scusset Creek and finally navigate on into Cape Cod Bay. It caused him +to think of the advantage of having a Cape Cod Canal.</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="SANDWICH">SANDWICH——</h2> +</div> + +<p> +<span class="lpad"><i>Joe Jefferson Described It As</i></span><br> +<span class="lpad"><i>“The Handsomest Town Out of</i></span><br> +<span class="lpad"><i>England”</i></span><br> +</p> + + +<p>Joseph Jefferson, great actor of his time, called Sandwich, Cape Cod, +“the handsomest town out of England.” And even today it is interesting +to note that Sandwich—the first town settled on Cape Cod—imparts more +of the nostalgic feeling than any other community on the Cape.</p> + +<p>Massive trees shade her quiet streets, with their beautiful old homes, +and the stranger is conscious of a serenity that places her apart from +the modern world. But, Sandwich, founded in 1637 and with a present +population of less than 2,000 has much to talk about.</p> + +<p>The ancestry of President Franklin D. Roosevelt is traced to the +historic Freeman Farm, at a junction on Route 28. Alvin Page Johnson +of Swampscott, Mass., an accredited<span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</span> genealogist, definitely connects +the President with Cape Cod ancestry and beyond to John Howland, a +Mayflower passenger. Edmond Freeman was among the ten men who came +from Saugus and settled Sandwich. He, according to data discovered by +this genealogist in 1934, was found to be one of the early American +ancestors of our President. Back of the Freeman Farm are boulders with +bronze tablets marking the graves of Edmond and his wife, Elizabeth.</p> + + +<p>DANIEL WEBSTER’S HAVEN</p> + +<p>“Rip Van Winkle” lies in another Sandwich grave. Joe Jefferson +had a strong desire to live in Sandwich. Both he and his friend, +President Grover Cleveland, negotiated to buy houses there, but were +unsuccessful. Historians drop the hint that this might have been +because the righteous Puritans of the community did not want an actor +in their midst. At any rate it is recorded on good authority that +Jefferson remarked to a friend: “They wouldn’t let me live in Sandwich, +but they can’t prevent my burial there.”</p> + +<p>Daniel Webster, great statesman, spent some of his pleasantest hours +on annual fishing and hunting excursions to the streams and marshes of +Sandwich. Daniel Webster Inn, the first stagecoach stop for Cape Cod +travellers of yore, and still providing food and good cheer, was named +for him. Webster put up there. He drank his rum straight and when he +was not engaged in camaraderie with the townsmen in the inn’s quaint +little taproom, the jug was delivered by a lift direct to his room.</p> + +<p>Millions of American kiddies of this and past generations can feel +indebted to Sandwich, for here, also, is the birthplace of one of their +favorite authors. Thornton W. Burgess was born in Sandwich in 1874 +and here he discovered the beloved little characters of his animal +kingdom, whose adventures he put into print and which have lulled<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</span> many +a child into slumberland. Thornton Burgess had to put a little boy of +his own to bed after his wife’s death, and that’s how he first began +discovering his delightful little characters of the woods and fields.</p> + +<p>The great meat packing industry, Swift and Company of Chicago, stemmed +from the brain and tireless toil of Gustavus Franklin Swift, who was +born in Sandwich in 1839. Gustavus’ ambitions came to light in early +boyhood when he bought hens from his grandfather at 40 cents each, then +sold each hen at a profit. At 16 he bought a heifer, slaughtered it +and peddled the meat. At his death Swift and Company was capitalized +at $25,000,000. Building the foundation for the business on Cape Cod, +Gustavus would drive pigs through the streets of Hyannis, aided by a +well-trained Collie dog. A housewife would come to the door, single +out the porker she wanted, and the dog and master would then thread +through the procession and work together to corner the pig until +the transaction was completed. The Swift family moved to Barnstable +in 1861. Tools used on Cape Cod in the beginning of the great meat +business were collected in Barnstable some years ago and now form a +prized collection at the Swift plant in Chicago.</p> + + +<p>FAME OF SANDWICH GLASS</p> + +<p>Sandwich, herself, was in the big industry bracket. Indeed, the +products of the Boston & Sandwich Glass Company have given the +community national fame, and this fame lives on today. Sandwich +glass, by virtue of design and distinctive colorings, is prized by +collectors all over the country. Here the largest glass-works in the +country flourished in 1850, with 500 master-craftsmen and a weekly +output of 100,000 pounds. There is the legend that the first skilled +glass blowers were from England and were smuggled into this country in +barrels at a time when they were forbidden to enter this country. The +famous plant is in ruins now. It closed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</span> down after a strike in 1888, +though, at that time, machine-made glassware, turned out in Pittsburgh +and Chicago, was entering into competition with the wares fashioned by +the original Sandwich artificers.</p> + +<p>Humor and curious laws and prejudices lighten the pages of Sandwich +history. A story that always gets a chuckle is that of “Seth the +Peddler” who, in 1669, was ordered out of town “lest he might become +a public charge.” Seth Pope shook the dust of Sandwich, but before he +left he announced he would be back and he would “buy up the town.” +Which is exactly what he did. Thirty years after making his bitter +departure, Seth, no longer the humble peddler, strode back into +Sandwich and proceeded to purchase nearly all the land in the town. He +built two houses and gave one each to his sons, Seth and John. Then +Seth Pope left Sandwich for good after letting it be generally known +“he would not live in the damn town.”</p> + +<p>And, romancing was decidedly different in those olden days of Sandwich. +Richard Bourne, minister to the Mashpee Indians, lost his wife, +Bathsheba. Not long after, he wrote to a widow who was to be his second +wife: “I have had divers motions since I received yours, but none +suits me but yourself, if God soe incline your myndie to marry me ... +I doe not find in myselfe any flexableness to any other but an utter +loatheness.”</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="FALMOUTH">FALMOUTH——</h2> +</div> + +<p> +<span class="lpad"><i>The “Marrying Town” For</i></span><br> +<span class="lpad"><i>New England’s Greatest</i></span><br> +<span class="lpad"><i>Military Camp</i></span><br> +</p> + + +<p>When New England’s greatest military camp was developed almost on +Falmouth’s doorstep, this very picturesque old community, with its rich +store of whaling lore and seafaring color, became the busiest and most +exciting center on all Cape Cod.</p> + +<p>Falmouth has had a notable number of wartime marriages in the New +England area. Many and many a Camp Edwards soldier, before embarking +for foreign duty has been joined in wedlock. And, these young people +who made the most of a few fleeting hours have come from widespread +parts of the country.</p> + +<p>The time factor also was precious in Falmouth romances of olden days. +There’s the story of the sailing-ship master of the last century. His +wedding plans were all arranged<span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</span> when he received orders to sail out +of New Bedford to Germany with a cargo of oil. A friend arranged to +have his beloved and the parson ready at the hour when the vessel would +arrive off Falmouth.</p> + +<p>No time was lost. The skipper rowed ashore and sped to the new house +he had built for his bride. The ceremony was performed, he kissed his +bride farewell and an hour later was over the water again, resuming a +voyage to Bremen.</p> + + +<p>OUTSTANDING IN HISTORY</p> + +<p>Falmouth is one of the most interesting places, historically, on the +Cape. The first house was built in 1685; the town meeting custom was +established in 1686; the first church was erected in 1796. The Village +Green, most attractive feature of the town, is linked with the colorful +course of Falmouth history.</p> + +<p>Opposite the Green is the old meeting house; in its spire is a bell +cast by Paul Revere. An inscription reads: “The living to the church +I call; And to the grave I summon all.” A faded receipt is in a local +bank, bearing the date 1796 and giving the purchase price as $338.94. +The Green had its whipping post. Not many years ago the top of the post +was found in the attic of a house facing the Green and was removed to +the Public Library to go on exhibition.</p> + +<p>Outstanding in Falmouth’s story is her rich fund of whaling lore. The +Town’s Museum has a generous assortment of articles reflecting the +great activity in this line: navigation instruments, revolvers used to +put down mutinies, logbooks, handcuffs, harpoon and many ship pictures.</p> + +<p>Elijah Swift, who began as a carpenter, is rated the most useful +citizen in Falmouth history and he is credited with first bringing +prosperity to the town. Elijah Swift knew wood, hence his services +were highly valued when he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11_12">[Pgs 11-12]</span> was engaged to supply live oak for the +shipbuilding program of the American Navy after the War of 1812. He +recruited a large number of Falmouth men to go South on the live oak +operation and, incidentally, he was successful in fighting the dreaded +“yellow jack” disease in the swamp country. This business was destined +to run into the millions.</p> + + +<p>INTERESTING PERSONALITIES</p> + +<p>A living reminder of Elijah Swift’s works are the beautiful, tall trees +surrounding the Village Green. He was permitted by the town, in 1832, +to plant, at his own expense, the saplings that developed into these +giants. The first summer after the planting was unusually dry. Elijah +Swift hired a man to carry water daily from Shiverick’s Pond to keep +life in the saplings, and this loving care he gave at the outset makes +this scene today “a glory to the community.”</p> + +<p>Falmouth has had, and still has, many people who have done distinctive +work in their lifetime. Katherine Lee Bates, who wrote “America, the +Beautiful,” was Falmouth-born. Edward Herbert Thompson, great American +archaeologist, who did some of the most important work of bringing to +light the facts of ancient American life and culture, was a Falmouth +native.</p> + +<p>Coonamessett Ranch, in the township of Falmouth, is said to be the +largest ranch east of the Mississippi. Charles R. Crane of Chicago +started cultivating it in 1915, to demonstrate the agricultural +possibilities of Cape Cod. But he had an idealistic aim that was +thwarted by the outbreak of the last war. The great acres were to have +been settled by carefully selected families of the Russian peasantry, +and the owner was intent upon carrying through his ideas for developing +the possibilities of the less fortunate Russian folk.</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="MASHPEE">MASHPEE——</h2> +</div> + +<p> +<span class="lpad"><i>Where the Wampanoag</i></span><br> +<span class="lpad"><i>Indian Tongue is Still</i></span><br> +<span class="lpad"><i>Chanted</i></span><br> +</p> + + +<p>Mrs. Dorcas Gardner, of Wampanoag Indian descent, sits in a low-ceiling +little room mellowed from many years of simple living, and she speaks +with the wisdom of her 74 years.</p> + +<p>“Why? I come up against the word Why so often I have to let it go by. +The Lord knows best. It should be a better world after this war. When +you go to the lowest, there must be an uplift somehow. We’ve seen so +much of the bad we’re bound to have some good come out of it.”</p> + +<p>Mashpee (originally Massapee) is steeped in Indian lore. Here is Cape +Cod’s smallest town. It has a population of 405. George Perlot proudly +points to the town’s remarkable service record.</p> + +<p>From the tent days Camp Edwards has had close ties with little Mashpee. +Indeed, 90 per cent of its airport is on<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</span> Mashpee land. But this +historic settlement has always had more than a local reputation, as far +back as 1658 when Richard Bourne began his evangelistic work among the +Indians. Mashpee election returns are watched for and featured in the +city newspapers, because they are the first to be announced in every +State or Federal polling.</p> + + +<p>OLDEST CAPE COD CHURCH</p> + +<p>The Indian Church, oldest house of worship on Cape Cod, is a rare +landmark; likewise the Indian burial ground, whose oldest gravestone +marks the resting place of Chief Popmonnett, who died in 1770 at the +age of 51. The fame of historic Hotel Attaquin, a whaling skipper’s +enterprise, is such that someone, in 1910, filched the register which +bore the signatures of Daniel Webster, Joseph Jefferson, Charles Dana +Gibson, Grover Cleveland, John Drew and Finley Peter Dunne.</p> + +<p>Two men survive in Mashpee who still speak the Wampanoag +tongue—Ambrose Pells and William James. One or the other intones the +primitive language over the grave when a Mashpee resident of Indian +descent is given to the earth.</p> + +<p>In 1711, the Rev. Daniel Williams of London left a fund in charge of +Harvard University for the religious education of Indians. Mashpee +became the beneficiary of this largesse. Richard Bourne taught the +Indians here to govern themselves; they were authorized to hold their +own courts, try criminals and pass judgment. Further, Bourne caused a +law to be invoked whereby “No land could be bought by or sold to any +white person without the consent of all the Indians, not even with the +consent of the General Court.”</p> + +<p>A Provincetown preacher, one Mr. Stone, appeared before the Mashpees +long ago and, in his sermon, laid particular stress on the evils of +alcohol. One of the Indians was asked how he liked the sermon. He +answered:</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_15_16">[Pgs 15-16]</span></p> + +<p>“Mr. Stone is one very good preacher, but he preach too much about rum. +Indian think nothing about it; but when he tells how Indian love rum, +and how much they drink, then I think how good it is, and think no more +’bout the sermon, my mouth waters all the time so much for rum.”</p> + + +<p>ANCIENT RITES RE-ENACTED</p> + +<p>Another in the line of preachers who occupied the Indian Church pulpit +was Rev. Phineas Fish of Sandwich. He annoyed his early American +parishioners, because, while accepting a salary, he held church for the +whites and discouraged attendance by the Indians. At a meeting of the +elders some strong sentiments were expressed and ultimately Mr. Fish +was forcibly ejected, after which “the lock on the door of the chapel +was changed.”</p> + +<p>Mrs. Gardner many years ago originated the Richard Bourne Day ceremony, +in celebration of the ordination of the pioneer missionary. In August +of each year the colorful pageantry of braves in their great feather +head-dresses, their squaws with beaded buckskins, tom-toms, tepees and +even papooses was witnessed at the Indian Church. The Indians came +from Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and other parts. Their +ancient rites were re-enacted and they exchanged reminiscenses of their +family lines, while large crowds of white visitors looked on and let +their imaginations roll backward. The war came and the curtain was +drawn—for the duration, at least—on this picturesque ceremony at the +257-year-old Indian Church in Mashpee.</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="BARNSTABLE">BARNSTABLE——</h2> +</div> + +<p> +<span class="lpad"><i>Revival Of A Great Cape Cod</i></span><br> +<span class="lpad"><i>Tradition Is Taking Place</i></span><br> +<span class="lpad"><i>In Hyannis Village</i></span><br> +</p> + + +<p>In olden days New England’s great clipper ships had a world reputation. +Fortunes of the American merchant marine were at the crest in the +1850’s, when, also, Cape Cod’s memorable pageant of clippers and +stalwart shipmasters were in full lustre—notably, the famous Red +Jacket, which made the record crossing of the Atlantic on her maiden +voyage in 13 days and one hour.</p> + +<p>Today the spirit of this great tradition is revived here with a new, +even more widespread, sort of drama. The historic Massachusetts +Maritime Academy has established a “permanent shore base” at Hyannis, +Cape Cod, to school officers for wartime duty in our merchant marine +and Navy and—after the war—to train young men for technical jobs at +sea or ashore.</p> + +<p>This is definitely the most newsworthy and promising wartime +development in Cape Cod affairs.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</span></p> + + +<p>OLD SEAFARER GIVES ADVICE</p> + +<p>The 100th class of this old school which had its beginning in the era +of wooden ships and iron men was graduated in 1944 with colorful and +impressive ceremonies. A full dress drill by a battalion of midshipmen +on the Academy parade grounds provided a stirring scene for some 500 +fathers and mothers and relatives. The graduating class was the largest +in the 51 years of the institution. Governor Saltonstall, Rear Admiral +Robert A. Theobald, U.S.N., Commandant of First Naval District, and +other notables bid Godspeed and counselled the new officers who were to +join Academy comrades scattered over the world in all theatres of the +war.</p> + +<p>Particularly interesting was the meaty advice Admiral Theobald offered +the new officers out of his own 40-odd years of seafaring experience. +He said:</p> + +<p>“You’re going to have to spend endless days and months in the sameness +of only a cloudless sky above you and a smooth sea beneath you. +Don’t get in a seagoing rut. Get an avocation as soon as you can. I +would suggest that you develop the habit of doing heavy reading on +international relations. Your nation is in the middle of world politics +now and will never recede again from world relationships.”</p> + +<p>“We, as a nation, have been too prone to accept the notion that other +nations have the same psychological reactions as ours. You will find it +a very interesting avocation to get books and study other people of the +world. You must go back to find out what makes them tick. And, also, +this reading will enable you to determine whether your own statesmen +are doing a good job.”</p> + +<p>He made a point of impressing the graduates that a man in war never +gets over fear. In a crisis of danger they would be afraid the first +time, and the hundredth time, although each time they would learn more +of what to expect.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_19_20">[Pgs 19-20]</span></p> + + +<p>GOVERNOR SEES FUTURE</p> + +<p>Governor Saltonstall spoke of America’s plans for a great merchant +marine fleet, and said, “I congratulate you on the opportunities that +lie ahead of you.”</p> + +<p>Capt. Walter K. Queen, U.S.N.R., Ret., chairman of the Academy’s board +of commissioners, announced that the total number of Massachusetts +lads trained for officer duty since the Academy was founded now was +2,277. In keeping with a long-time custom, the Boston Marine Society, +established in 1742 and the oldest marine society in the world, +presented its prize to Vincent Francis Leahy of Brookline as “the +graduate excelling in those qualities making for the best shipmaster.” +Prizes were presented also to other outstanding students by the Society +of the War of 1812 and the Massachusetts State Society.</p> + +<p>Cape Cod, pioneered by men of the sea, is an appropriate setting for a +modern school of shipmasters. The future looks extremely promising and +the Academy, hardly established on the new site, is steadily expanding. +Its erstwhile students are in the thick of action in this war, and many +of them saw the worst of it while “delivering the goods” to Murmansk. +Some have been killed, some wounded and some decorated for valor.</p> + +<p>Cape Cod and New England at large will hear much about the +Massachusetts Maritime Academy as time goes on, for the signs point to +increasing heights of achievement by the American merchant marine after +peace is won.</p> + +<p>Capt. Claude O. Bassett, U.S.N.R., is the Academy superintendent. A +mild and good-humored veteran and thoroughly schooled and seasoned in +the profession of the sea.</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="YARMOUTHPORT">YARMOUTHPORT——</h2> +</div> + +<p> +<span class="lpad"><i>Ichabod Paddock, Whaling</i></span><br> +<span class="lpad"><i>Instructor—and “Wes” Baker,</i></span><br> +<span class="lpad"><i>Guadalcanal Hero</i></span><br> +</p> + + +<p>Tom Baker is mail carrier for the Yarmouthport, Cape Cod, postoffice. +An elderly man, wiry, with quick-moving gait, he makes his appointed +rounds in fair weather and foul. A younger man who held the job is in a +war plant.</p> + +<p>When Guadalcanal was taken, Tom Baker’s son—19-year-old Pvt. 1st Cl. +Thomas Wesley Baker—raced up the beach in the first invading wave of +Marines.</p> + +<p>I talked with him when he came home—an invalid, with jungle malaria in +his system. His Guadalcanal experience had cost him 40 pounds.</p> + +<p>It was 3 o’clock in the morning when the Japs advanced up the beach. +Wes Baker was taut and scared, because this was to be his first +experience in actual combat.... “We saw them first. They came in +columns of four. The highest ranking officers were right out in front. +Later, we found that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</span> none of the Japs was less than corporal and in +their clothing was a lot of American and English money. They were +picked troops and the biggest Japs I ever saw, all of them close to +six feet tall. They came through a little lagoon, waist high in water. +There wasn’t any barbed wire up, so they kept coming on. They were no +more than 200 yards away when we opened fire. There were 1500 of them +and they were all killed. We lost 29 and 80 were wounded. We’d charge +and they’d go into the water, trying to swim out of range. We picked +them off like ducks. When their officers were killed, they didn’t know +what they were doing.”</p> + + +<p>HOME FRONT CHARM</p> + +<p>More advanced in years than mail carrier Tom Baker are Miss Saidee M. +Swift and her sister, Mrs. Caroline Burr, of the Home Front. They are +in the candy-making business.</p> + +<p>A large and pleasant old house stands at the bend of the road just as +you enter upon the beautiful vista of great elms in Yarmouthport. A +weather-worn sign—Saidee Swift’s Candies—is on a tree out in front. +For 20 years Saidee Swift has turned out fine candies and travellers +from all parts of the nation have knocked at her door. Her chocolates +have gone to China. Governor Saltonstall is one of her best customers. +Her trade has included judges, society folk, artists, writers and +countless prominent individuals who have visited the Cape. Each +Christmas she makes about 200 pounds of candy for faithful customers in +distant parts.</p> + +<p>Saidee Swift’s technique includes a close watch on the weather and +sometimes she waits four or five days for just the right temperature. +She says, “In a northeast storm, I can dip splendidly.”</p> + +<p>Whaling captains lived in the great houses facing the Yarmouthport +elms. In 1691, Ichabod Paddock was engaged to go to Nantucket to +instruct men “in the art of killing<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23_24">[Pgs 23-24]</span> whales by the employment of boats +from the shore.” Not far from Saidee Swift’s is the former domicile of +Asa Eldredge, commander of the famous clipper Red Jacket, who made a +record voyage from New York to Liverpool in 13 days.</p> + +<p>Regular packet service to Boston contributed to the naming of +Yarmouthport. There is still an old timer or two who can recall the +fierce competition between the Yarmouthport and Barnstable sailing +packets and the frequent races to Boston.</p> + + +<p>WOMEN MOULDED BULLETS</p> + +<p>Yarmouthport is a part of the township of Yarmouth, which is +considerably spread out, from shore to shore, across the Cape. Not so +many years ago some stray bullets were found under the bricks of the +hearthstone of an old house that was being demolished. The find was +reminiscent of the story of Joshua Gray and his fellow soldiers of +Yarmouth. Joshua Gray was captain of the early Yarmouth Militia and an +officer in the Revolution, who marched with his men to help Washington +defend Dorchester Heights. The night before their departure, women of +the town worked in his home until sunrise moulding bullets for the +soldiers.</p> + +<p>In great grandfather’s time Yarmouthport was the trading center in +this section of the Cape, and people came over from Hyannis to do +their shopping. Tom Baker’s mail delivery job was first held by John +Thacher, who rode horseback and made his rounds once a week. His pay +was $1 a day, and some citizens considered this an extravagance. Total +postoffice receipts in the town of Yarmouthport for the year 1795 +amounted to $26.</p> + +<p>The first daily newspaper on Cape Cod was founded in 1893 in +Yarmouthport. George Otis operated the <i>Cape Cod Item</i>. On the +same site the <i>Yarmouth Register</i>, weekly newspaper, continues to +record the local life, as it did 108 years ago.</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="DENNIS">DENNIS——</h2> +</div> + +<p> +<span class="lpad"><i>The “Smoky Gold” Craft Thrived</i></span><br> +<span class="lpad"><i>When America Was Young</i></span><br> +</p> + + +<p>The “smoky gold” story of Cape Cod gives a rare picture of the +pioneering spirit and richness of America’s founding days.</p> + +<p>Smoky gold was the local name for lampblack, an indispensable base for +paints and printer’s ink in the olden days. The little town of Dennis, +once a great clipper ship port, was known in those days as one of the +world’s greatest sources of lampblack and her precious shipments were +in demand in England and on the Continent.</p> + +<p>A modern summer visitor, the Rev. Ernest G. N. Holmes of Bethlehem, +Pa., brought the story of the great Cape Cod industry to light. While +clearing a Dennis farm he had bought for a summer home, the clergyman +discovered a stone arch two or three feet above the ground; adjoining +it was a stone floor and around its edges the soil was as black as +night—a very unusual color for Cape Cod earth.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</span></p> + + +<p>AN INGENIOUS OPERATION</p> + +<p>Subsequent investigation revealed that this was the remnant of a +lampblack manufactory, known to the old timers as a Funn. Today this +section of Dennis is called Funntown. The Funn was a lamp chimney +on Gargantuan lines. Anyone who has used a kerosene lamp knows how +annoying it was to have the lamp smoke and smudge the glass. The Funn, +however, was erected for just that purpose, only there was no glass +and the lampblack formed on the ceiling of the Funn thick enough to be +scraped off in layers. Thus, smoky gold was produced.</p> + +<p>The relic was found knee-high above the ground, but when the Funn was +in working order it stood 18 feet above the ground and over a circular +area 20 feet in diameter. It was of stone and brick construction, the +top like a great inverted cone. There was an opening on each side. The +winds were important to the industry. So, the Funns were always built +in pairs, the hearth of one facing due east and the other due north. +The prevailing wind on Cape Cod is southwest. The idea was to keep the +smoke from escaping outside the Funn.</p> + +<p>The smoke first came from fires of pine knots gathered in the +surrounding woods. Next, after this supply was cut down, resin was +sailed to Dennis from the Carolinas and Virginia. A fuel problem +arose when, in 1860, a Civil War blockade cut off this supply. The +Funn operators then looked to the coal regions of the Pennsylvania +mountains; naphtha, a by-product, was shipped in and this was used up +to the last days when the Funns operated.</p> + + +<p>OXEN CARTED SMOKY GOLD</p> + +<p>After the fire was quenched, a man would enter the Funn with a 12-foot +pole and a board at the end, somewhat like a hoe. For protection +against the showering soot he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27_28">[Pgs 27-28]</span> wore a straw hat with a brim that went +beyond his shoulders, and with his long scraper he would reap the heavy +coatings of smoky gold. It would be poured into boxes, then taken to an +adjacent packing shed, where the boxes would be sealed for shipment. +Oxen then would cart the smoky gold to the East Dennis shore, where +crews of the clipper ships that sailed the seven seas put in. It would +go to Boston by sail, a trip of 10 to 11 hours if the wind was good. +On the oldtime Boston docks Cape Cod lampblack would join the company +of spices and silks from India, the teas from China, Java’s coffee and +sugar from the West Indies and become a part of the adventurous world +commerce of the clipper days.</p> + +<p>“Time moves on to ever new discoveries,” wrote Edna Cornell, telling +the story of smoky gold in a bulletin of The Society for the +Preservation of New England Antiquities. “The wonder of yesterday is +the forgotten glory of today. The Funns were new and amazing a century +ago; but industry, always in a hurry, outstripped them long ago, and +they are now only a few scattered bricks, a few garden walks and a +fireplace. Nevertheless, like all big and influential things, no matter +of what antiquity or deep obliteration, they have left a footprint +behind them that time has not yet erased nor witchgrass on a Cape Cod +farm completely hidden.”</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="DENNIS_">DENNIS——</h2> +</div> + +<p> +<span class="lpad"><i>“Sleepy John” Sears’</i></span><br> +<span class="lpad"><i>$2,000,000 Idea</i></span><br> +</p> + + +<p>Some remembrances of an old Cape Codder:</p> + +<p>“Salt works! Yes, I have seen many of them. There were rows and rows +of them on my grandfather’s farm. And my grandmother! Well, she wore +herself out taking care of them. She had only 14 children. Generally +three of them were in arms. Many a time when grandfather and the boys +were at the flats (the shore) and a rainstorm came up, grandmother +would walk half a mile, carrying one child, leading another, and the +three-year-old toddling behind—to the salt works to cover them before +the rain came on. Rain freshened the salt, you know.”</p> + +<p>Salt-making by the solar evaporation process was developed into a +$2,000,000 business on Cape Cod in the early 1800’s, according to +one estimate. Today, in an age when the Cape lives on the summer +vacationist trade and Camp Edwards revenue, you rarely hear a mention +of this once great, now extinct, industry. The originator was a +retired<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</span> skipper who had ideas and ever a weather eye for an extra +dollar—Capt. John (“Sleepy John”) Sears of Dennis.</p> + + +<p>CAPE COD STICKTOITIVNESS</p> + +<p>People thought him whacky when they first learned he was trying to make +money from the sun and the salt water all around him. But, Sleepy John +(an ill-chosen sobriquet, if there ever was one) had the last laugh and +rolled up a nice fortune meanwhile when he demonstrated that it is not +only a good idea to have ideas but, also, to carry them through. For, +salt was a lot more important in his era; it was needed then as now to +go with ones’ vittles, though the greatest value was its indispensable +use in the curing of fish.</p> + +<p>Dubbed “Sears Folly”, the first salt-making plant got off to a merry +start in 1776. Skipper Sears built a vat, or “water room”, that was a +crude affair, 100 feet long, 10 feet wide. There were shutters over +the top so that the vat containing salt water could be covered when +it rained, or exposed to the full rays of the sun. As the hot sun +poured down on the water, salt began to crystallize and the Dennis +idea man must have danced a ’76 jitter jig, conjuring up pictures +of what he would do with all his wealth, amassed from just a simple +contraption and no expense whatever. At the end of the sunny season, +however, Captain Sears had produced only eight bushels of salt, and the +neighbors were laughing louder.</p> + +<p>The old sea dog wasn’t in the habit of quitting when the going got +rough. Having discovered that production was held down by leaks in the +vat, he persevered and found a way to make the vat tight as a drum. The +second year he crystallized 30 bushels of salt. But, a labor problem +was slowing his progress. The salt water had to be poured into the vat +from buckets, a tedious and time-consuming handicap, for John soon +learned that for every 350 gallons of water he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31_32">[Pgs 31-32]</span> poured only one bushel +of salt formed. He kept plugging and, meanwhile, he was doing some tall +scheming. The neighbors were still laughing.</p> + + +<p>FINALE OF A GREAT INDUSTRY</p> + +<p>On the fourth year Sears Folly was improved with a pump worked by hand. +Production was stepped up. The pump continued in use until 1785, then, +at a suggestion of Capt. Nathaniel Freeman, John Sears, with the help +of others, contrived a pump worked by wind. This really turned the +trick and set the skipper off full sail to become the local Croesus.</p> + +<p>Salt sold at $8 a bushel ($8 was $8 in those times) and the bushels +piled higher and higher at the Sears works. By this time the neighbors +had gotten sober and interested and other salt-making windmills were +erected and their creaking and whirring were familiar sounds throughout +the village. The men who assisted John Sears with his windmill +improvement eventually reassigned to him their right and title and +finally the founder of the salt industry obtained a Government patent.</p> + +<p>The production of salt spread in other parts of the Cape, notably +Provincetown, a great fishing port and, earlier, a whaler’s haven. +Salt-making began there in 1800; in 1837 the tip of the Cape had 78 +salt works, each employing two men and producing a total of 48,960 +bushels of salt. The manufacturing developed even to a higher plan when +Glauber Salts, made from boiling brine, was valued by physicians and +came into brisk demand.</p> + +<p>Development of the salt springs of New York, and manufacturing +improvements and cheaper operating costs elsewhere, marked the +beginning of the end of Cape Cod’s great salt industry.</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="BREWSTER">BREWSTER——</h2> +</div> + +<p> +<span class="lpad"><i>Thanks to Pioneering Here,</i></span><br> +<span class="lpad"><i>Millions of American Soldiers</i></span><br> +<span class="lpad"><i>Wear Good Shoes</i></span><br> +</p> + + +<p>Quiet little Brewster, Cape Cod, offers a rich tapestry of Americana.</p> + +<p>Many a U. S. soldier slogging over the world battlefronts is wearing +brogans turned out by patented machines of the great United Shoe +Machinery—which started from a one-man cobbling business in oldtime +Brewster.</p> + +<p>West Brewster, dubbed “Factory Village” by the old timers, was a +bustling scene, with spinning, fulling and grist mills, tannery and +iron works, and the still-present Flax Pond, where flax gathered in +surrounding fields was put to soak in the water-retting process of +making linen.</p> + +<p>The sheep growers would trek here, over the fields and ragged roads, +with their bags of wool. The going was hard on their footwear, it was +noted by the Winslow brothers, one of whom operated a fulling mill +and the other, a grist mill.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</span> So, to maintain good will, the fulling +mill Winslow verged into a sideline of cobbling the shoes of his wool +producers.</p> + +<p>But, a teen-age son—who gave the lie to common gossip of that day, +that the younger generation was swiftly going to the dogs—was actually +the one who transformed the humble cobbler’s tapping into a nationwide +whirr and, incidentally, founded the Great Winslow fortune of today.</p> + + +<p>A CROSS-ROADS GENIUS</p> + +<p>The lad was uncommonly ingenious and tenacious. Recruited by the +fulling mill operator to assist in the cobbling work, the boy grew +impatient at the tediousness of the task. He conceived a time-saving +and labor-saving machine. Then he dreamed up another and another. He +wrote to Washington and obtained a patent on each new invention as fast +as it took shape.</p> + +<p>These same patents are in use today in the big shoe plants of America, +and the earnings from them continue to flow handsomely to the present +Winslow heirs. Thus, the mighty United Shoe Machinery Company got its +first breath of life on old Cape Cod.</p> + +<p>Brewster is named for Elder William Brewster, a crusader for religious +freedom, who sailed to Cape Cod on the Mayflower and acted as pastor to +the church at Plymouth. He is described as having been “tender harted, +and compassionate of such as were in miserie.” Further, “none did more +offend him and displease him than such as would haughtily and proudly +carry and lift up themselves, being rise from nothing, and haveing +little els in them to comend them but a few fine cloaths, or a little +riches more than others.” On his death, we are told, Elder Brewster’s +complete estate consisted of 275 books, of which 64 were “in the +learned languages.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</span></p> + +<p>Quaint names are associated with Cape Cod lore. Fear Brewster was one +of Elder Brewster’s daughters and he had sons named Love Brewster and +Wrestling Brewster.</p> + + +<p>SEA ADVENTURES OF OLD</p> + +<p>When Brewster town history is recounted there is always talk of the +colorful seafaring oldsters and their great sailing craft. Outstanding +is the Pitcairn Island story. Captain William Freeman of Brewster +landed at the bleak hiding place of the Bounty mutineers in 1883, +and brought his daughter Clara along with him. Clara cultivated the +friendship with Rosa Young, daughter of Edward Young, who survived the +hardships and bloody conflict among the mutineers after they found +refuge on the island in 1790. Later, they corresponded. Today, in the +Brewster Public Library, there is the original manuscript of Rosa +Young’s letters, extending over a period of six months.</p> + +<p>In one of these letters, Rosa tells of her meeting with the chaplain +of the man-of-war Constance, who landed at Pitcairn. All descendents +of the mutineers, including Rosa, were intensely religious. Thus, she +described the visiting chaplain to her Brewster friend: “Whether he +experienced the same feeling that I did I cannot tell, but I certainly +thought that a more un-chaplain-looking man was hard to find, and if +words and manner are an index to a man’s character, he certainly did +not seem rightly fitted for a sacred office.” And then, as though to +show how shocked she was, Rosa Young concluded, “as we were about to +leave ship he said, ‘Now, we will have to sing, <i>The Girl I Left +Behind Me.</i>’”</p> + +<p>The house in Brewster where Joseph C. Lincoln, writer of Cape Cod +character stories, was born still bears a For Sale sign. Conrad Aiken, +noted American poet, has a Summer place in a tranquil spot in the hill +country. Chester Slack, an artist of reputation, lives there year-round +and takes a sympathetic<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</span> interest in local affairs. In recent times +a Brewster craftsman, with a resourceful spirit reminiscent of the +Factory Village pioneers, has been weaving fine tweeds to fill +individual orders.</p> + +<p>Brewster today reflects mostly upon her memory-book, for there is +no longer any of the teeming industry of the Winslow founders. The +exciting spring herring run annually draws attention to the town. +Brewster has one vestige of the hallowed past that is distinctive: +It is the site of the only water-power grist mill on Cape Cod where +countless modern summer visitors have watched the ancient process of +grinding corn—and captured a bit of stirring reality of the vigorous +Founding Days of our nation.</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="HARWICH">HARWICH——</h2> +</div> + +<p> +<span class="lpad"><i>A Liberator of Slaves, Immortalized</i></span><br> +<span class="lpad"><i>by the Poet Whittier</i></span><br> +</p> + + +<p>“The boys all want the town paper. It’s like getting a letter from +home, they write.”</p> + +<p>Harry Albro, friendly and kind country editor, gives particular +attention to his servicemen’s mailing list. He served under MacArthur +in the last war, was gassed at Argonne and came back with six battle +stars. He has held the post of a State Guard commanding officer and has +had other Home Front duties. His homey weekly newspapers mean a lot to +people in war service now far removed from their beloved Cape Cod.</p> + +<p>When the Revolutionary War clouds loomed, Ebenezer Weekes of Harwich +said to his son, “Eben you are the only one that can be spared; take +your gun and go; fight for religion and liberty!”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</span></p> + + +<p>“HARRICH” IN ENGLAND, “HAR-WICH” HERE</p> + +<p>“Harrich” is the way it is mouthed in the seaport town of Essex County, +England. The Harwich of Cape Cod is pronounced Har-wich. This Harwich +was founded in 1694 and it is said that one of her ardent townsmen, +Patrick Butler, walked all the way to Boston, a trek of 100 miles, to +obtain the incorporation.</p> + +<p>In modern times Anthony Elmer Crowell of East Harwich achieved fame +as one of America’s great craftsmen. Mr. Crowell, remote from the +beaten path, admirably proved the better mousetrap adage. He carved and +painted images of birds so realistically that they came into demand +for museums and private collections and travelled even to Australia. +At first Mr. Crowell was a gunners’ guide, commissioned to fashion +some duck decoys that would be more convincing to Cape Cod ducks than +the wood-butcher jobs that other decoy-makers had sold the sportsmen. +Then the East Harwich genius branched into making robins, bluejays, +sanderlings and the many, many other species of the feathered tribes.</p> + +<p>Word of his skill got around fast and he profited handsomely. His +quaint craft was put into Joseph C. Lincoln’s Cape Cod book, “Queer +Judson”. And, “It is not unlikely that a day may come when a ‘Crowell +bird’ will be as much sought as a genuine bit of Sandwich glass or a +slender piece of Sheraton furniture,” prophesies Arthur Wilson Tarbell +in “Cape Cod Ahoy!”</p> + +<p>Religion was a strong point of Harwich’s early days. A variety of +fifteen denominations once functioned within the town’s borders and +at times emotions ran high. It is recorded, for example, that the +Rev. Edward Pell of Harwich left a request for his burial to be in +the North Precinct, or present-day<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</span> Brewster, for, “if left among the +pines of the South Precinct (Harwich) he might be overlooked at the +resurrection, that the Lord would never think of looking in such an +un-Godly place for a righteous man.”</p> + + +<p>MAN WITH “THE BRANDED HAND”</p> + +<p>In 1743 came the “Great Awakening” evangelical movement and with it +the all-out sects known as “New Lights” who “made the pine woods of +Harwich ring with Hallelujahs and hosannas, even from babes!” Moreover, +there was “a screeching and groaning all over, and it hath been very +powerful ever since.” Touching on activities of the New Lights, Henry +C. Kittridge, Cape Cod historian, narrates that “when under the spell +of their mania, they walked along the tops of fences instead of on the +sidewalks; affected a strange, springing gait, and conversed by singing +instead of ordinary speech, in the distressing manner of characters in +light operas.” Could it be that author Kittridge was spoofing us a bit?</p> + +<p>A native of Harwich—recorded in history as the first liberator of +slaves—is eulogized in verse by Whittier. Capt. Jonathan Walker in +1844 put out from Pensacola with seven runaway slaves aboard his +vessel, having responded to their appeals to be taken to the British +West Indies, where they would find freedom under the Union Jack. The +Cape Cod skipper was captured, he was imprisoned in irons and thence +the brand, “S.S.” (slave stealer) was seared into his right hand. +Captain Walker is hailed by Whittier:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">“Hold it up before our sunshine, up against our Northern air;</span><br> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ho! Men of Massachusetts, for the love of God, look there!</span><br> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Take it henceforth for your standard, like the Bruce’s heart of yore,</span><br> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In the dark strife closing round ye, let that hand be seen before.”</span><br> +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</span></p> + +<p>The culture of cranberries on Cape Cod—a source of revenue that runs +into the millions—was begun on a commercial scale in Harwich in 1845, +though it was Henry Hall of Dennis who was the pioneer grower in 1816. +Fishing was on the decline and a retired harvester of cod spoke the +sentiment of his salty brethren:</p> + +<p>“I put up my chart and glass, and took to raising cranberry sass.” +Before then the cranberry was regarded as only food for the cranes. +Crane-berry was the original name the pioneers gave this famous Cape +Cod product.</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHATHAM">CHATHAM——</h2> +</div> + +<p> +<span class="lpad"><i>The First American to Fly</i></span><br> +<span class="lpad"><i>The Atlantic “Hopped Off” Here</i></span><br> +</p> + + +<p>“You don’t say hum and eggs, do you?” chided the old native.</p> + +<p>So, the proper pronunciation for the town of Chatham is—Chat-ham. With +the accent on the hind end. To the native this is important. And so it +is on the opposite side of the nation where the true citizen of San +Francisco winces when you say “Frisco” and would prefer to have you +articulate the whole name of his fair city.</p> + +<p>Chatham, with some 50 miles of shoreline, is one of the most beautiful, +unspoiled seashore places on Cape Cod. Architecture of great seafaring +days, the primitive, lonely cry of the seagull, the home-spun shell +fisherman, a history crowded with drama, bright little Yankee streets, +art and literature and here and there a touch of international +fame—this is Chatham. The writer is prejudiced, because this is the +place where, 18 years ago, he spent his first night on Cape Cod. And +met his first artist acquaintance, a dear friend for two decades, +Harold Dunbar.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</span></p> + + +<p>PEOPLE OF DISTINCTION</p> + +<p>The late Joseph C. Lincoln was a widely known Chatham resident. The +writer of many fiction-novels about Cape Cod folk contributed more +than any other person to make this peninsula known to the nation at +large. Arthur Wilson Tarbell of Chatham, a modern historian, wrote +an outstanding book, “Cape Cod Ahoy!” Sinclair Lewis did some of his +early writing here. Alice Stallknecht Wight got on the Associated Press +wires as a result of the excitement caused by her mural painting in +the Chatham Congregational Church. “Christ Preaching to the Multitude” +is its title. The multitude consists of well known Chatham faces and +Christ, depicted as a fisherman, is shown addressing them from a boat. +For a companion piece Mrs. Wight later painted “The Last Supper”, +showing Coast Guards, sea captains and other Chathamites as the +disciples.</p> + +<p>And in a pleasing, secluded spot the late Supreme Court Justice Louis +D. Brandeis had his summer home for many years.</p> + +<p>The tiptop spire of the Congregational Church is fashioned from a +spar on the bark R. A. Allen, wrecked on the Chatham shore in 1887. +Lightning damaged the church in the same storm. And the Cape’s toy +windmill industry, that has waxed fat from the summer trade, started +in Chatham. The humble carver of the first shop is romanticized in +Lincoln’s novel “Shavings”. But a Coast Guard station skipper is given +credit for making the first toy windmill. The art spread to other +stations and business got so brisk the Government issued an order, +forbidding the guardians of the deep from engaging further in the +profitable sideline.</p> + + +<p>LINKED WITH OLD ENGLAND</p> + +<p>Chatham is named for the County of Kent town in old England. Before the +Pilgrims came to the Cape, Champlain,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43_44">[Pgs 43-44]</span> the French explorer, arrived +here in 1606. He planned to establish a French colony in Chatham, but +a fight with the Indians drove him off. In 1658, William Nickerson of +Norfolk, England, appeared on the scene and gave the sachem Mattaquason +a shallop for the sea-girted acres. Complications developed; Nickerson +was called to Plymouth Court and ultimately he had to pay 90 pounds as +a fair purchase price. In 1712 Chatham was incorporated as a town.</p> + +<p>The Mayflower, her passengers looking to a settlement below the Hudson, +barely escaped being wrecked on the Chatham shoals. Here she turned +back to enter Provincetown Harbor.</p> + +<p>Three hundred years later a Navy flier repaid this visit, wafting down +from the heavens onto Plymouth, England.</p> + +<p>Lieut. Albert Cushing Read of Hanson, Mass., was the first man to +fly the Atlantic, and he took off from Chatham. He competed in a +trans-ocean contest of the Navy “Nancies” in 1919, the N-C’s 1, 2, 3 +and 4. The original takeoff point was Rockaway Beach, Long Island. Read +rode the N-C 4, which was disabled far off this shore, but managed +to get into this port, where, as luck had it, a Navy air station was +located for the training of large numbers of fliers for the last war. +A new motor was installed, the N-C 4 winged off to the Azores via +Trepassey Bay, New Foundland and the pioneering flight was completed +with fifty-two and a half hours having been spent in the skies. Read +flew on to Plymouth, perhaps for sentiment’s sake, having the Mayflower +in mind.</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="ORLEANS">ORLEANS——</h2> +</div> + +<p> +<span class="lpad"><i>The World’s Insomnia</i></span><br> +<span class="lpad"><i>Champion Lived Here</i></span><br> +</p> + + +<p>The late Joseph C. Lincoln of Chatham gained national fame with his +stories of Cape Cod. The quaint characters he wrote about were, for the +most part, taken from life. Some other old-timers, however, have been a +bit too unconventional, even for Mr. Lincoln’s yarn-spinning purposes. +“Bill-Ike” Small, for example.</p> + +<p>Bill-Ike—or, Isaac Wilbur Small, a name that no one would have +recognized—claimed he never slept. He was the insomnia champion of +the world until he passed on in Orleans a few years ago. And, he made +it so real a Boston paper printed pages about him. The paper sent down +its crack feature writer and he and Bill-Ike went off to New York to +tour the night clubs—the idea being to determine whether Bill-Ike’s +story would stand the test during two or three night of skylarking and +sitting up in a hotel room.</p> + +<p>Bill-Ike made good, we were told, for the newspaperman observed him +every blessed minute of the sleeplessness, nor did he, himself, fall +off a chair.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</span></p> + + +<p>HE GAINED WEIGHT, TOO</p> + +<p>“I close my eyes for a little while, just to rest ’em, but I don’t +sleep. I haven’t used a bed for over five years,” Bill-Ike would tell +me. Then the gentle old man with a flowing white beard would add that +he had gained 38 pounds in the past year.</p> + +<p>He would just “set” in a decrepit old chair by the stove or putter +about the house long winter nights. He’d while away the tedious hours +reading sea stories and cowboy yarns and go through three or four +magazines in a night. But, his mother’s glasses didn’t serve him as +well toward the end and time became more of a burden. Around 3 a.m. he +would brew a pot of tea and make himself a sandwich. Moonlight nights +in the spring and summer were welcomed, for then he was able to get +outdoors and do a few chores.</p> + +<p>Bill-Ike said he first discovered the capacity to go without sleep when +he was a youth working in the cranberry bogs during a rush season. He +worked night and day for three months that time and discovered that +he could get along with only an hour’s snooze in the morning before +breakfast. But, he didn’t really begin to make a habit of staying awake +until 1928.</p> + + +<p>HOW HE “EXPERIMENTED”</p> + +<p>That year Bill-Ike happened to read in a magazine, “Nobody can go 80 +days without sleep.” Just to prove this wasn’t so, the old gentleman +began by denying himself sleep for a continuous stretch of 83 days. +In 1929 he “experimented” again, keeping awake 147 days. Then the +sleeplessness became more of a habit. But, each year he bettered his +own record and in 1933 he rounded out his first full year of going +without sleep. Finally, Bill-Ike achieved the amazing five-year record, +and he was going into his sixth year when he passed on.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_47_48">[Pgs 47-48]</span></p> + +<p>He was in fine fettle almost to the end, a firm believer in the gospel +of hard toil. During vacation seasons he kept busy tending the gardens +and being the handyman for summer cottagers. A bachelor—“always +been willin’ but the right gal ain’t ever showed up”—Bill-Ike lived +with his brother, Fred, in a century-old house in a spot remote from +the town. Fred would have his regular eight or nine hours in bed, +undisturbed by Bill-Ike’s poking about the house at all hours of the +night.</p> + +<p>“Sure, I could enjoy a full night’s sleep,” was the old insomnia +champion’s mournful comment. “But, I just can’t, that’s all. Doctors +say it has something to do with my nerves.”</p> + +<p>There were people in Orleans who took Bill-Ike’s sleepless story with +a pinch of salt. But Bill-Ike got the publicity just the same, and the +New York excursion and ballyhoo didn’t change him a bit. And, at the +peak of the newspaper excitement, another oldster of the community +bobbed up with a new and original claim. He slept, all right, but his +eyelids never seemed to come down. All of his sleeping was done with +eyes wide open. He just lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling, all +night long.</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="ORLEANS_">ORLEANS——</h2> +</div> + +<p> +<span class="lpad"><i>The First German U-Boat</i></span><br> +<span class="lpad"><i>Attack On American Soil</i></span><br> +</p> + + +<p>In the last war, the one and only attack on American soil by the +Germans was at Orleans, Cape Cod.</p> + +<p>On a quiet Sunday morning, July 21, 1918, the submarine, U-156, rose +from the ocean waters a few hundred yards off the Orleans shore. In +full view of numerous cottagers, the enemy sub leisurely began shelling +the defenseless tug Perth Amboy and her three barges.</p> + +<p>Exactly why these craft, of no particular military value, were chosen +for attack has never been made known. It may have been an impulsive act +of bravado by the Kaiser’s marauders or, possibly, a scare stunt to +give Americans at home the jitters.</p> + +<p>The Americans attacked, managed to get ashore in dories, while +the firing continued. “One observer counted 147 shots.” There +are conflicting versions, naturally, but it is agreed there was +considerable shooting, and the U-boat operated throughout without +meeting resistance.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</span></p> + + +<p>FIRED ON COAST GUARD</p> + +<p>At least one shot was aimed directly at the tower of a Coast Guard +station. It missed by a small margin and landed in a marsh, according +to the description given me by a former Coast Guardsman who was +standing the tower watch at the time. The three barges were sunk. The +Perth Amboy, while badly burned, was subsequently towed in for repairs, +and she may even be in service today.</p> + +<p>A Cape Cod man, strange as it may seem, was skipper of the Perth +Amboy—Capt. Joe Perry hailed from Provincetown. Another Provincetown +man, Henry J. James, son of a fishing captain in that old port at the +tip-end of the Cape, was moved to write a significant book after the +Orleans attack.</p> + +<p>Of interest even today, this book—“German Subs in Yankee Waters”—came +out not long before Pearl Harbor, though James (when I last heard from +him he was superintendent of schools in Simsbury, Connecticut) had +negotiated with publishers for a long time to get it into print.</p> + +<p>Many American developments for defense in the present war coincide +with suggestions made by James—small, fast boats for coastal defense, +beam-trawlers for minesweeping, the registering of all small craft for +coastal protection and other aids lacking in the last war.</p> + +<p>The Cape Cod attack and its implications made a strong impression upon +James in his youth; this spurred him on to devote many years of patient +research to complete his book.</p> + +<p>He relates that in 1918, during the final action of the last war, +Germany had six U-boats operating in our waters and these alone sank 91 +ships and took a toll of 368 lives. All this happened within a brief +six months.</p> + +<p>These half-dozen underseas boats operating along the Atlantic +shore—3400 miles from their base at Kiel,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</span> Germany—all got away +safely after their destructive work. All but one—this struck a mine in +the North Sea, not far from Kiel—got back to the home base.</p> + + +<p>STRANGE MEETING AT SEA</p> + +<p>A complete, authentic record of the Cape Cod U-boat attack is still +lacking. Occasionally, however, a new bit of information is added to +the story by one who was at the scene. One of the best anecdotes was +told me by a physician who had a cottage on the shore and sat with a +telephone in his hand, observing the shelling and giving a running +account of the attack to the <i>Boston Globe</i>.</p> + +<p>After the war this gentleman made a crossing on the Leviathan. He fell +into conversation with a German steward, mentioning that he was from +Cape Cod. The German asked if he had, by chance, ever heard of a U-boat +attack there during the war, and then proceeded to give an accurate +description of the Orleans attack. Thus, the doctor-reporter, who +had scored the biggest newspaper scoop in Cape Cod journalism and an +erstwhile member of the U-156 crew met in mid-Atlantic.</p> + +<p>The German chuckled: “Yah! we had some fun on that cruise. You didn’t +know, did you, that some of us went ashore one night in a rubber boat +and attended a movie in your Beverly, Massachusetts!”</p> + +<p>The only effort to repulse the attacking U-boat was made by a lone +flier from a Naval station at nearby Chatham. He lacked ammunition and +had to resort to bold bluffing. After diving a couple of times over the +submarine, he made a final low swoop and let fly a monkey wrench at the +heads of the crew standing on deck.</p> + +<p>Some time ago an article I wrote about the Cape Cod attack was +reprinted in a digest magazine. A retired navy officer, in a little +town in Pennsylvania, read it. He wrote<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</span> me: “Well do I remember that +dull overcast Sabbath morning, as I was the fellow who threw the monkey +wrench.” And, he invited me to drop in, if I ever got around his way, +and he’d tell me “the whole story.”</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="EASTHAM">EASTHAM——</h2> +</div> + +<p> +<span class="lpad"><i>Local Boy Makes Good On</i></span><br> +<span class="lpad"><i>First Bombing of Tokio</i></span><br> +</p> + + +<p>Eastham, Cape Cod, has a real claim to present-day fame. This +unexciting, though historic little settlement, near the outer end of +the sickle, is the home of Master Sgt. Edwin W. Horton, Jr., member of +the Doolittle party on the first bombing of Tokio in World War II.</p> + +<p>On his return to this country, Horton, at the first opportunity, +hastened back to little Eastham for a quiet visit. And brought his +bride to introduce to the home folks.</p> + +<p>Eastham is small but historically she is important. The original name +was Nauset. Here the Pilgrims, exploring after their arrival on the +Mayflower, had their first encounter with the Indians. The forefathers +focused particular attention on the fertile soil, Thomas Prence, +Governor of Plymouth Colony, describing it as the “richest soyle, for +ye most part a blackish & deep mould, much like that wher groweth ye +best Tobacco in Virginia.” Today Eastham is<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</span> still outstanding as a +farming place, noted especially for her asparagus production.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Provincetown for beauty,</i></span><br> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Wellfleet for pride,</i></span><br> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>If it wasn’t for milk cans</i></span><br> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Eastham ’d’ a died.</i></span><br> +</p> + +<p>Thus the sing-song went when, later, the lush Nauset dairy herds +provided milk for a good part of the Cape. And Eastham, truly +farming-minded, would fling back these better known lines:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>The Cape Cod girls they have no combs,</i></span><br> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>They comb their hair with codfish bones;</i></span><br> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>The Cape Cod Boys they have no sleds,</i></span><br> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>They slide downhill on codfish heads.</i></span><br> +</p> + + +<p>PILGRIM’S TREE STILL BLOSSOMS</p> + +<p>Life still springs from at least one of the plantings of those far +distant days of the forefathers. Thomas Prence, who first set foot +on the Cape in 1621, subsequently built a house for himself and his +bride near Fort Hill. He planted a little pear tree there; it had been +brought over from England.</p> + +<p>Each Spring a pear tree blossoms on this site. Thoreau, in the book +on his Cape Cod travels, refers to the planting by Thomas Prence and +states the tree had been blown down a few months previous to his visit +to the scene. A modern historian, however, records that Thomas Prence’s +pear tree is still bearing, a sapling having been planted after the +old tree had been swept down in a gale. Thoreau quotes the following +tribute by a Cape Codder, a Mr. Herman Doane:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">“<i>That exiled band long since have passed away,</i></span><br> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>And still, old Tree! Thou standest in the place</i></span><br> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Where Prence’s hand did plant thee in his day,—</i></span><br> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>An undersigned memorial of his race.</i>”</span><br> +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</span></p> + + +<p>THE LAST WORKING WINDMILL</p> + +<p>The lone workable windmill on Cape Cod is located in Eastham. Before +Pearl Harbor there would be a ceaseless trek of Summer visitors to the +Seth Knowles’ windmill and Miller John Fulcher would demonstrate its +ancient workings with true professional eclat. He’d set her sails, +swing her into the wind, give the lift wheel a deft spin, and, in jig +time, Miller John would turn out a bushel of ground corn before the +eyes of the intrigued city folk. Those who seemed to know asserted +that Miller John had the “miller’s thumb”. Dipping his thumb into the +trough, he would decide just when the corn was properly ground.</p> + +<p>The story of the old windmill is vague. Some say it gave service +originally in Plymouth and then was “flaked” across the Bay to be +re-erected in Eastham. The date 1793 is nailed inside, but this still +leaves unanswered the point as to when and where its story begins.</p> + +<p>There’s a tablet near a stretch of Eastham beach that memorializes +the “First Encounter.” The event is described in William Bradford’s +narrative:</p> + +<p>“But, presently, all on ye sudain, they heard a great & strange crie, +which they knew to be the same voyces they heard in ye night, though +they varied their notes, & one of their company being abroad came +runing in & cried, ‘Men, Indeans, Indeans’; and withall, their arrowes +came flying amongst them. Their men rane with all speed to recover +their armes, as by ye good providence of God they did.... The crie of +ye Indeans was dreadfull, espetially when they saw ther men rune out of +ye randevoue towourds ye shallop, to recover their armes, the Indeans +wheeling aboute upon them. But some runing out with coats of malle +on, & cutlesses in their hands, they soon got their armes & let flye +amongst them, and quickly stopped their violence.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</span></p> + +<p>Bradford’s narrative reveals, also, why the redskins were in a +war-making mood.</p> + +<p>Six years previous “one Hunt, a mr. of a ship” had visited this scene. +Hunt had seized 24 of the Nauset Indians and taken them to Spain in +slave chains and, it is elsewhere related, he “sold these silly savages +for rials of eight.”</p> + +<p>What changes are wrought by the years! Where slavery was introduced in +the early 17th century, a native son now is ranked with America’s great +heroes in a global war for freedom.</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="SOUTH_WELLFLEET">SOUTH WELLFLEET——</h2> +</div> + +<p> +<span class="lpad"><i>Our World Communications System</i></span><br> +<span class="lpad"><i>Began with Marconi’s Triumph</i></span><br> +<span class="lpad"><i>On a Lonely Ocean Bluff</i></span><br> +</p> + + +<p>How many Americans know that our world radio system was given birth on +Cape Cod?</p> + +<p>Guglielmo Marconi achieved his great goal on the oceanside of South +Wellfleet, out near the end of the Cape. Here, on the Sabbath night +of January 19, 1903, he got through the first trans-Atlantic wireless +telegraph message. Modern radio developed from that beginning.</p> + +<p>The overseas wireless message was a greeting from President Theodore +Roosevelt to King Edward. It read:</p> + + + +<p class="right"> +White House, Jan. 19, 1903<br> +</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">His Majesty Edward VII</span><br> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">London, England</span><br> +</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In taking advantage of the wonderful triumph</span><br> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">of scientific research and ingenuity which has been</span><br> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">achieved in perfecting a system of wireless telegraphy,</span><br> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I extend on behalf of the American people,</span><br> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">most cordial greetings and good wishes to you and</span><br> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">to all the people of the British Empire.</span><br> +</p> + +<p class="right"> +Theodore Roosevelt<br> +</p> + +<p>King Edward’s response came several days later—proof that Marconi had +completely succeeded in his long work of experimenting.</p> + + +<p>THE FIRST-HAND STORY</p> + +<p>Then Charlie Paine, gaunt Cape Cod native, entered the scene. He had +been engaged to get the King’s message to the Wellfleet telegraph +office, whence it was to be dispatched to the White House. But, +Marconi’s horse-and-buggy courier, holding to an old Cape Cod trait, +showed not a twitch of emotion—“he wasn’t goin’ to kill his horse for +nobody.” Old Charlie Paine passed on about two years ago in his native +South Wellfleet. This is how he related his part in the big day of +excitement:</p> + +<p>“The first message Marconi ever got through from the other side of the +ocean I took from his hand to carry to the telegraph office. I’d waited +about six days to get it, with Black Diamond hitched up in the buggy +most of the time. We jes stayed there, ready to go any minute.</p> + +<p>“It was winter and colder’n Greenland. Dimey had two blankets over her +and I was wearin’ Steve Paine’s wolf coat that he shot up in Alaska. +All of a sudden I see Marconi come rearin’ out of the plant with both +hands full of tape. He was jes like a crazy man.</p> + +<p>“‘You wait there, Paine, and I’ll be with you in a minute,’ he shouted, +and started for his office. I got my buggy turned around ready. The +nearest telegraph office was Wellfleet, four miles away. When he came +out again he had two big envelopes in his hand. They were messages to +be telegraphed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</span> to Washington and New York. I found out later that it +was a message from King Edward to President Theodore Roosevelt, for one +envelope was addressed to the White House and the other to a New York +newspaper.</p> + +<p>“‘Drive like the wind!’ says Marconi. ‘If you kill your horse I’ll buy +you another.’</p> + +<p>“Well, I started off for Wellfleet as fast as I could make Dimey go. +But when I got over the dunes, out of sight, I slowed down. I couldn’t +see any need of goin’ crazy over a telegraph message. ’Twas four miles +of hard goin’ and I wasn’t goin’ to kill my horse for nobody. Jim Swett +was telegraph operator at Wellfleet railroad station then and I gave +him the two envelopes. And that’s all there was to it.”</p> + + +<p>MARCONI WAS JUST 29</p> + +<p>Marconi was not yet in his 30th year. First he had proved wireless +practicable by communicating across the French channel from his +native Bologna in 1899. Working at Cornwall, he made contact with +Newfoundland. His Cape Cod transmission of President Roosevelt’s +message was the crowning achievement of his career. Thereon the +Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America became absorbed in a +brisk overseas business. The <i>London Times</i> received part of its +American news through this Cape Cod station.</p> + +<p>The term Marconigram became familiar to American ears. Marconi’s system +was adopted by the British and Italian navies. He took charge of +wireless operations of the Italian government during the last war. He +was awarded the Nobel prize for physics in 1909, and the J. Scott medal +for the invention of wireless telegraphy on June 5, 1931.</p> + +<p>The pioneering was done on a high bluff overlooking the endless +sweep of the Atlantic. Work was started in 1901. Twenty immense +spars, 200 feet high, were erected in a circle.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</span> The station proper +was a one-story bungalow. Marconi and his crew slept and ate in a +cottage a few paces away. The big poles hadn’t been up long when a +nor’easter howled down on the exposed spot. They were knocked over +like matchsticks. Ice contributed to the damage and the loss ran into +$50,000. Then four towers of steel and wood, rooted with blocks of +cement and cables were erected, and they stayed put.</p> + + +<p>FAMOUS SITE UNMARKED</p> + +<p>Mrs. Eliza J. Doane of South Wellfleet cooked for Marconi and his men. +She said: “Mr. Marconi could play the piano something grand, and he had +a pleasing voice. He was especially fond of ‘Old Black Joe’. He and the +others would sing that almost every time they got around the piano.”</p> + +<p>A few years ago, when I last visited the scene, only the twisted ends +of cable, the broken cement blocks, studded with bolts, and a few +heavy timbers, revealed the historic scene. Unless the storm-lashed +tides have crumbled the embankment, the important debris is still +there. There was talk of establishing a “Marconi Park,” with a suitable +tablet. Prof. Frederick C. Hicks of Yale Law School led a group of +summer cottagers sponsoring the project. But, something stymied the +plans.</p> + +<p>During its commercial career, the South Wellfleet station had a +range of about 1600 miles. At night, under favorable conditions, it +transmitted messages to a distance of 3500 miles. The government closed +this and other wireless stations for the duration of the last war. When +peace came the Chatham station of the Radio Corporation of America, a +few towns up the Cape, took over the Marconi commercial business.</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="ADMIRAL_NIMITZ">ADMIRAL NIMITZ——</h2> +</div> + +<p> +<span class="lpad"><i>Cape Cod’s Most Famous</i></span><br> +<span class="lpad"><i>Summer Resident</i></span><br> +</p> + + +<p>Cape Cod’s most distinguished summer visitor—Admiral Chester W. +Nimitz—plans to resume his summer vacationing in Wellfleet, Cape Cod, +after the war.</p> + +<p>The great Naval leader who is directing the defeat of Japan manages +to keep up correspondence with his sister-in-law, Miss Elizabeth E. +Freeman of Wellfleet. Miss Freeman, who is Mrs. Nimitz’s sister, says +he has written her how he misses the Cape and that he looks forward to +his return.</p> + +<p>For many years the Admiral and his family have vacationed in Wellfleet. +Their haven is deeply secluded in the woods on Gull Pond Road. The +inaccessibility of the place is the reason why, perhaps, so few people +are aware of the Cape Cod ties of one of the illustrious figures of +modern world history.</p> + +<p>The Admiral’s efficient and courageous son, Lieut. Commander Chester W. +Nimitz, Jr., who has been twice decorated for heroism, calls Wellfleet +his home. He has done so<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</span> in making out his personal Naval records ever +since his graduation from Annapolis, Miss Freeman informed me. As late +as last summer Commander Nimitz managed to get in a Wellfleet visit, +and his wife and child spent all the summer there.</p> + + +<p>FISHING HIS RECREATION</p> + +<p>The last time Admiral Nimitz and Mrs. Nimitz vacationed at Wellfleet +was in April, 1941. Members of his family, however, continue to +visit there at least once or twice every year. The two older Nimitz +daughters, Catherine, who is head of the music division in the +Washington, D. C. Library, and Nancy, who is in the Information +Division of the library, were at Wellfleet for a week last spring—they +brought with them some Navy friends and people of the musical world. +Catherine and Nancy plan to return next September and spend a month.</p> + +<p>A Cape Cod story on Admiral Nimitz reflects the same quiet dignity and +staunchness of character that folks at home vision when they read of +him in the great war dispatches out of the Pacific. Fundamentally, he +is a man of simple tastes. He has done nothing on the Cape to cause a +personal headline in the newspapers and, from summer to summer, has +moved among his less gifted Wellfleet neighbors practically unnoticed. +Which is the way he seems to like it.</p> + +<p>“Most of his time in Wellfleet is spent walking in the woods and +fishing. These are his chief pleasures. He reads of course, but he +doesn’t spend as much time at it as he does roaming in the outdoors. He +is a good fisherman,” relates Miss Freeman.</p> + +<p>The Admiral and Mrs. Nimitz, nee Catherine Vance Freeman, daughter of +the late Richard R. Freeman, a Boston ship broker, were married in +1913. She was born in Wollaston, Mass. Since birth she and others of +her family have summered at Wellfleet. After her marriage, however, +she<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63_64">[Pgs 63-64]</span> travelled far to be with her husband, living on the West Coast and +in China, Germany and other foreign places.</p> + +<p>At first the Nimitzes spent their summer visits at the old Freeman +family house, outside Wellfleet, on Route 6. During the last war the +family summer home was re-established in the remote Gull Pond section, +one of the most primitive and lovely spots on Cape Cod. Here Mrs. +Nimitz’s sister makes her year-round residence. The former residence is +now owned by Edmund Wilson, literary critic of <i>The New Yorker</i> +magazine.</p> + + +<p>ADMIRAL KING’S JOB HERE</p> + +<p>Some time ago a large picture was on the front page of the <i>New York +Times</i>, showing Admiral Ernest J. King, Commander-in-Chief of the +United States fleet, presenting the second Distinguished Service medal +to Admiral Nimitz. Forming an admiring audience were Admiral William F. +Halsey, Mrs. Nimitz and 13-year-old Mary Nimitz. It is an interesting +coincidence to set down in a Cape Cod story that Admiral King also is +no stranger to Cape Cod. He used to take many a long walk to stretch +his sea legs on Provincetown’s Commercial Street when he was a Captain +in the Navy and in charge of salvaging the tragic submarine S-4, sunken +outside Provincetown harbor with a loss of 40 lives.</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="TRURO">TRURO——</h2> +</div> + +<p> +<span class="lpad"><i>The “Blond Norseman”—Cape</i></span><br> +<span class="lpad"><i>Cod’s Most Ancient</i></span><br> +<span class="lpad"><i>Ghost Visitor</i></span><br> +</p> + + +<p>Ten years ago, approximately, the Blond Norseman came out of his spirit +world to re-visit Cape Cod. That is the latest report on this most +ancient member of Cape Cod’s gallery of wraiths.</p> + +<p>The setting is the wild, beach-grass country of Corn Hill, Truro. Here, +close by the far-flung shore of Cape Cod Bay, where only the seagull’s +lonely cry breaks the silence and sand peeps skitter to and fro on +their ceaseless foraging, stands a weather-battered, sprawling frame +structure known as “The Fish House.” For a long time the sea harvesters +used it for a headquarters; later it became the loved dwelling of a +large family who would remain there as long as the winds and the rains +of late fall would permit.</p> + +<p>On one of these late fall nights, the lady of the household was +awakened abruptly from a sound sleep. Sitting up,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</span> her gaze was drawn +to the door that faced the noisy surf of the bay shore. The door was +flung wide. A “startling blue light” illumined the figure of a tall, +distinctly blond man, so powerful of stature and awesomely erect, that +he filled the door frame. The apparition did not move, its presence +was only momentary, for, in the next instant, the lady was staring at +the gaping door. She got up, closed the door and spent the rest of the +night in wakeful wonderment. But, to this day, the vivid impression of +the brief visit of the Blond Norseman remains with her.</p> + +<p>The following day she mentioned it to a friend. He was not greatly +surprised, for he recalled a nighttime stroll along the beach some +weeks previous and related how he had discovered a bright light that +loomed up not many yards ahead of him. Thinking it was a man with a +lantern, the stroller called out. He got no answer, and the light +disappeared instantly. He was sure, that night, he had witnessed +something supernatural.</p> + + +<p>ANCIENT GRAVE MAY BE CLUE</p> + +<p>Then the lady mentioned the incident to the owner of a large fish +business, whose plant is two or three miles up the beach. He, too, was +sympathetic. “Oh, yes,” he responded, “that’s the Blond Norseman. My +men have talked about him often. It’s an old story to them.”</p> + +<p>Commander Donald B. MacMillan, the Arctic explorer, of Provincetown, +likewise gave a respectful ear and even suggested that the grave of +the Norse warrior who had returned to this hurly-burly world might +be located near the Fish House. Norsemen colonized along the North +Atlantic coast. Historians say that Leif Ericson and his men were the +earliest settlers on the Cape and that Thorwald died from an Indian’s +arrow in Yarmouth on the Bay side. It is said that as he lay mortally +wounded, Thorwald told his men, “Bury me<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</span> here; place a cross at my +head, another at my feet, call it ‘Crossness’ forever more.”</p> + + +<p>DIGGING PARTY UNCOVERS SKELETONS</p> + +<p>The grave that might be that of the Blond Norseman was found by a +Mayflower party of explorers, according to Mourt’s Relation. The +discovery was made after the Pilgrims found the Indians’ cache of corn +on the lofty eminence now called Corn Hill. Two skeletons were turned +up by the second digging party, one a man’s and the other, possibly +that of an Indian child. The man’s skull “had fine yellow hair still on +it.” Norse scholars have shown much interest in this grave and there +has been considerable conjecture concerning it. But, little of real +factual value on the Blond Norseman has turned up thus far.</p> + +<p>It might be assumed that this daddy of all Cape Cod ghosts merely +returned to this earthly world to go over scenes dear to his heart. For +it is generally established that spirits that have stalked the Cape are +not the vengeful kind, but rather companionable and of a comradely mood +for returning to places fragrant in their memories.</p> + + +<p>A FRONT-PAGE GHOST</p> + +<p>This reporter once covered a dramatic spook-story in the early part +of his Cape Cod newspaper career. The incident was unusual because it +involved a trouble-brewing spook and made unhappiness all around.</p> + +<p>A lady from New York had rented an old house facing the highway in +North Truro and had paid $200 down, intending to operate a summer tea +room. But her uneasiness grew following each night she spent alone in +the old house. There would be the slamming of a door at an eerie hour +after<span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</span> midnight, or the frequent tread of creaking footsteps up and +down the narrow little front staircase. Finally there came the morning +when a blanket-fog came down into the valley and enveloped the quaint +old house.</p> + +<p>The New York lady sat chatting in the kitchen with a Portuguese +neighbor and as they talked the weird thing happened. A big, sturdy +rocker that stood in a corner of the room began to rock. Back and +forth, with an even motion, just as though someone was in the seat, the +rocking continued.</p> + +<p>Spellbound, the two women watched the strange business for at least two +or three minutes. It was the last straw for the lady from New York. +She made the door in two bounds and didn’t even bother to grasp up a +handbag on the table that contained a sizeable sum. She forfeited the +$200 rental payment and returned to Manhattan the next day after a more +courageous neighbor had ventured into the haunted house to retrieve the +abandoned handbag.</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="A_CAPE_CODDER">A CAPE CODDER——</h2> +</div> + +<p> +<span class="lpad"><i>Pioneered Our</i></span><br> +<span class="lpad"><i>Trans-Atlantic Steamship Service</i></span><br> +</p> + + +<p>Truro, Cape Cod, looks out over the heaving Atlantic to the horizon, +and beyond lies Spain. Great romance colors the adventures of Truro’s +seafaring men of long, long ago. There is also, in consistent fashion, +the darkest tragedy.</p> + +<p>Truro is the birthplace of Edward K. Collins, who established the first +trans-Atlantic steamship service from the American shore. His elegantly +equipped paddle-wheel steamer, “Atlantic”, embarked on the first +crossing on April 27, 1850 and completed the voyage within 11 days.</p> + +<p>The story of Edward Collins’ career has all the elements to make an +exciting novel or a Hollywood movie—for the lad of 15 who went to +New York to become the nation’s mightiest ship operator—launching +“the most ambitious and spectacular attempt of the American merchant +marine to challenge British supremacy”—finally ended up as a hum-drum +land-bound provision dealer, yet “rosy, hearty and not careworn as when +he had those mighty American steamships resting on his shoulders.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</span></p> + +<p>Seafaring was deep-rooted as the trade of the Collins family. Edward +began with his father in the shipping and commission business; they +operated a service to Vera Cruz and New Orleans. The father died, then +the E. K. Collins & Co. firm was founded and its sign was prominent +on the New York waterfront for almost a half century. Associated with +Collins was a Count Foster of New Orleans.</p> + + +<p>CALLED “THEATRICAL LINE”</p> + +<p>The spectacular Cape Codder and his partner established the Dramatic +Line, to run packets between New York and England. Capt. Lorenzo D. +Baker of Wellfleet, Cape Cod, was scoffed at when he announced he was +going to popularize the banana in the United States and so was Collins +when shipping men heard he was building ships of 1000 tons. His critics +argued there would not be cargoes large enough to fill them, nor +would merchants trust their goods in them. So, in their hoots, they +coined a name for the Dramatic Line. They called it the “Theatrical +Line” because Collins named his vessels for famous authors and actors: +Shakespeare, Siddons, Garrick, Sheridan and Roscius, to mention a few.</p> + +<p>Collins had become one of New York’s richest men when the curtain +raised on the era of steam. He visioned the possibilities and watched +closely after England gave Samuel Cunard a subsidy mail contract in +1838. The Cunard Line berthed its first ship at this shore on July 18, +1840. Collins, according to the record at this point, saw a challenge +in the British enterprise. He barged into a financing spree, determined +“to drive the Cunarders out of business.”</p> + +<p>Collins went to the nation’s capital for the money he needed. There +he began on a grandiose scale and gradually descended with a series +of headaches to ultimate ruin. His first triumph was the granting of +a government subsidy of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_71_72">[Pgs 71-72]</span> $385,000 a year for a period of ten years. +He and his associates were pledged to build five steamers in the +Collins-style, which would make twenty round trips annually, carrying +the mails. In 1852 fortnightly service was established and the subsidy +was increased to $858,000 annually.</p> + +<p>The Collins Line prospered for two years. Then the clouds began to +gather.</p> + + +<p>THE TRAGIC DECLINE</p> + +<p>On Sept. 27, 1854, off Cape Race, New York, a Collins steamer, the +Artic, collided with a small French steamer, the Vesta. The Arctic went +down with a loss of 233 passengers and 135 members of the crew. Among +the victims was Edward Collins’ wife, the former Mary Ann Woodruff, +and his son and his daughter. The master of the Arctic, Capt. James C. +Luce, of Martha’s Vineyard ancestry, held his own child in his arms +through the awful scenes of panic. As he was about to launch a raft, +some debris from the paddlebox struck and killed the child.</p> + +<p>Then came the second blow. The steamer Pacific of the Collins Line put +out from Liverpool on January 25, 1856, with 45 passengers and a crew +of 141. She was never heard from again. No clue to her fate was ever +turned up.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile Collins had been having his troubles in Washington, and now +they were piling up. A public clamor was on; the general theme was +that the Cunard Line competition was too keen. Congress withdrew the +second subsidy. A contract was made with the rival line of Cornelius +Vanderbilt. Gradually the Collins Line sank to failure and the panic of +1857 put a period to its glorious adventuring. Fortunes were lost by +investors in the line.</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="PROVINCETOWN">PROVINCETOWN——</h2> +</div> + +<p> +<span class="lpad"><i>Its Town Seal Reads,</i></span><br> +<span class="lpad"><i>“Birthplace of American Liberty”</i></span><br> +</p> + + +<p>Millions of Americans do not know the complete story of the founding +of our nation. Many history books and most orators fail to begin at +the beginning when the pioneering of the Pilgrim Fathers is related. +Plymouth Rock is the accepted symbol and the starting point. The +important, earlier events on Cape Cod are passed up, particularly the +contribution the Pilgrim Fathers made to our form of free government +during their Cape Cod stay, before sailing across the bay to establish +their settlement at Plymouth.</p> + +<p>If you began at the beginning of the Pilgrims’ story on this continent, +you would find that the Mayflower did not sail direct to Plymouth, +as is the common impression. She first put in at the outer end of +Cape Cod on Nov. 11, 1620, (O. S.), after a violent, 63-day voyage +from Holland, and it was on the sands of what is now Provincetown +that her weary passengers first set foot on American soil. Here they +found haven for a full month, here they signed the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</span> historic Mayflower +Compact, establishing their system of self-government. They began their +reconnoitering, found their first drinking water, their first corn and +had their first encounter with the Indians on Cape Cod.</p> + + +<p>HOW OUR FREEDOM BEGAN</p> + +<p>But, all this is not to deny Plymouth her fame, even though the town +seal of Provincetown does bear the words, “Birthplace of American +Liberty.” That claim has been a bone of contention for a long time. +And, when a Massachusetts State official was asked some years ago why +the Provincetown phase in the story of the founding of the nation +had received so little attention, he could only suggest, “Perhaps it +happened that way because Plymouth was 300 years ahead of Provincetown +in her advertising.”</p> + +<p>Actually, however, the signing of the Mayflower Compact was not the +first step taken to establish free Government in the New World. Our +democratic government was first introduced at Jamestown Colony the year +previous to the Pilgrims’ arrival on Cape Cod. There, on June 30, 1619, +America’s first legislative body convened.</p> + +<p>John Quincy Adams said of the Mayflower Compact: “This is perhaps the +only instance in human history, of that positive, original social +concept, which speculative philosophers have imagined as the only +legitimate source of government.”</p> + +<p>In Mourt’s Relation there is Governor Bradford’s simple, though +picturesque description of Provincetown Harbor and ancient Cape Cod as +the Pilgrims discovered the scene:</p> + + +<p>WHAT THE PILGRIMS FOUND</p> + +<p>“It is a good harbor and pleasant bay, circled round, except in the +entrance, which is about four miles from land<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</span> to land, compassed to +the very sea, with oaks, pines, juniper, sassafras, and other sweet +wood. It is a harbor wherein a thousand sail of ship may safely ride. +There we relieved ourselves with wood and water, and refreshed our +people while our shallop was fitted to coast the bay, to search for an +habitation; there was the greatest store of fowl that we ever saw. And +every day we saw whales playing hard by us, of which, in that place, if +we had instruments, and means to take them we might have made a very +rich return, which to our great grief, we wanted. Our master and his +mate, and others experienced in fishing, professed that we might have +made three or four thousand pounds worth of oil; they preferred it +before Greenland whale fishing and purposed the next Winter to fish for +whale here.”</p> + +<p>The first of the exploring Pilgrims “were forced to wade a bow-shoot or +two in going aland, which caused many to get colds and coughs, for it +was many times freezing cold weather.” Much sickness developed in the +first harsh Winter and some deaths occurred later in Plymouth.</p> + + +<p>WILL ROGERS ON THE PILGRIMS</p> + +<p>Some years ago Plymouth and Provincetown engaged in a harmless tiff +over the rightful ownership of the title, “Birthplace of American +Liberty.” The late Will Rogers, cowboy humorist, who was of Indian +descent, was drawn into the controversy via the radio. Said Will:</p> + +<p>“What makes my Cherokee blood boil is that the Pilgrims were allowed to +land anywhere. As a race the Pilgrims could never be compared with the +Indians. I’m sure that it was only through the extreme generosity of my +ancestors that the Pilgrims were allowed to land at all.</p> + +<p>“Anyhow, Provincetown says the Pilgrims found some corn buried there, +and that this saved them from starving to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</span> death. Then they shot the +Indians. That was because they had not stored any more corn.</p> + +<p>“Next they prayed. You know one thing the Pilgrims always did was to +pray, but you never saw a picture of a Pilgrim who didn’t have a gun +beside him. That was to see that he got what he was praying for!”</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CAPE_COD_FISHING">CAPE COD FISHING——</h2> +</div> + +<p> +<span class="lpad"><i>Excitement of Catching Tuna</i></span><br> +<span class="lpad"><i>In The Traps</i></span><br> +</p> + + +<p>A hefty axe is the main implement of a trap-fishing crew when the tuna +run is on in Cape Cod waters. A tuna may weigh 50 to 1,000 pounds and +often a net is crowded with them. A crew of five men, operating a +50-foot boat, have their hands full when they move into the confines +of a big pole-net to take the clumsy and frantic fish. So, the +stout-handled axe is brought into play before the tuna are brought +aboard.</p> + +<p>The killing technique is a thoroughly gory business. The axe-swinger, a +seasoned hand, rarely misses when he aims a lusty blow at the lump that +is atop the tuna’s head. One expert blow on this vital spot usually +kills the fish instantly, but, the process of maneuvering the tuna for +the kill is highly active, calling for a nimble foot and split-second +judgment. Thereon the blood flies freely and profusely.</p> + +<p>Sometimes, in these wild jousts, a man goes overboard. Occasionally an +arm or a leg is broken during the topside<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</span> excitement. But the tuna, +for all its size, does not attack. The fisherman has only to keep a +weather eye peeled to keep clear of its mighty tail.</p> + +<p>A trapper relates an experience he had when he tried “a new way” of +dispatching a tuna. “I shoved the gaff down his mouth with everything +I had. A few minutes later I woke up in the bottom of the boat with a +big goose-egg on my head.” Another trapper was dragged overboard, gaff +and all, and the tuna towed him clear out of the trap. He let go as the +tuna dived under and escaped, gaff and all.</p> + + +<p>FIND WHALES, TOO</p> + +<p>Once in a while old leviathan himself stumbles into one of Cape Cod’s +fish traps. He’s usually a finback whale, valueless to present-day +fishermen, and just a nuisance. His great, threshing flukes threaten +death. The trap has to be partially dismantled so that the crew, +working at a safe distance, can shoo him out. Then follows a whole +day’s work of repairing the damage.</p> + +<p>In Cape Cod waters there are more pole-traps, or weirs, than in any +other section of the Atlantic coast. Most of them are off Provincetown, +and part of the large profits they yield help enrich the town +government coffers. Long poles of tough hickory are shipped in from +Connecticut. Seventy of these are needed to drape the nets of a single +trap. First in the structure of a trap is the “leader”, a 900-foot +subterranean fence. This fence begins in shoal water and extends +offshore to the main body of the trap. When fish swim into it, they +do not turn inshore. As a rule they follow along the fence and swim +offshore.</p> + +<p>Thus, the schools obligingly move into the mouth of the trap. From +there they go into the trap “heart”, which is the first stage of their +captivity, and thence into the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</span> “bowl”. Once inside the bowl the +baffled finny tribes are completely hoodwinked and rarely escape into +open water. Here they swim around and around until the trapping crew +pays the morning visit and the net is hauled up and pursed for the +bailers to go into action.</p> + +<p>Commercial fishing in Cape Cod Bay provided the means for establishing +Massachusetts’ public school system. The Pilgrims appropriated the +profits to public uses. Portions of the fishery fund were allocated to +various towns. Barnstable, Cape Cod, being one of the beneficiaries in +1683.</p> + +<p>When the Pilgrims went to King James to get his consent for the +Mayflower voyage to America, the King, according to Edward Winslow’s +narrative, inquired, “What profit might arise?” A single word was the +Pilgrims’ response: “Fishing.” James was satisfied: “So God have my +soul, ’tis an honest trade, ’twas the Apostle’s own calling.”</p> + + +<p>ROMANTIC EARLY DAYS</p> + +<p>Subsequently, Captain John Smith, after he had pocketed a profit of +$7500 on a shipment of dried Cape Cod fish to Spain, is credited with +the statement that the richest mine in Spain was not as valuable as the +Cape Cod fisheries.</p> + +<p>Whales first were caught in these waters. When they became scarce +vessels were fitted to go out in search of them. On one voyage, Capt. +Jesse Holbrook of Wellfleet, active in the Revolutionary War period, +killed 52 sperm whales. His skill was so good a London company employed +him for 12 years to give instruction to their employees.</p> + +<p>Franklin Atkins was a Cape Codder who had a rare experience while +whaling in West Indies waters. Leviathan’s flukes struck the small boat +he was in and sent the boat kiting from the sea. In his descent Mr. +Atkins fell directly into the whale’s gaping mouth. He was gashed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</span> and +bruised, but managed to free himself. A boat crew picked him up and he +lay in a critical condition for four weeks. In later years Mr. Atkins +would boast, “Jonah and me were the only two persons that have been in +a whale’s mouth and come out alive.”</p> + +<p>Ambergris, a secretion found in the intestines of an occasional sperm +whale, and worth more than its weight in gold, was a prize the old +whalemen always were on the alert for. The story is told of how a Cape +Cod crew, jittery with excitement over an ambergris find in a whale +they were spading alongside the vessel, lost it. In their eagerness of +hauling up the treasure they fumbled. The ambergris chunk slipped from +the slings. The crew stared with blank dismay as they watched the prize +worth $25,000 slowly vanish in 60 fathoms of water.</p> + +<p>It’s small boat, inshore fishing in these modern times. Yet there +is a constant yield of millions of pounds of fish taken by net or +hook. There are whiting, mackerel, cod, haddock, herring, butterfish, +bluefish, squid, sea bass, pollock and many other species.</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="ON_CAPE_COD">ON CAPE COD——</h2> +</div> + +<p> +<span class="lpad"><i>Is the Second Most</i></span><br> +<span class="lpad"><i>Powerful Beacon on</i></span><br> +<span class="lpad"><i>the Atlantic Coast</i></span><br> +</p> + + +<p>The second most powerful beacon on the Atlantic coast is located on the +far end of Cape Cod. Highland Light is situated near the edge of a high +bluff on the ocean side of North Truro. Its nightly beam, revolving and +flashing to all points of the compass, has guided mariners for almost +150 years.</p> + +<p>The champ of all beacons on this coast is Neversink Light, at Sandy +Hook.</p> + +<p>Countless summer visitors would look over Highland Light in peacetime, +but now, of course, visitors are barred. They came from every state +in the union and from foreign places, for this faithful landmark has +always been a standard attraction for the Cape Cod sightseer. Chief +Boatswain’s Mate William Joseph, who has been in charge of the light +for a long while, recalls they asked some odd questions. For example:</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</span></p> + +<p>“Is the light lit in the wintertime?”</p> + +<p>“Do you stay here year ’round?”</p> + +<p>“Does the fog start up the foghorn?”</p> + +<p>“Why do you keep ‘blankets’ on the lenses in the daytime?”</p> + +<p>“Does the tide ever come over the banking (the edge of the banking is a +mere 140 feet above the shoreline)?”</p> + +<p>“Did you ever help catch rum-runners with the light?”</p> + +<p>“How do you keep awake all night long?”</p> + + +<p>COVER LENSES TO PREVENT FIRES</p> + +<p>But, the lightkeeper, his assistants and their womenfolk take it all in +stride with cheerful patience.</p> + +<p>The mighty lenses are covered up in daytime, but not with “blankets”. +The lightkeeper gives the reason for this: “Every morning we put a +linen covering over the lenses and over that a covering of starched +linen. There is no covering on the north side of the light because the +sun doesn’t hit there.</p> + +<p>“The coverings are necessary to protect surrounding property. The +lighthouse lenses, if they were left uncovered, would set afire a +building 25 feet away, or anything else that would burn.”</p> + +<p>There have been numerous other lamps before the present electrically +operated one, with its $30,000 French glassworks and four revolving +bullseyes. The original light, established in 1797, was stationary and +burned whale oil in wick lamps, much like the old-fashioned sitting +room lamp. The light has always stood on the present site.</p> + +<p>Ashore the great beacon is always referred to as Highland Light. “But,” +remarks the keeper, “if you were lost out there and tried to locate +Highland Light on the chart, you’d be plum out o’ luck. The official +name is Cape Cod Light and that’s the name all the mariners go by.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_83_84">[Pgs 83-84]</span></p> + +<p>Highland Light has cast its flash over many a dramatic event in its +long lifetime. Almost within its shadow, the first piece of wreckage +that revealed the fate of the Steamer Portland—New England’s most +appalling sea tragedy to this day—was washed ashore in the terrible +gale of November, 1898. Countless rescues by the breeches buoy, and +the foundering of old-time sailing ships were witnessed there. Mighty +gales, 75 to 80 miles an hour, have belabored the lighthouse, but it +has breasted them all.</p> + + +<p>A MARKER FOR ZEPPELIN</p> + +<p>The German Zeppelin, burned at Lakehurst, N. J., made a practice of +pointing its course directly over Highland Light on its return trips to +Germany.</p> + +<p>The light has one implacable enemy—fog. When the heavy vapor banks +roll in, the beam is practically invisible. In a real thick fog not +even the glow of the lamp can be seen by one standing at the base of +the tower.</p> + +<p>Many visitors, noting the close proximity of the lighthouse to the edge +of the shore embankment, have inquired whether there is danger the sea +will some day undermine Highland Light. Keeper Joseph has never worried +about this. When, in 1796, the Government purchased the tract of land +for the erection of the lighthouse, the reservation comprised ten +acres. Storms and pounding surf have swept six acres of the original +site into the sea.</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="FIRST_REAL_GLIDER_FLIGHT_IN_U_S">FIRST REAL GLIDER FLIGHT IN U. S.——</h2> +</div> + +<p> +<span class="lpad"><i>Witnessed Over Cape Cod Waters</i></span><br> +</p> + + +<p>The invasion of Sicily was begun with glider transports. And, the +beginning of glider-flying in the United States was witnessed on Cape +Cod. Sixteen years ago the first extended glider flight in America was +demonstrated by a German expert.</p> + +<p>On July 29, 1928, at Corn Hill, Truro, near the outer end of this +historic peninsula, Peter Hesselbach of Darmstadt, Germany, was +catapulted over the brink of a 100-foot bluff in a Darmstadt-made +glider. He remained aloft for four hours and five minutes. A few days +before this, Hesselbach smashed Orville Wright’s record of soaring nine +minutes and forty-five seconds. A group of helpful American citizens, +hauling on a rope, snapped him into the ether on the ocean side of +Truro. He maintained a motorless flight for 55 minutes.</p> + +<p>Glider flying has progressed a great deal since those pioneering +flights. Soon after a school was established at<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</span> South Wellfleet, +but it didn’t last long. Much activity developed in California and +in the East. Elmira, N. Y., became the headquarters of motorless +flying enthusiasts. Before our entry into the war, Parker Leonard of +Osterville, Cape Cod, was the chief glider experimenter in this area. +Now he is serving his country as a glider specialist.</p> + + +<p>STUDIED THE GULLS</p> + +<p>Peter Hesselbach and his German comrades who accompanied him to this +country were a companionable lot and popular with the Summer folk +that Summer of 1928. Corn Hill is situated in a primitive setting, +with unbounded spaces of hills, marsh land, and beach, and faces the +great sweep of Cape Cod Bay. It is a lofty hill and on its top is a +bronze tablet attesting that here the reconnoitering Pilgrims found +the Indians’ cache of corn which enabled them to survive the first +hard year in Plymouth. And, looking out over the waters one discerns +the outline of Provincetown Harbor where the Mayflower was anchored +and where the Pilgrim fathers signed their Compact, the genesis of +our American form of free Government. A group of rude cottages are +perched atop Corn Hill. Two of them were occupied by the German glider +experts. A haus frau, brought in from somewhere, served up hearty +German dishes and all in all it was a very pleasant Summer. For +recreation, the visitors whizzed into Provincetown for ice cream cones +and gingerale—“gingeraley” they called it. Often they would sit for +long periods at the end of a Provincetown wharf, studying the soaring, +wheeling, dipping flight of the gulls.</p> + +<p>Sometimes their American neighbors would pull on a rope and lift the +glider into the air on the numerous practice flights. Setting off on +his four hours and five minutes-flight, Peter Hesselbach was propelled +over the edge of Corn Hill by a rubber slingshot and a tail-tripper +arrangement that was clamped to a planking and worked by a lever. +Several<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</span> hundred Summerers and natives from surrounding towns witnessed +that epochal event. A good representation of Boston newspaper cameramen +took pictures of the 55-minute flight. Newsreel men also made a +recording.</p> + +<p>It was a beautiful, bright day when Hesselbach got off on his long +flight at 9:55 A. M. He was hoping to be able to beat the world record +for a soaring flight at that time—14 hours, 23 minutes. A series of +bonfires stretching for two miles along the beach would have guided him +on the nocturnal part of his adventure. For sustenance he took with him +a few sandwiches and some coffee.</p> + + +<p>TRAVELLED 120 MILES</p> + +<p>Spectators exclaimed at the graceful serenity of the fine glider craft, +wafting silently with the air currents over their heads against a blue +and cloud-flecked sky. The Darmstadt wafted northward and southward on +a one to two miles’ course, going back and forth over the white-capped +bay or surrounding hills and banking gracefully over Corn Hill on each +return trip.</p> + +<p>Once, as Peter Hesselbach circled Corn Hill, Captain Paul Roehre, a +gliding comrade, roared up to him:</p> + +<p>“Are you hungry?”</p> + +<p>With a wave of his hand, Hesselbach responded, “What’s the use?”</p> + +<p>Finally he landed at Wellfleet, an adjoining town. The writer picked +him up at a crossroads and brought him back to Corn Hill. These were +his first words:</p> + +<p>“I came down because I could not fly for the hills and gain altitude +after the wind changed more to the north. I went off my course +purposely. I wanted to study air conditions. This territory is ideal +for soaring. It has much better possibilities than Rossiten, which is +one of the best soaring places in Germany.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</span></p> + +<p>“My altimeter shows I reached a maximum altitude of 350 feet. The wind +velocity was about 30 miles an hour. I soared a total of 120 miles.”</p> + +<p>It’s a far cry from Cape Cod to Sicily. But that’s how glider flying +actually got its springboard start in America.</p><br> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i088" style="max-width: 123.625em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i088.png" alt=""><br><br> +</figure> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="transnote"> +<p class="center"><b>Transcriber’s Notes</b></p> +<p>Perceived typographical errors have been silently corrected.</p> +<p>Colloquial spelling in dialog has been retained as in the original.</p> +<p>Inconsistencies in hyphenation and compound words have not been standardized.</p> +</div> + +<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75918 ***</div> +</body> +</html> + diff --git a/75918-h/images/cover.jpg b/75918-h/images/cover.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..b3c6412 --- /dev/null +++ b/75918-h/images/cover.jpg diff --git a/75918-h/images/i000_title.png b/75918-h/images/i000_title.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..bdc2968 --- /dev/null +++ b/75918-h/images/i000_title.png diff --git a/75918-h/images/i088.png b/75918-h/images/i088.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..f6cc6bd --- /dev/null +++ b/75918-h/images/i088.png diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b5dba15 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This book, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. 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