Stories of Cape Cod
Date: 2025-04-20T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Cape Cod (Mass.) -- History

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Title: Stories of Cape Cod

Author: Jack Johnson

Illustrator: Leo J. Schreiber

Release date: April 20, 2025 [eBook #75918]

Language: English

Original publication: Plymouth, Massachusetts: The Memorial Press, 1944

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/75918

Credits: Steve Mattern and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STORIES OF CAPE COD ***

STORIES
OF
CAPE COD

by

JACK JOHNSON

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.

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.

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Table of Contents

- STORIES OF CAPE COD
- Contents
- BOURNE——
- SANDWICH——
- FALMOUTH——
- MASHPEE——
- BARNSTABLE——
- YARMOUTHPORT——
- DENNIS——
- DENNIS——
- BREWSTER——
- HARWICH——
- CHATHAM——
- ORLEANS——
- ORLEANS——
- EASTHAM——
- SOUTH WELLFLEET——
- ADMIRAL NIMITZ——
- TRURO——
- A CAPE CODDER——
- PROVINCETOWN——
- CAPE COD FISHING——
- ON CAPE COD——
- FIRST REAL GLIDER FLIGHT IN U. S.——
- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE