The Project Gutenberg eBook of Stories of Cape Cod
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: Stories of Cape Cod
Author: Jack Johnson
Release date: April 20, 2025 [eBook #75918]
Language: English
Original publication: Plymouth, Massachusetts: The Memorial Press, 1944
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
[Illustration]
A “DISCOVERY BOOK”...
Romantic Facts of All
the Cape Cod Towns
Copyright 1944
by JACK JOHNSON
Designed and printed by
THE MEMORIAL PRESS
Plymouth, Massachusetts
Cover design by
Leo Schreiber
First Printing August 10, 1944
Second Aug. 25, Third Sept 11, Fourth Oct. 1, 1944
Fifth June 4, 1945
_For additional copies of this book write_:
Jack Johnson, Yarmouthport, Cape Cod, Mass.
_CONTENTS_
Bourne 1
Sandwich 5
Falmouth 9
Mashpee 13
Barnstable 17
Yarmouthport 21
Dennis 25, 29
Brewster 33
Harwich 37
Chatham 41
Orleans 45, 49
Eastham 53
South Wellfleet 57
Admiral Nimitz 61
Truro 65
Pioneer Trans-Atlantic Steamship Service 69
Provincetown 73
Cape Cod Fishing 77
Cape Cod Beacon 81
First Glider Flight in United States 85
BOURNE----
_300 Years Ago The Pilgrims
Visioned Cape Cod’s $50,000,000
Canal_
Myles Standish, the Pilgrim’s engineer, first conceived the idea
for the Cape Cod Canal in 1624. Governor Bradford wished for the
development in order that his fellow pioneers could better carry on
their fur trade with the Dutch in New York. He craved to “avoyd the
compasing of Cap-Codd, and those deangerous shoulds, and so make any
vioage to ye southward in much shorter time, and with far less danger.”
But, the actual building of this eight-mile waterway was delayed for
300 years. August Belmont took over in 1909, and the job consumed five
years and $13,000,000. Later the Government acquired the Canal--to date
the total cost, including periodic dredging and other improvements, is
said to be around $50,000,000.
The Canal has proved to be Cape Cod’s greatest contribution to the
winning of the war.
George Washington saw its military value. In 1776, when he was in
Boston, planning to send troops to New York, Washington observed that
this “interior barrier should be cut in order to give greater security
to navigation, and against the enemy.”
BUILT TO PREVENT SHIPWRECKS
Often the military angle is mentioned in the long and hectic history of
planning the project, but primarily the Canal was visioned to safeguard
shipping in an era when shoals and fogs off this coast took a great
toll of vessels and lives. Also, by speeding up traffic, the Canal was
intended to help in the development of New England commerce.
Prophetic words were uttered by Belmont’s survey engineer while the
construction was under way. These are found in some interesting
material passed on to me by Bill McLaughlin of the Hotel Onset. “The
Canal as planned,” said Engineer Parsons, “is quite sufficiently deep
to take all the smaller vessels of the Navy, even to cruisers.... There
might, however, arise a contingency when the Canal would be of the
greatest value to the country in time of war.”
On the shipwreck problem hereabouts in that day, Parsons noted: “Of all
the wrecks occurring on the whole Atlantic coast from Eastport, Maine,
to Key West, Florida, one-quarter take place in the short stretches
between Chatham and Provincetown.”
Numerous costly attempts were made to put through the waterway, and
failed, before Belmont entered the scene. As the story goes, the
financier was moved largely by sentiment, for when he functioned with
a silver spade at the ceremonious opening of operations it was on land
that once belonged to his ancestors.
Prospects looked bright for another promoting group just before the
Civil War. It appeared the Government would provide a large portion of
the necessary funds. But negotiations halted when the war started.
At a later stage some 500 Italian laborers were imported to Sandwich
from New York and they began work scooping out the ditch, using shovels
and wheelbarrows. This lasted only a few weeks. Another means employed
was a dredge with a chain of buckets, 39 in all, operated by two steam
engines. Lack of capital halted this venture; the dredge was burned and
sunk in the Canal at the spot where operations had started.
FAITH TRIUMPHED IN CRISIS
August Belmont’s engineer found quicksand in the borings when he began
his survey. He was about to write a report to his boss and recommend
that he save his money. But another engineer whose heart was in the
Canal dream argued warmly that the quicksand was confined to the
center and not over the entire bed of the proposed canal. A glacier
had ploughed its way into the waters of Cape Cod Bay, cutting a furrow
through the valley between Sandwich and Buzzards Bay.
The quicksand came of this glacier, declared this authority, and he
added it was not general enough to be a serious detriment. His advice
was taken, he was proved correct, and Belmont’s engineer submitted a
report that was favorable.
On the south bank of the Canal, in Bourne, is a replica of the trading
post, “Aptucxet”, which rests on the very foundation stones that were
laid in 1627. Here the first business between New York and Eastern
Massachusetts was carried on by the Pilgrims who then were intent upon
getting money together to settle with their backers in London who had
financed their voyage to the New World.
Meanwhile, Governor Bradford was observing the Indians paddle their
canoes up Manomet River, then portage them over a stretch of land to
Scusset Creek and finally navigate on into Cape Cod Bay. It caused him
to think of the advantage of having a Cape Cod Canal.
SANDWICH----
_Joe Jefferson Described It As
“The Handsomest Town Out of
England”_
Joseph Jefferson, great actor of his time, called Sandwich, Cape Cod,
“the handsomest town out of England.” And even today it is interesting
to note that Sandwich--the first town settled on Cape Cod--imparts more
of the nostalgic feeling than any other community on the Cape.
Massive trees shade her quiet streets, with their beautiful old homes,
and the stranger is conscious of a serenity that places her apart from
the modern world. But, Sandwich, founded in 1637 and with a present
population of less than 2,000 has much to talk about.
The ancestry of President Franklin D. Roosevelt is traced to the
historic Freeman Farm, at a junction on Route 28. Alvin Page Johnson
of Swampscott, Mass., an accredited genealogist, definitely connects
the President with Cape Cod ancestry and beyond to John Howland, a
Mayflower passenger. Edmond Freeman was among the ten men who came
from Saugus and settled Sandwich. He, according to data discovered by
this genealogist in 1934, was found to be one of the early American
ancestors of our President. Back of the Freeman Farm are boulders with
bronze tablets marking the graves of Edmond and his wife, Elizabeth.
DANIEL WEBSTER’S HAVEN
“Rip Van Winkle” lies in another Sandwich grave. Joe Jefferson
had a strong desire to live in Sandwich. Both he and his friend,
President Grover Cleveland, negotiated to buy houses there, but were
unsuccessful. Historians drop the hint that this might have been
because the righteous Puritans of the community did not want an actor
in their midst. At any rate it is recorded on good authority that
Jefferson remarked to a friend: “They wouldn’t let me live in Sandwich,
but they can’t prevent my burial there.”
Daniel Webster, great statesman, spent some of his pleasantest hours
on annual fishing and hunting excursions to the streams and marshes of
Sandwich. Daniel Webster Inn, the first stagecoach stop for Cape Cod
travellers of yore, and still providing food and good cheer, was named
for him. Webster put up there. He drank his rum straight and when he
was not engaged in camaraderie with the townsmen in the inn’s quaint
little taproom, the jug was delivered by a lift direct to his room.
Millions of American kiddies of this and past generations can feel
indebted to Sandwich, for here, also, is the birthplace of one of their
favorite authors. Thornton W. Burgess was born in Sandwich in 1874
and here he discovered the beloved little characters of his animal
kingdom, whose adventures he put into print and which have lulled many
a child into slumberland. Thornton Burgess had to put a little boy of
his own to bed after his wife’s death, and that’s how he first began
discovering his delightful little characters of the woods and fields.
The great meat packing industry, Swift and Company of Chicago, stemmed
from the brain and tireless toil of Gustavus Franklin Swift, who was
born in Sandwich in 1839. Gustavus’ ambitions came to light in early
boyhood when he bought hens from his grandfather at 40 cents each, then
sold each hen at a profit. At 16 he bought a heifer, slaughtered it
and peddled the meat. At his death Swift and Company was capitalized
at $25,000,000. Building the foundation for the business on Cape Cod,
Gustavus would drive pigs through the streets of Hyannis, aided by a
well-trained Collie dog. A housewife would come to the door, single
out the porker she wanted, and the dog and master would then thread
through the procession and work together to corner the pig until
the transaction was completed. The Swift family moved to Barnstable
in 1861. Tools used on Cape Cod in the beginning of the great meat
business were collected in Barnstable some years ago and now form a
prized collection at the Swift plant in Chicago.
FAME OF SANDWICH GLASS
Sandwich, herself, was in the big industry bracket. Indeed, the
products of the Boston & Sandwich Glass Company have given the
community national fame, and this fame lives on today. Sandwich
glass, by virtue of design and distinctive colorings, is prized by
collectors all over the country. Here the largest glass-works in the
country flourished in 1850, with 500 master-craftsmen and a weekly
output of 100,000 pounds. There is the legend that the first skilled
glass blowers were from England and were smuggled into this country in
barrels at a time when they were forbidden to enter this country. The
famous plant is in ruins now. It closed down after a strike in 1888,
though, at that time, machine-made glassware, turned out in Pittsburgh
and Chicago, was entering into competition with the wares fashioned by
the original Sandwich artificers.
Humor and curious laws and prejudices lighten the pages of Sandwich
history. A story that always gets a chuckle is that of “Seth the
Peddler” who, in 1669, was ordered out of town “lest he might become
a public charge.” Seth Pope shook the dust of Sandwich, but before he
left he announced he would be back and he would “buy up the town.”
Which is exactly what he did. Thirty years after making his bitter
departure, Seth, no longer the humble peddler, strode back into
Sandwich and proceeded to purchase nearly all the land in the town. He
built two houses and gave one each to his sons, Seth and John. Then
Seth Pope left Sandwich for good after letting it be generally known
“he would not live in the damn town.”
And, romancing was decidedly different in those olden days of Sandwich.
Richard Bourne, minister to the Mashpee Indians, lost his wife,
Bathsheba. Not long after, he wrote to a widow who was to be his second
wife: “I have had divers motions since I received yours, but none
suits me but yourself, if God soe incline your myndie to marry me ...
I doe not find in myselfe any flexableness to any other but an utter
loatheness.”
FALMOUTH----
_The “Marrying Town” For
New England’s Greatest
Military Camp_
When New England’s greatest military camp was developed almost on
Falmouth’s doorstep, this very picturesque old community, with its rich
store of whaling lore and seafaring color, became the busiest and most
exciting center on all Cape Cod.
Falmouth has had a notable number of wartime marriages in the New
England area. Many and many a Camp Edwards soldier, before embarking
for foreign duty has been joined in wedlock. And, these young people
who made the most of a few fleeting hours have come from widespread
parts of the country.
The time factor also was precious in Falmouth romances of olden days.
There’s the story of the sailing-ship master of the last century. His
wedding plans were all arranged when he received orders to sail out
of New Bedford to Germany with a cargo of oil. A friend arranged to
have his beloved and the parson ready at the hour when the vessel would
arrive off Falmouth.
No time was lost. The skipper rowed ashore and sped to the new house
he had built for his bride. The ceremony was performed, he kissed his
bride farewell and an hour later was over the water again, resuming a
voyage to Bremen.
OUTSTANDING IN HISTORY
Falmouth is one of the most interesting places, historically, on the
Cape. The first house was built in 1685; the town meeting custom was
established in 1686; the first church was erected in 1796. The Village
Green, most attractive feature of the town, is linked with the colorful
course of Falmouth history.
Opposite the Green is the old meeting house; in its spire is a bell
cast by Paul Revere. An inscription reads: “The living to the church
I call; And to the grave I summon all.” A faded receipt is in a local
bank, bearing the date 1796 and giving the purchase price as $338.94.
The Green had its whipping post. Not many years ago the top of the post
was found in the attic of a house facing the Green and was removed to
the Public Library to go on exhibition.
Outstanding in Falmouth’s story is her rich fund of whaling lore. The
Town’s Museum has a generous assortment of articles reflecting the
great activity in this line: navigation instruments, revolvers used to
put down mutinies, logbooks, handcuffs, harpoon and many ship pictures.
Elijah Swift, who began as a carpenter, is rated the most useful
citizen in Falmouth history and he is credited with first bringing
prosperity to the town. Elijah Swift knew wood, hence his services
were highly valued when he was engaged to supply live oak for the
shipbuilding program of the American Navy after the War of 1812. He
recruited a large number of Falmouth men to go South on the live oak
operation and, incidentally, he was successful in fighting the dreaded
“yellow jack” disease in the swamp country. This business was destined
to run into the millions.
INTERESTING PERSONALITIES
A living reminder of Elijah Swift’s works are the beautiful, tall trees
surrounding the Village Green. He was permitted by the town, in 1832,
to plant, at his own expense, the saplings that developed into these
giants. The first summer after the planting was unusually dry. Elijah
Swift hired a man to carry water daily from Shiverick’s Pond to keep
life in the saplings, and this loving care he gave at the outset makes
this scene today “a glory to the community.”
Falmouth has had, and still has, many people who have done distinctive
work in their lifetime. Katherine Lee Bates, who wrote “America, the
Beautiful,” was Falmouth-born. Edward Herbert Thompson, great American
archaeologist, who did some of the most important work of bringing to
light the facts of ancient American life and culture, was a Falmouth
native.
Coonamessett Ranch, in the township of Falmouth, is said to be the
largest ranch east of the Mississippi. Charles R. Crane of Chicago
started cultivating it in 1915, to demonstrate the agricultural
possibilities of Cape Cod. But he had an idealistic aim that was
thwarted by the outbreak of the last war. The great acres were to have
been settled by carefully selected families of the Russian peasantry,
and the owner was intent upon carrying through his ideas for developing
the possibilities of the less fortunate Russian folk.
MASHPEE----
_Where the Wampanoag
Indian Tongue is Still
Chanted_
Mrs. Dorcas Gardner, of Wampanoag Indian descent, sits in a low-ceiling
little room mellowed from many years of simple living, and she speaks
with the wisdom of her 74 years.
“Why? I come up against the word Why so often I have to let it go by.
The Lord knows best. It should be a better world after this war. When
you go to the lowest, there must be an uplift somehow. We’ve seen so
much of the bad we’re bound to have some good come out of it.”
Mashpee (originally Massapee) is steeped in Indian lore. Here is Cape
Cod’s smallest town. It has a population of 405. George Perlot proudly
points to the town’s remarkable service record.
From the tent days Camp Edwards has had close ties with little Mashpee.
Indeed, 90 per cent of its airport is on Mashpee land. But this
historic settlement has always had more than a local reputation, as far
back as 1658 when Richard Bourne began his evangelistic work among the
Indians. Mashpee election returns are watched for and featured in the
city newspapers, because they are the first to be announced in every
State or Federal polling.
OLDEST CAPE COD CHURCH
The Indian Church, oldest house of worship on Cape Cod, is a rare
landmark; likewise the Indian burial ground, whose oldest gravestone
marks the resting place of Chief Popmonnett, who died in 1770 at the
age of 51. The fame of historic Hotel Attaquin, a whaling skipper’s
enterprise, is such that someone, in 1910, filched the register which
bore the signatures of Daniel Webster, Joseph Jefferson, Charles Dana
Gibson, Grover Cleveland, John Drew and Finley Peter Dunne.
Two men survive in Mashpee who still speak the Wampanoag
tongue--Ambrose Pells and William James. One or the other intones the
primitive language over the grave when a Mashpee resident of Indian
descent is given to the earth.
In 1711, the Rev. Daniel Williams of London left a fund in charge of
Harvard University for the religious education of Indians. Mashpee
became the beneficiary of this largesse. Richard Bourne taught the
Indians here to govern themselves; they were authorized to hold their
own courts, try criminals and pass judgment. Further, Bourne caused a
law to be invoked whereby “No land could be bought by or sold to any
white person without the consent of all the Indians, not even with the
consent of the General Court.”
A Provincetown preacher, one Mr. Stone, appeared before the Mashpees
long ago and, in his sermon, laid particular stress on the evils of
alcohol. One of the Indians was asked how he liked the sermon. He
answered:
“Mr. Stone is one very good preacher, but he preach too much about rum.
Indian think nothing about it; but when he tells how Indian love rum,
and how much they drink, then I think how good it is, and think no more
’bout the sermon, my mouth waters all the time so much for rum.”
ANCIENT RITES RE-ENACTED
Another in the line of preachers who occupied the Indian Church pulpit
was Rev. Phineas Fish of Sandwich. He annoyed his early American
parishioners, because, while accepting a salary, he held church for the
whites and discouraged attendance by the Indians. At a meeting of the
elders some strong sentiments were expressed and ultimately Mr. Fish
was forcibly ejected, after which “the lock on the door of the chapel
was changed.”
Mrs. Gardner many years ago originated the Richard Bourne Day ceremony,
in celebration of the ordination of the pioneer missionary. In August
of each year the colorful pageantry of braves in their great feather
head-dresses, their squaws with beaded buckskins, tom-toms, tepees and
even papooses was witnessed at the Indian Church. The Indians came
from Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and other parts. Their
ancient rites were re-enacted and they exchanged reminiscenses of their
family lines, while large crowds of white visitors looked on and let
their imaginations roll backward. The war came and the curtain was
drawn--for the duration, at least--on this picturesque ceremony at the
257-year-old Indian Church in Mashpee.
BARNSTABLE----
_Revival Of A Great Cape Cod
Tradition Is Taking Place
In Hyannis Village_
In olden days New England’s great clipper ships had a world reputation.
Fortunes of the American merchant marine were at the crest in the
1850’s, when, also, Cape Cod’s memorable pageant of clippers and
stalwart shipmasters were in full lustre--notably, the famous Red
Jacket, which made the record crossing of the Atlantic on her maiden
voyage in 13 days and one hour.
Today the spirit of this great tradition is revived here with a new,
even more widespread, sort of drama. The historic Massachusetts
Maritime Academy has established a “permanent shore base” at Hyannis,
Cape Cod, to school officers for wartime duty in our merchant marine
and Navy and--after the war--to train young men for technical jobs at
sea or ashore.
This is definitely the most newsworthy and promising wartime
development in Cape Cod affairs.
OLD SEAFARER GIVES ADVICE
The 100th class of this old school which had its beginning in the era
of wooden ships and iron men was graduated in 1944 with colorful and
impressive ceremonies. A full dress drill by a battalion of midshipmen
on the Academy parade grounds provided a stirring scene for some 500
fathers and mothers and relatives. The graduating class was the largest
in the 51 years of the institution. Governor Saltonstall, Rear Admiral
Robert A. Theobald, U.S.N., Commandant of First Naval District, and
other notables bid Godspeed and counselled the new officers who were to
join Academy comrades scattered over the world in all theatres of the
war.
Particularly interesting was the meaty advice Admiral Theobald offered
the new officers out of his own 40-odd years of seafaring experience.
He said:
“You’re going to have to spend endless days and months in the sameness
of only a cloudless sky above you and a smooth sea beneath you.
Don’t get in a seagoing rut. Get an avocation as soon as you can. I
would suggest that you develop the habit of doing heavy reading on
international relations. Your nation is in the middle of world politics
now and will never recede again from world relationships.”
“We, as a nation, have been too prone to accept the notion that other
nations have the same psychological reactions as ours. You will find it
a very interesting avocation to get books and study other people of the
world. You must go back to find out what makes them tick. And, also,
this reading will enable you to determine whether your own statesmen
are doing a good job.”
He made a point of impressing the graduates that a man in war never
gets over fear. In a crisis of danger they would be afraid the first
time, and the hundredth time, although each time they would learn more
of what to expect.
GOVERNOR SEES FUTURE
Governor Saltonstall spoke of America’s plans for a great merchant
marine fleet, and said, “I congratulate you on the opportunities that
lie ahead of you.”
Capt. Walter K. Queen, U.S.N.R., Ret., chairman of the Academy’s board
of commissioners, announced that the total number of Massachusetts
lads trained for officer duty since the Academy was founded now was
2,277. In keeping with a long-time custom, the Boston Marine Society,
established in 1742 and the oldest marine society in the world,
presented its prize to Vincent Francis Leahy of Brookline as “the
graduate excelling in those qualities making for the best shipmaster.”
Prizes were presented also to other outstanding students by the Society
of the War of 1812 and the Massachusetts State Society.
Cape Cod, pioneered by men of the sea, is an appropriate setting for a
modern school of shipmasters. The future looks extremely promising and
the Academy, hardly established on the new site, is steadily expanding.
Its erstwhile students are in the thick of action in this war, and many
of them saw the worst of it while “delivering the goods” to Murmansk.
Some have been killed, some wounded and some decorated for valor.
Cape Cod and New England at large will hear much about the
Massachusetts Maritime Academy as time goes on, for the signs point to
increasing heights of achievement by the American merchant marine after
peace is won.
Capt. Claude O. Bassett, U.S.N.R., is the Academy superintendent. A
mild and good-humored veteran and thoroughly schooled and seasoned in
the profession of the sea.
YARMOUTHPORT----
_Ichabod Paddock, Whaling
Instructor--and “Wes” Baker,
Guadalcanal Hero_
Tom Baker is mail carrier for the Yarmouthport, Cape Cod, postoffice.
An elderly man, wiry, with quick-moving gait, he makes his appointed
rounds in fair weather and foul. A younger man who held the job is in a
war plant.
When Guadalcanal was taken, Tom Baker’s son--19-year-old Pvt. 1st Cl.
Thomas Wesley Baker--raced up the beach in the first invading wave of
Marines.
I talked with him when he came home--an invalid, with jungle malaria in
his system. His Guadalcanal experience had cost him 40 pounds.
It was 3 o’clock in the morning when the Japs advanced up the beach.
Wes Baker was taut and scared, because this was to be his first
experience in actual combat.... “We saw them first. They came in
columns of four. The highest ranking officers were right out in front.
Later, we found that none of the Japs was less than corporal and in
their clothing was a lot of American and English money. They were
picked troops and the biggest Japs I ever saw, all of them close to
six feet tall. They came through a little lagoon, waist high in water.
There wasn’t any barbed wire up, so they kept coming on. They were no
more than 200 yards away when we opened fire. There were 1500 of them
and they were all killed. We lost 29 and 80 were wounded. We’d charge
and they’d go into the water, trying to swim out of range. We picked
them off like ducks. When their officers were killed, they didn’t know
what they were doing.”
HOME FRONT CHARM
More advanced in years than mail carrier Tom Baker are Miss Saidee M.
Swift and her sister, Mrs. Caroline Burr, of the Home Front. They are
in the candy-making business.
A large and pleasant old house stands at the bend of the road just as
you enter upon the beautiful vista of great elms in Yarmouthport. A
weather-worn sign--Saidee Swift’s Candies--is on a tree out in front.
For 20 years Saidee Swift has turned out fine candies and travellers
from all parts of the nation have knocked at her door. Her chocolates
have gone to China. Governor Saltonstall is one of her best customers.
Her trade has included judges, society folk, artists, writers and
countless prominent individuals who have visited the Cape. Each
Christmas she makes about 200 pounds of candy for faithful customers in
distant parts.
Saidee Swift’s technique includes a close watch on the weather and
sometimes she waits four or five days for just the right temperature.
She says, “In a northeast storm, I can dip splendidly.”
Whaling captains lived in the great houses facing the Yarmouthport
elms. In 1691, Ichabod Paddock was engaged to go to Nantucket to
instruct men “in the art of killing whales by the employment of boats
from the shore.” Not far from Saidee Swift’s is the former domicile of
Asa Eldredge, commander of the famous clipper Red Jacket, who made a
record voyage from New York to Liverpool in 13 days.
Regular packet service to Boston contributed to the naming of
Yarmouthport. There is still an old timer or two who can recall the
fierce competition between the Yarmouthport and Barnstable sailing
packets and the frequent races to Boston.
WOMEN MOULDED BULLETS
Yarmouthport is a part of the township of Yarmouth, which is
considerably spread out, from shore to shore, across the Cape. Not so
many years ago some stray bullets were found under the bricks of the
hearthstone of an old house that was being demolished. The find was
reminiscent of the story of Joshua Gray and his fellow soldiers of
Yarmouth. Joshua Gray was captain of the early Yarmouth Militia and an
officer in the Revolution, who marched with his men to help Washington
defend Dorchester Heights. The night before their departure, women of
the town worked in his home until sunrise moulding bullets for the
soldiers.
In great grandfather’s time Yarmouthport was the trading center in
this section of the Cape, and people came over from Hyannis to do
their shopping. Tom Baker’s mail delivery job was first held by John
Thacher, who rode horseback and made his rounds once a week. His pay
was $1 a day, and some citizens considered this an extravagance. Total
postoffice receipts in the town of Yarmouthport for the year 1795
amounted to $26.
The first daily newspaper on Cape Cod was founded in 1893 in
Yarmouthport. George Otis operated the _Cape Cod Item_. On the
same site the _Yarmouth Register_, weekly newspaper, continues to
record the local life, as it did 108 years ago.
DENNIS----
_The “Smoky Gold” Craft Thrived
When America Was Young_
The “smoky gold” story of Cape Cod gives a rare picture of the
pioneering spirit and richness of America’s founding days.
Smoky gold was the local name for lampblack, an indispensable base for
paints and printer’s ink in the olden days. The little town of Dennis,
once a great clipper ship port, was known in those days as one of the
world’s greatest sources of lampblack and her precious shipments were
in demand in England and on the Continent.
A modern summer visitor, the Rev. Ernest G. N. Holmes of Bethlehem,
Pa., brought the story of the great Cape Cod industry to light. While
clearing a Dennis farm he had bought for a summer home, the clergyman
discovered a stone arch two or three feet above the ground; adjoining
it was a stone floor and around its edges the soil was as black as
night--a very unusual color for Cape Cod earth.
AN INGENIOUS OPERATION
Subsequent investigation revealed that this was the remnant of a
lampblack manufactory, known to the old timers as a Funn. Today this
section of Dennis is called Funntown. The Funn was a lamp chimney
on Gargantuan lines. Anyone who has used a kerosene lamp knows how
annoying it was to have the lamp smoke and smudge the glass. The Funn,
however, was erected for just that purpose, only there was no glass
and the lampblack formed on the ceiling of the Funn thick enough to be
scraped off in layers. Thus, smoky gold was produced.
The relic was found knee-high above the ground, but when the Funn was
in working order it stood 18 feet above the ground and over a circular
area 20 feet in diameter. It was of stone and brick construction, the
top like a great inverted cone. There was an opening on each side. The
winds were important to the industry. So, the Funns were always built
in pairs, the hearth of one facing due east and the other due north.
The prevailing wind on Cape Cod is southwest. The idea was to keep the
smoke from escaping outside the Funn.
The smoke first came from fires of pine knots gathered in the
surrounding woods. Next, after this supply was cut down, resin was
sailed to Dennis from the Carolinas and Virginia. A fuel problem
arose when, in 1860, a Civil War blockade cut off this supply. The
Funn operators then looked to the coal regions of the Pennsylvania
mountains; naphtha, a by-product, was shipped in and this was used up
to the last days when the Funns operated.
OXEN CARTED SMOKY GOLD
After the fire was quenched, a man would enter the Funn with a 12-foot
pole and a board at the end, somewhat like a hoe. For protection
against the showering soot he wore a straw hat with a brim that went
beyond his shoulders, and with his long scraper he would reap the heavy
coatings of smoky gold. It would be poured into boxes, then taken to an
adjacent packing shed, where the boxes would be sealed for shipment.
Oxen then would cart the smoky gold to the East Dennis shore, where
crews of the clipper ships that sailed the seven seas put in. It would
go to Boston by sail, a trip of 10 to 11 hours if the wind was good.
On the oldtime Boston docks Cape Cod lampblack would join the company
of spices and silks from India, the teas from China, Java’s coffee and
sugar from the West Indies and become a part of the adventurous world
commerce of the clipper days.
“Time moves on to ever new discoveries,” wrote Edna Cornell, telling
the story of smoky gold in a bulletin of The Society for the
Preservation of New England Antiquities. “The wonder of yesterday is
the forgotten glory of today. The Funns were new and amazing a century
ago; but industry, always in a hurry, outstripped them long ago, and
they are now only a few scattered bricks, a few garden walks and a
fireplace. Nevertheless, like all big and influential things, no matter
of what antiquity or deep obliteration, they have left a footprint
behind them that time has not yet erased nor witchgrass on a Cape Cod
farm completely hidden.”
DENNIS----
_“Sleepy John” Sears’
$2,000,000 Idea_
Some remembrances of an old Cape Codder:
“Salt works! Yes, I have seen many of them. There were rows and rows
of them on my grandfather’s farm. And my grandmother! Well, she wore
herself out taking care of them. She had only 14 children. Generally
three of them were in arms. Many a time when grandfather and the boys
were at the flats (the shore) and a rainstorm came up, grandmother
would walk half a mile, carrying one child, leading another, and the
three-year-old toddling behind--to the salt works to cover them before
the rain came on. Rain freshened the salt, you know.”
Salt-making by the solar evaporation process was developed into a
$2,000,000 business on Cape Cod in the early 1800’s, according to
one estimate. Today, in an age when the Cape lives on the summer
vacationist trade and Camp Edwards revenue, you rarely hear a mention
of this once great, now extinct, industry. The originator was a
retired skipper who had ideas and ever a weather eye for an extra
dollar--Capt. John (“Sleepy John”) Sears of Dennis.
CAPE COD STICKTOITIVNESS
People thought him whacky when they first learned he was trying to make
money from the sun and the salt water all around him. But, Sleepy John
(an ill-chosen sobriquet, if there ever was one) had the last laugh and
rolled up a nice fortune meanwhile when he demonstrated that it is not
only a good idea to have ideas but, also, to carry them through. For,
salt was a lot more important in his era; it was needed then as now to
go with ones’ vittles, though the greatest value was its indispensable
use in the curing of fish.
Dubbed “Sears Folly”, the first salt-making plant got off to a merry
start in 1776. Skipper Sears built a vat, or “water room”, that was a
crude affair, 100 feet long, 10 feet wide. There were shutters over
the top so that the vat containing salt water could be covered when
it rained, or exposed to the full rays of the sun. As the hot sun
poured down on the water, salt began to crystallize and the Dennis
idea man must have danced a ’76 jitter jig, conjuring up pictures
of what he would do with all his wealth, amassed from just a simple
contraption and no expense whatever. At the end of the sunny season,
however, Captain Sears had produced only eight bushels of salt, and the
neighbors were laughing louder.
The old sea dog wasn’t in the habit of quitting when the going got
rough. Having discovered that production was held down by leaks in the
vat, he persevered and found a way to make the vat tight as a drum. The
second year he crystallized 30 bushels of salt. But, a labor problem
was slowing his progress. The salt water had to be poured into the vat
from buckets, a tedious and time-consuming handicap, for John soon
learned that for every 350 gallons of water he poured only one bushel
of salt formed. He kept plugging and, meanwhile, he was doing some tall
scheming. The neighbors were still laughing.
FINALE OF A GREAT INDUSTRY
On the fourth year Sears Folly was improved with a pump worked by hand.
Production was stepped up. The pump continued in use until 1785, then,
at a suggestion of Capt. Nathaniel Freeman, John Sears, with the help
of others, contrived a pump worked by wind. This really turned the
trick and set the skipper off full sail to become the local Croesus.
Salt sold at $8 a bushel ($8 was $8 in those times) and the bushels
piled higher and higher at the Sears works. By this time the neighbors
had gotten sober and interested and other salt-making windmills were
erected and their creaking and whirring were familiar sounds throughout
the village. The men who assisted John Sears with his windmill
improvement eventually reassigned to him their right and title and
finally the founder of the salt industry obtained a Government patent.
The production of salt spread in other parts of the Cape, notably
Provincetown, a great fishing port and, earlier, a whaler’s haven.
Salt-making began there in 1800; in 1837 the tip of the Cape had 78
salt works, each employing two men and producing a total of 48,960
bushels of salt. The manufacturing developed even to a higher plan when
Glauber Salts, made from boiling brine, was valued by physicians and
came into brisk demand.
Development of the salt springs of New York, and manufacturing
improvements and cheaper operating costs elsewhere, marked the
beginning of the end of Cape Cod’s great salt industry.
BREWSTER----
_Thanks to Pioneering Here,
Millions of American Soldiers
Wear Good Shoes_
Quiet little Brewster, Cape Cod, offers a rich tapestry of Americana.
Many a U. S. soldier slogging over the world battlefronts is wearing
brogans turned out by patented machines of the great United Shoe
Machinery--which started from a one-man cobbling business in oldtime
Brewster.
West Brewster, dubbed “Factory Village” by the old timers, was a
bustling scene, with spinning, fulling and grist mills, tannery and
iron works, and the still-present Flax Pond, where flax gathered in
surrounding fields was put to soak in the water-retting process of
making linen.
The sheep growers would trek here, over the fields and ragged roads,
with their bags of wool. The going was hard on their footwear, it was
noted by the Winslow brothers, one of whom operated a fulling mill
and the other, a grist mill. So, to maintain good will, the fulling
mill Winslow verged into a sideline of cobbling the shoes of his wool
producers.
But, a teen-age son--who gave the lie to common gossip of that day,
that the younger generation was swiftly going to the dogs--was actually
the one who transformed the humble cobbler’s tapping into a nationwide
whirr and, incidentally, founded the Great Winslow fortune of today.
A CROSS-ROADS GENIUS
The lad was uncommonly ingenious and tenacious. Recruited by the
fulling mill operator to assist in the cobbling work, the boy grew
impatient at the tediousness of the task. He conceived a time-saving
and labor-saving machine. Then he dreamed up another and another. He
wrote to Washington and obtained a patent on each new invention as fast
as it took shape.
These same patents are in use today in the big shoe plants of America,
and the earnings from them continue to flow handsomely to the present
Winslow heirs. Thus, the mighty United Shoe Machinery Company got its
first breath of life on old Cape Cod.
Brewster is named for Elder William Brewster, a crusader for religious
freedom, who sailed to Cape Cod on the Mayflower and acted as pastor to
the church at Plymouth. He is described as having been “tender harted,
and compassionate of such as were in miserie.” Further, “none did more
offend him and displease him than such as would haughtily and proudly
carry and lift up themselves, being rise from nothing, and haveing
little els in them to comend them but a few fine cloaths, or a little
riches more than others.” On his death, we are told, Elder Brewster’s
complete estate consisted of 275 books, of which 64 were “in the
learned languages.”
Quaint names are associated with Cape Cod lore. Fear Brewster was one
of Elder Brewster’s daughters and he had sons named Love Brewster and
Wrestling Brewster.
SEA ADVENTURES OF OLD
When Brewster town history is recounted there is always talk of the
colorful seafaring oldsters and their great sailing craft. Outstanding
is the Pitcairn Island story. Captain William Freeman of Brewster
landed at the bleak hiding place of the Bounty mutineers in 1883,
and brought his daughter Clara along with him. Clara cultivated the
friendship with Rosa Young, daughter of Edward Young, who survived the
hardships and bloody conflict among the mutineers after they found
refuge on the island in 1790. Later, they corresponded. Today, in the
Brewster Public Library, there is the original manuscript of Rosa
Young’s letters, extending over a period of six months.
In one of these letters, Rosa tells of her meeting with the chaplain
of the man-of-war Constance, who landed at Pitcairn. All descendents
of the mutineers, including Rosa, were intensely religious. Thus, she
described the visiting chaplain to her Brewster friend: “Whether he
experienced the same feeling that I did I cannot tell, but I certainly
thought that a more un-chaplain-looking man was hard to find, and if
words and manner are an index to a man’s character, he certainly did
not seem rightly fitted for a sacred office.” And then, as though to
show how shocked she was, Rosa Young concluded, “as we were about to
leave ship he said, ‘Now, we will have to sing, _The Girl I Left
Behind Me._’”
The house in Brewster where Joseph C. Lincoln, writer of Cape Cod
character stories, was born still bears a For Sale sign. Conrad Aiken,
noted American poet, has a Summer place in a tranquil spot in the hill
country. Chester Slack, an artist of reputation, lives there year-round
and takes a sympathetic interest in local affairs. In recent times
a Brewster craftsman, with a resourceful spirit reminiscent of the
Factory Village pioneers, has been weaving fine tweeds to fill
individual orders.
Brewster today reflects mostly upon her memory-book, for there is
no longer any of the teeming industry of the Winslow founders. The
exciting spring herring run annually draws attention to the town.
Brewster has one vestige of the hallowed past that is distinctive:
It is the site of the only water-power grist mill on Cape Cod where
countless modern summer visitors have watched the ancient process of
grinding corn--and captured a bit of stirring reality of the vigorous
Founding Days of our nation.
HARWICH----
_A Liberator of Slaves, Immortalized
by the Poet Whittier_
“The boys all want the town paper. It’s like getting a letter from
home, they write.”
Harry Albro, friendly and kind country editor, gives particular
attention to his servicemen’s mailing list. He served under MacArthur
in the last war, was gassed at Argonne and came back with six battle
stars. He has held the post of a State Guard commanding officer and has
had other Home Front duties. His homey weekly newspapers mean a lot to
people in war service now far removed from their beloved Cape Cod.
When the Revolutionary War clouds loomed, Ebenezer Weekes of Harwich
said to his son, “Eben you are the only one that can be spared; take
your gun and go; fight for religion and liberty!”
“HARRICH” IN ENGLAND, “HAR-WICH” HERE
“Harrich” is the way it is mouthed in the seaport town of Essex County,
England. The Harwich of Cape Cod is pronounced Har-wich. This Harwich
was founded in 1694 and it is said that one of her ardent townsmen,
Patrick Butler, walked all the way to Boston, a trek of 100 miles, to
obtain the incorporation.
In modern times Anthony Elmer Crowell of East Harwich achieved fame
as one of America’s great craftsmen. Mr. Crowell, remote from the
beaten path, admirably proved the better mousetrap adage. He carved and
painted images of birds so realistically that they came into demand
for museums and private collections and travelled even to Australia.
At first Mr. Crowell was a gunners’ guide, commissioned to fashion
some duck decoys that would be more convincing to Cape Cod ducks than
the wood-butcher jobs that other decoy-makers had sold the sportsmen.
Then the East Harwich genius branched into making robins, bluejays,
sanderlings and the many, many other species of the feathered tribes.
Word of his skill got around fast and he profited handsomely. His
quaint craft was put into Joseph C. Lincoln’s Cape Cod book, “Queer
Judson”. And, “It is not unlikely that a day may come when a ‘Crowell
bird’ will be as much sought as a genuine bit of Sandwich glass or a
slender piece of Sheraton furniture,” prophesies Arthur Wilson Tarbell
in “Cape Cod Ahoy!”
Religion was a strong point of Harwich’s early days. A variety of
fifteen denominations once functioned within the town’s borders and
at times emotions ran high. It is recorded, for example, that the
Rev. Edward Pell of Harwich left a request for his burial to be in
the North Precinct, or present-day Brewster, for, “if left among the
pines of the South Precinct (Harwich) he might be overlooked at the
resurrection, that the Lord would never think of looking in such an
un-Godly place for a righteous man.”
MAN WITH “THE BRANDED HAND”
In 1743 came the “Great Awakening” evangelical movement and with it
the all-out sects known as “New Lights” who “made the pine woods of
Harwich ring with Hallelujahs and hosannas, even from babes!” Moreover,
there was “a screeching and groaning all over, and it hath been very
powerful ever since.” Touching on activities of the New Lights, Henry
C. Kittridge, Cape Cod historian, narrates that “when under the spell
of their mania, they walked along the tops of fences instead of on the
sidewalks; affected a strange, springing gait, and conversed by singing
instead of ordinary speech, in the distressing manner of characters in
light operas.” Could it be that author Kittridge was spoofing us a bit?
A native of Harwich--recorded in history as the first liberator of
slaves--is eulogized in verse by Whittier. Capt. Jonathan Walker in
1844 put out from Pensacola with seven runaway slaves aboard his
vessel, having responded to their appeals to be taken to the British
West Indies, where they would find freedom under the Union Jack. The
Cape Cod skipper was captured, he was imprisoned in irons and thence
the brand, “S.S.” (slave stealer) was seared into his right hand.
Captain Walker is hailed by Whittier:
“Hold it up before our sunshine, up against our Northern air;
Ho! Men of Massachusetts, for the love of God, look there!
Take it henceforth for your standard, like the Bruce’s heart of yore,
In the dark strife closing round ye, let that hand be seen before.”
The culture of cranberries on Cape Cod--a source of revenue that runs
into the millions--was begun on a commercial scale in Harwich in 1845,
though it was Henry Hall of Dennis who was the pioneer grower in 1816.
Fishing was on the decline and a retired harvester of cod spoke the
sentiment of his salty brethren:
“I put up my chart and glass, and took to raising cranberry sass.”
Before then the cranberry was regarded as only food for the cranes.
Crane-berry was the original name the pioneers gave this famous Cape
Cod product.
CHATHAM----
_The First American to Fly
The Atlantic “Hopped Off” Here_
“You don’t say hum and eggs, do you?” chided the old native.
So, the proper pronunciation for the town of Chatham is--Chat-ham. With
the accent on the hind end. To the native this is important. And so it
is on the opposite side of the nation where the true citizen of San
Francisco winces when you say “Frisco” and would prefer to have you
articulate the whole name of his fair city.
Chatham, with some 50 miles of shoreline, is one of the most beautiful,
unspoiled seashore places on Cape Cod. Architecture of great seafaring
days, the primitive, lonely cry of the seagull, the home-spun shell
fisherman, a history crowded with drama, bright little Yankee streets,
art and literature and here and there a touch of international
fame--this is Chatham. The writer is prejudiced, because this is the
place where, 18 years ago, he spent his first night on Cape Cod. And
met his first artist acquaintance, a dear friend for two decades,
Harold Dunbar.
PEOPLE OF DISTINCTION
The late Joseph C. Lincoln was a widely known Chatham resident. The
writer of many fiction-novels about Cape Cod folk contributed more
than any other person to make this peninsula known to the nation at
large. Arthur Wilson Tarbell of Chatham, a modern historian, wrote
an outstanding book, “Cape Cod Ahoy!” Sinclair Lewis did some of his
early writing here. Alice Stallknecht Wight got on the Associated Press
wires as a result of the excitement caused by her mural painting in
the Chatham Congregational Church. “Christ Preaching to the Multitude”
is its title. The multitude consists of well known Chatham faces and
Christ, depicted as a fisherman, is shown addressing them from a boat.
For a companion piece Mrs. Wight later painted “The Last Supper”,
showing Coast Guards, sea captains and other Chathamites as the
disciples.
And in a pleasing, secluded spot the late Supreme Court Justice Louis
D. Brandeis had his summer home for many years.
The tiptop spire of the Congregational Church is fashioned from a
spar on the bark R. A. Allen, wrecked on the Chatham shore in 1887.
Lightning damaged the church in the same storm. And the Cape’s toy
windmill industry, that has waxed fat from the summer trade, started
in Chatham. The humble carver of the first shop is romanticized in
Lincoln’s novel “Shavings”. But a Coast Guard station skipper is given
credit for making the first toy windmill. The art spread to other
stations and business got so brisk the Government issued an order,
forbidding the guardians of the deep from engaging further in the
profitable sideline.
LINKED WITH OLD ENGLAND
Chatham is named for the County of Kent town in old England. Before the
Pilgrims came to the Cape, Champlain, the French explorer, arrived
here in 1606. He planned to establish a French colony in Chatham, but
a fight with the Indians drove him off. In 1658, William Nickerson of
Norfolk, England, appeared on the scene and gave the sachem Mattaquason
a shallop for the sea-girted acres. Complications developed; Nickerson
was called to Plymouth Court and ultimately he had to pay 90 pounds as
a fair purchase price. In 1712 Chatham was incorporated as a town.
The Mayflower, her passengers looking to a settlement below the Hudson,
barely escaped being wrecked on the Chatham shoals. Here she turned
back to enter Provincetown Harbor.
Three hundred years later a Navy flier repaid this visit, wafting down
from the heavens onto Plymouth, England.
Lieut. Albert Cushing Read of Hanson, Mass., was the first man to
fly the Atlantic, and he took off from Chatham. He competed in a
trans-ocean contest of the Navy “Nancies” in 1919, the N-C’s 1, 2, 3
and 4. The original takeoff point was Rockaway Beach, Long Island. Read
rode the N-C 4, which was disabled far off this shore, but managed
to get into this port, where, as luck had it, a Navy air station was
located for the training of large numbers of fliers for the last war.
A new motor was installed, the N-C 4 winged off to the Azores via
Trepassey Bay, New Foundland and the pioneering flight was completed
with fifty-two and a half hours having been spent in the skies. Read
flew on to Plymouth, perhaps for sentiment’s sake, having the Mayflower
in mind.
ORLEANS----
_The World’s Insomnia
Champion Lived Here_
The late Joseph C. Lincoln of Chatham gained national fame with his
stories of Cape Cod. The quaint characters he wrote about were, for the
most part, taken from life. Some other old-timers, however, have been a
bit too unconventional, even for Mr. Lincoln’s yarn-spinning purposes.
“Bill-Ike” Small, for example.
Bill-Ike--or, Isaac Wilbur Small, a name that no one would have
recognized--claimed he never slept. He was the insomnia champion of
the world until he passed on in Orleans a few years ago. And, he made
it so real a Boston paper printed pages about him. The paper sent down
its crack feature writer and he and Bill-Ike went off to New York to
tour the night clubs--the idea being to determine whether Bill-Ike’s
story would stand the test during two or three night of skylarking and
sitting up in a hotel room.
Bill-Ike made good, we were told, for the newspaperman observed him
every blessed minute of the sleeplessness, nor did he, himself, fall
off a chair.
HE GAINED WEIGHT, TOO
“I close my eyes for a little while, just to rest ’em, but I don’t
sleep. I haven’t used a bed for over five years,” Bill-Ike would tell
me. Then the gentle old man with a flowing white beard would add that
he had gained 38 pounds in the past year.
He would just “set” in a decrepit old chair by the stove or putter
about the house long winter nights. He’d while away the tedious hours
reading sea stories and cowboy yarns and go through three or four
magazines in a night. But, his mother’s glasses didn’t serve him as
well toward the end and time became more of a burden. Around 3 a.m. he
would brew a pot of tea and make himself a sandwich. Moonlight nights
in the spring and summer were welcomed, for then he was able to get
outdoors and do a few chores.
Bill-Ike said he first discovered the capacity to go without sleep when
he was a youth working in the cranberry bogs during a rush season. He
worked night and day for three months that time and discovered that
he could get along with only an hour’s snooze in the morning before
breakfast. But, he didn’t really begin to make a habit of staying awake
until 1928.
HOW HE “EXPERIMENTED”
That year Bill-Ike happened to read in a magazine, “Nobody can go 80
days without sleep.” Just to prove this wasn’t so, the old gentleman
began by denying himself sleep for a continuous stretch of 83 days.
In 1929 he “experimented” again, keeping awake 147 days. Then the
sleeplessness became more of a habit. But, each year he bettered his
own record and in 1933 he rounded out his first full year of going
without sleep. Finally, Bill-Ike achieved the amazing five-year record,
and he was going into his sixth year when he passed on.
He was in fine fettle almost to the end, a firm believer in the gospel
of hard toil. During vacation seasons he kept busy tending the gardens
and being the handyman for summer cottagers. A bachelor--“always
been willin’ but the right gal ain’t ever showed up”--Bill-Ike lived
with his brother, Fred, in a century-old house in a spot remote from
the town. Fred would have his regular eight or nine hours in bed,
undisturbed by Bill-Ike’s poking about the house at all hours of the
night.
“Sure, I could enjoy a full night’s sleep,” was the old insomnia
champion’s mournful comment. “But, I just can’t, that’s all. Doctors
say it has something to do with my nerves.”
There were people in Orleans who took Bill-Ike’s sleepless story with
a pinch of salt. But Bill-Ike got the publicity just the same, and the
New York excursion and ballyhoo didn’t change him a bit. And, at the
peak of the newspaper excitement, another oldster of the community
bobbed up with a new and original claim. He slept, all right, but his
eyelids never seemed to come down. All of his sleeping was done with
eyes wide open. He just lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling, all
night long.
ORLEANS----
_The First German U-Boat
Attack On American Soil_
In the last war, the one and only attack on American soil by the
Germans was at Orleans, Cape Cod.
On a quiet Sunday morning, July 21, 1918, the submarine, U-156, rose
from the ocean waters a few hundred yards off the Orleans shore. In
full view of numerous cottagers, the enemy sub leisurely began shelling
the defenseless tug Perth Amboy and her three barges.
Exactly why these craft, of no particular military value, were chosen
for attack has never been made known. It may have been an impulsive act
of bravado by the Kaiser’s marauders or, possibly, a scare stunt to
give Americans at home the jitters.
The Americans attacked, managed to get ashore in dories, while
the firing continued. “One observer counted 147 shots.” There
are conflicting versions, naturally, but it is agreed there was
considerable shooting, and the U-boat operated throughout without
meeting resistance.
FIRED ON COAST GUARD
At least one shot was aimed directly at the tower of a Coast Guard
station. It missed by a small margin and landed in a marsh, according
to the description given me by a former Coast Guardsman who was
standing the tower watch at the time. The three barges were sunk. The
Perth Amboy, while badly burned, was subsequently towed in for repairs,
and she may even be in service today.
A Cape Cod man, strange as it may seem, was skipper of the Perth
Amboy--Capt. Joe Perry hailed from Provincetown. Another Provincetown
man, Henry J. James, son of a fishing captain in that old port at the
tip-end of the Cape, was moved to write a significant book after the
Orleans attack.
Of interest even today, this book--“German Subs in Yankee Waters”--came
out not long before Pearl Harbor, though James (when I last heard from
him he was superintendent of schools in Simsbury, Connecticut) had
negotiated with publishers for a long time to get it into print.
Many American developments for defense in the present war coincide
with suggestions made by James--small, fast boats for coastal defense,
beam-trawlers for minesweeping, the registering of all small craft for
coastal protection and other aids lacking in the last war.
The Cape Cod attack and its implications made a strong impression upon
James in his youth; this spurred him on to devote many years of patient
research to complete his book.
He relates that in 1918, during the final action of the last war,
Germany had six U-boats operating in our waters and these alone sank 91
ships and took a toll of 368 lives. All this happened within a brief
six months.
These half-dozen underseas boats operating along the Atlantic
shore--3400 miles from their base at Kiel, Germany--all got away
safely after their destructive work. All but one--this struck a mine in
the North Sea, not far from Kiel--got back to the home base.
STRANGE MEETING AT SEA
A complete, authentic record of the Cape Cod U-boat attack is still
lacking. Occasionally, however, a new bit of information is added to
the story by one who was at the scene. One of the best anecdotes was
told me by a physician who had a cottage on the shore and sat with a
telephone in his hand, observing the shelling and giving a running
account of the attack to the _Boston Globe_.
After the war this gentleman made a crossing on the Leviathan. He fell
into conversation with a German steward, mentioning that he was from
Cape Cod. The German asked if he had, by chance, ever heard of a U-boat
attack there during the war, and then proceeded to give an accurate
description of the Orleans attack. Thus, the doctor-reporter, who
had scored the biggest newspaper scoop in Cape Cod journalism and an
erstwhile member of the U-156 crew met in mid-Atlantic.
The German chuckled: “Yah! we had some fun on that cruise. You didn’t
know, did you, that some of us went ashore one night in a rubber boat
and attended a movie in your Beverly, Massachusetts!”
The only effort to repulse the attacking U-boat was made by a lone
flier from a Naval station at nearby Chatham. He lacked ammunition and
had to resort to bold bluffing. After diving a couple of times over the
submarine, he made a final low swoop and let fly a monkey wrench at the
heads of the crew standing on deck.
Some time ago an article I wrote about the Cape Cod attack was
reprinted in a digest magazine. A retired navy officer, in a little
town in Pennsylvania, read it. He wrote me: “Well do I remember that
dull overcast Sabbath morning, as I was the fellow who threw the monkey
wrench.” And, he invited me to drop in, if I ever got around his way,
and he’d tell me “the whole story.”
EASTHAM----
_Local Boy Makes Good On
First Bombing of Tokio_
Eastham, Cape Cod, has a real claim to present-day fame. This
unexciting, though historic little settlement, near the outer end of
the sickle, is the home of Master Sgt. Edwin W. Horton, Jr., member of
the Doolittle party on the first bombing of Tokio in World War II.
On his return to this country, Horton, at the first opportunity,
hastened back to little Eastham for a quiet visit. And brought his
bride to introduce to the home folks.
Eastham is small but historically she is important. The original name
was Nauset. Here the Pilgrims, exploring after their arrival on the
Mayflower, had their first encounter with the Indians. The forefathers
focused particular attention on the fertile soil, Thomas Prence,
Governor of Plymouth Colony, describing it as the “richest soyle, for
ye most part a blackish & deep mould, much like that wher groweth ye
best Tobacco in Virginia.” Today Eastham is still outstanding as a
farming place, noted especially for her asparagus production.
_Provincetown for beauty,
Wellfleet for pride,
If it wasn’t for milk cans
Eastham ’d’ a died._
Thus the sing-song went when, later, the lush Nauset dairy herds
provided milk for a good part of the Cape. And Eastham, truly
farming-minded, would fling back these better known lines:
_The Cape Cod girls they have no combs,
They comb their hair with codfish bones;
The Cape Cod Boys they have no sleds,
They slide downhill on codfish heads._
PILGRIM’S TREE STILL BLOSSOMS
Life still springs from at least one of the plantings of those far
distant days of the forefathers. Thomas Prence, who first set foot
on the Cape in 1621, subsequently built a house for himself and his
bride near Fort Hill. He planted a little pear tree there; it had been
brought over from England.
Each Spring a pear tree blossoms on this site. Thoreau, in the book
on his Cape Cod travels, refers to the planting by Thomas Prence and
states the tree had been blown down a few months previous to his visit
to the scene. A modern historian, however, records that Thomas Prence’s
pear tree is still bearing, a sapling having been planted after the
old tree had been swept down in a gale. Thoreau quotes the following
tribute by a Cape Codder, a Mr. Herman Doane:
“_That exiled band long since have passed away,
And still, old Tree! Thou standest in the place
Where Prence’s hand did plant thee in his day,--
An undersigned memorial of his race._”
THE LAST WORKING WINDMILL
The lone workable windmill on Cape Cod is located in Eastham. Before
Pearl Harbor there would be a ceaseless trek of Summer visitors to the
Seth Knowles’ windmill and Miller John Fulcher would demonstrate its
ancient workings with true professional eclat. He’d set her sails,
swing her into the wind, give the lift wheel a deft spin, and, in jig
time, Miller John would turn out a bushel of ground corn before the
eyes of the intrigued city folk. Those who seemed to know asserted
that Miller John had the “miller’s thumb”. Dipping his thumb into the
trough, he would decide just when the corn was properly ground.
The story of the old windmill is vague. Some say it gave service
originally in Plymouth and then was “flaked” across the Bay to be
re-erected in Eastham. The date 1793 is nailed inside, but this still
leaves unanswered the point as to when and where its story begins.
There’s a tablet near a stretch of Eastham beach that memorializes
the “First Encounter.” The event is described in William Bradford’s
narrative:
“But, presently, all on ye sudain, they heard a great & strange crie,
which they knew to be the same voyces they heard in ye night, though
they varied their notes, & one of their company being abroad came
runing in & cried, ‘Men, Indeans, Indeans’; and withall, their arrowes
came flying amongst them. Their men rane with all speed to recover
their armes, as by ye good providence of God they did.... The crie of
ye Indeans was dreadfull, espetially when they saw ther men rune out of
ye randevoue towourds ye shallop, to recover their armes, the Indeans
wheeling aboute upon them. But some runing out with coats of malle
on, & cutlesses in their hands, they soon got their armes & let flye
amongst them, and quickly stopped their violence.”
Bradford’s narrative reveals, also, why the redskins were in a
war-making mood.
Six years previous “one Hunt, a mr. of a ship” had visited this scene.
Hunt had seized 24 of the Nauset Indians and taken them to Spain in
slave chains and, it is elsewhere related, he “sold these silly savages
for rials of eight.”
What changes are wrought by the years! Where slavery was introduced in
the early 17th century, a native son now is ranked with America’s great
heroes in a global war for freedom.
SOUTH WELLFLEET----
_Our World Communications System
Began with Marconi’s Triumph
On a Lonely Ocean Bluff_
How many Americans know that our world radio system was given birth on
Cape Cod?
Guglielmo Marconi achieved his great goal on the oceanside of South
Wellfleet, out near the end of the Cape. Here, on the Sabbath night
of January 19, 1903, he got through the first trans-Atlantic wireless
telegraph message. Modern radio developed from that beginning.
The overseas wireless message was a greeting from President Theodore
Roosevelt to King Edward. It read:
White House, Jan. 19, 1903
His Majesty Edward VII
London, England
In taking advantage of the wonderful triumph
of scientific research and ingenuity which has been
achieved in perfecting a system of wireless telegraphy,
I extend on behalf of the American people,
most cordial greetings and good wishes to you and
to all the people of the British Empire.
Theodore Roosevelt
King Edward’s response came several days later--proof that Marconi had
completely succeeded in his long work of experimenting.
THE FIRST-HAND STORY
Then Charlie Paine, gaunt Cape Cod native, entered the scene. He had
been engaged to get the King’s message to the Wellfleet telegraph
office, whence it was to be dispatched to the White House. But,
Marconi’s horse-and-buggy courier, holding to an old Cape Cod trait,
showed not a twitch of emotion--“he wasn’t goin’ to kill his horse for
nobody.” Old Charlie Paine passed on about two years ago in his native
South Wellfleet. This is how he related his part in the big day of
excitement:
“The first message Marconi ever got through from the other side of the
ocean I took from his hand to carry to the telegraph office. I’d waited
about six days to get it, with Black Diamond hitched up in the buggy
most of the time. We jes stayed there, ready to go any minute.
“It was winter and colder’n Greenland. Dimey had two blankets over her
and I was wearin’ Steve Paine’s wolf coat that he shot up in Alaska.
All of a sudden I see Marconi come rearin’ out of the plant with both
hands full of tape. He was jes like a crazy man.
“‘You wait there, Paine, and I’ll be with you in a minute,’ he shouted,
and started for his office. I got my buggy turned around ready. The
nearest telegraph office was Wellfleet, four miles away. When he came
out again he had two big envelopes in his hand. They were messages to
be telegraphed to Washington and New York. I found out later that it
was a message from King Edward to President Theodore Roosevelt, for one
envelope was addressed to the White House and the other to a New York
newspaper.
“‘Drive like the wind!’ says Marconi. ‘If you kill your horse I’ll buy
you another.’
“Well, I started off for Wellfleet as fast as I could make Dimey go.
But when I got over the dunes, out of sight, I slowed down. I couldn’t
see any need of goin’ crazy over a telegraph message. ’Twas four miles
of hard goin’ and I wasn’t goin’ to kill my horse for nobody. Jim Swett
was telegraph operator at Wellfleet railroad station then and I gave
him the two envelopes. And that’s all there was to it.”
MARCONI WAS JUST 29
Marconi was not yet in his 30th year. First he had proved wireless
practicable by communicating across the French channel from his
native Bologna in 1899. Working at Cornwall, he made contact with
Newfoundland. His Cape Cod transmission of President Roosevelt’s
message was the crowning achievement of his career. Thereon the
Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America became absorbed in a
brisk overseas business. The _London Times_ received part of its
American news through this Cape Cod station.
The term Marconigram became familiar to American ears. Marconi’s system
was adopted by the British and Italian navies. He took charge of
wireless operations of the Italian government during the last war. He
was awarded the Nobel prize for physics in 1909, and the J. Scott medal
for the invention of wireless telegraphy on June 5, 1931.
The pioneering was done on a high bluff overlooking the endless
sweep of the Atlantic. Work was started in 1901. Twenty immense
spars, 200 feet high, were erected in a circle. The station proper
was a one-story bungalow. Marconi and his crew slept and ate in a
cottage a few paces away. The big poles hadn’t been up long when a
nor’easter howled down on the exposed spot. They were knocked over
like matchsticks. Ice contributed to the damage and the loss ran into
$50,000. Then four towers of steel and wood, rooted with blocks of
cement and cables were erected, and they stayed put.
FAMOUS SITE UNMARKED
Mrs. Eliza J. Doane of South Wellfleet cooked for Marconi and his men.
She said: “Mr. Marconi could play the piano something grand, and he had
a pleasing voice. He was especially fond of ‘Old Black Joe’. He and the
others would sing that almost every time they got around the piano.”
A few years ago, when I last visited the scene, only the twisted ends
of cable, the broken cement blocks, studded with bolts, and a few
heavy timbers, revealed the historic scene. Unless the storm-lashed
tides have crumbled the embankment, the important debris is still
there. There was talk of establishing a “Marconi Park,” with a suitable
tablet. Prof. Frederick C. Hicks of Yale Law School led a group of
summer cottagers sponsoring the project. But, something stymied the
plans.
During its commercial career, the South Wellfleet station had a
range of about 1600 miles. At night, under favorable conditions, it
transmitted messages to a distance of 3500 miles. The government closed
this and other wireless stations for the duration of the last war. When
peace came the Chatham station of the Radio Corporation of America, a
few towns up the Cape, took over the Marconi commercial business.
ADMIRAL NIMITZ----
_Cape Cod’s Most Famous
Summer Resident_
Cape Cod’s most distinguished summer visitor--Admiral Chester W.
Nimitz--plans to resume his summer vacationing in Wellfleet, Cape Cod,
after the war.
The great Naval leader who is directing the defeat of Japan manages
to keep up correspondence with his sister-in-law, Miss Elizabeth E.
Freeman of Wellfleet. Miss Freeman, who is Mrs. Nimitz’s sister, says
he has written her how he misses the Cape and that he looks forward to
his return.
For many years the Admiral and his family have vacationed in Wellfleet.
Their haven is deeply secluded in the woods on Gull Pond Road. The
inaccessibility of the place is the reason why, perhaps, so few people
are aware of the Cape Cod ties of one of the illustrious figures of
modern world history.
The Admiral’s efficient and courageous son, Lieut. Commander Chester W.
Nimitz, Jr., who has been twice decorated for heroism, calls Wellfleet
his home. He has done so in making out his personal Naval records ever
since his graduation from Annapolis, Miss Freeman informed me. As late
as last summer Commander Nimitz managed to get in a Wellfleet visit,
and his wife and child spent all the summer there.
FISHING HIS RECREATION
The last time Admiral Nimitz and Mrs. Nimitz vacationed at Wellfleet
was in April, 1941. Members of his family, however, continue to
visit there at least once or twice every year. The two older Nimitz
daughters, Catherine, who is head of the music division in the
Washington, D. C. Library, and Nancy, who is in the Information
Division of the library, were at Wellfleet for a week last spring--they
brought with them some Navy friends and people of the musical world.
Catherine and Nancy plan to return next September and spend a month.
A Cape Cod story on Admiral Nimitz reflects the same quiet dignity and
staunchness of character that folks at home vision when they read of
him in the great war dispatches out of the Pacific. Fundamentally, he
is a man of simple tastes. He has done nothing on the Cape to cause a
personal headline in the newspapers and, from summer to summer, has
moved among his less gifted Wellfleet neighbors practically unnoticed.
Which is the way he seems to like it.
“Most of his time in Wellfleet is spent walking in the woods and
fishing. These are his chief pleasures. He reads of course, but he
doesn’t spend as much time at it as he does roaming in the outdoors. He
is a good fisherman,” relates Miss Freeman.
The Admiral and Mrs. Nimitz, nee Catherine Vance Freeman, daughter of
the late Richard R. Freeman, a Boston ship broker, were married in
1913. She was born in Wollaston, Mass. Since birth she and others of
her family have summered at Wellfleet. After her marriage, however,
she travelled far to be with her husband, living on the West Coast and
in China, Germany and other foreign places.
At first the Nimitzes spent their summer visits at the old Freeman
family house, outside Wellfleet, on Route 6. During the last war the
family summer home was re-established in the remote Gull Pond section,
one of the most primitive and lovely spots on Cape Cod. Here Mrs.
Nimitz’s sister makes her year-round residence. The former residence is
now owned by Edmund Wilson, literary critic of _The New Yorker_
magazine.
ADMIRAL KING’S JOB HERE
Some time ago a large picture was on the front page of the _New York
Times_, showing Admiral Ernest J. King, Commander-in-Chief of the
United States fleet, presenting the second Distinguished Service medal
to Admiral Nimitz. Forming an admiring audience were Admiral William F.
Halsey, Mrs. Nimitz and 13-year-old Mary Nimitz. It is an interesting
coincidence to set down in a Cape Cod story that Admiral King also is
no stranger to Cape Cod. He used to take many a long walk to stretch
his sea legs on Provincetown’s Commercial Street when he was a Captain
in the Navy and in charge of salvaging the tragic submarine S-4, sunken
outside Provincetown harbor with a loss of 40 lives.
TRURO----
_The “Blond Norseman”--Cape
Cod’s Most Ancient
Ghost Visitor_
Ten years ago, approximately, the Blond Norseman came out of his spirit
world to re-visit Cape Cod. That is the latest report on this most
ancient member of Cape Cod’s gallery of wraiths.
The setting is the wild, beach-grass country of Corn Hill, Truro. Here,
close by the far-flung shore of Cape Cod Bay, where only the seagull’s
lonely cry breaks the silence and sand peeps skitter to and fro on
their ceaseless foraging, stands a weather-battered, sprawling frame
structure known as “The Fish House.” For a long time the sea harvesters
used it for a headquarters; later it became the loved dwelling of a
large family who would remain there as long as the winds and the rains
of late fall would permit.
On one of these late fall nights, the lady of the household was
awakened abruptly from a sound sleep. Sitting up, her gaze was drawn
to the door that faced the noisy surf of the bay shore. The door was
flung wide. A “startling blue light” illumined the figure of a tall,
distinctly blond man, so powerful of stature and awesomely erect, that
he filled the door frame. The apparition did not move, its presence
was only momentary, for, in the next instant, the lady was staring at
the gaping door. She got up, closed the door and spent the rest of the
night in wakeful wonderment. But, to this day, the vivid impression of
the brief visit of the Blond Norseman remains with her.
The following day she mentioned it to a friend. He was not greatly
surprised, for he recalled a nighttime stroll along the beach some
weeks previous and related how he had discovered a bright light that
loomed up not many yards ahead of him. Thinking it was a man with a
lantern, the stroller called out. He got no answer, and the light
disappeared instantly. He was sure, that night, he had witnessed
something supernatural.
ANCIENT GRAVE MAY BE CLUE
Then the lady mentioned the incident to the owner of a large fish
business, whose plant is two or three miles up the beach. He, too, was
sympathetic. “Oh, yes,” he responded, “that’s the Blond Norseman. My
men have talked about him often. It’s an old story to them.”
Commander Donald B. MacMillan, the Arctic explorer, of Provincetown,
likewise gave a respectful ear and even suggested that the grave of
the Norse warrior who had returned to this hurly-burly world might
be located near the Fish House. Norsemen colonized along the North
Atlantic coast. Historians say that Leif Ericson and his men were the
earliest settlers on the Cape and that Thorwald died from an Indian’s
arrow in Yarmouth on the Bay side. It is said that as he lay mortally
wounded, Thorwald told his men, “Bury me here; place a cross at my
head, another at my feet, call it ‘Crossness’ forever more.”
DIGGING PARTY UNCOVERS SKELETONS
The grave that might be that of the Blond Norseman was found by a
Mayflower party of explorers, according to Mourt’s Relation. The
discovery was made after the Pilgrims found the Indians’ cache of corn
on the lofty eminence now called Corn Hill. Two skeletons were turned
up by the second digging party, one a man’s and the other, possibly
that of an Indian child. The man’s skull “had fine yellow hair still on
it.” Norse scholars have shown much interest in this grave and there
has been considerable conjecture concerning it. But, little of real
factual value on the Blond Norseman has turned up thus far.
It might be assumed that this daddy of all Cape Cod ghosts merely
returned to this earthly world to go over scenes dear to his heart. For
it is generally established that spirits that have stalked the Cape are
not the vengeful kind, but rather companionable and of a comradely mood
for returning to places fragrant in their memories.
A FRONT-PAGE GHOST
This reporter once covered a dramatic spook-story in the early part
of his Cape Cod newspaper career. The incident was unusual because it
involved a trouble-brewing spook and made unhappiness all around.
A lady from New York had rented an old house facing the highway in
North Truro and had paid $200 down, intending to operate a summer tea
room. But her uneasiness grew following each night she spent alone in
the old house. There would be the slamming of a door at an eerie hour
after midnight, or the frequent tread of creaking footsteps up and
down the narrow little front staircase. Finally there came the morning
when a blanket-fog came down into the valley and enveloped the quaint
old house.
The New York lady sat chatting in the kitchen with a Portuguese
neighbor and as they talked the weird thing happened. A big, sturdy
rocker that stood in a corner of the room began to rock. Back and
forth, with an even motion, just as though someone was in the seat, the
rocking continued.
Spellbound, the two women watched the strange business for at least two
or three minutes. It was the last straw for the lady from New York.
She made the door in two bounds and didn’t even bother to grasp up a
handbag on the table that contained a sizeable sum. She forfeited the
$200 rental payment and returned to Manhattan the next day after a more
courageous neighbor had ventured into the haunted house to retrieve the
abandoned handbag.
A CAPE CODDER----
_Pioneered Our
Trans-Atlantic Steamship Service_
Truro, Cape Cod, looks out over the heaving Atlantic to the horizon,
and beyond lies Spain. Great romance colors the adventures of Truro’s
seafaring men of long, long ago. There is also, in consistent fashion,
the darkest tragedy.
Truro is the birthplace of Edward K. Collins, who established the first
trans-Atlantic steamship service from the American shore. His elegantly
equipped paddle-wheel steamer, “Atlantic”, embarked on the first
crossing on April 27, 1850 and completed the voyage within 11 days.
The story of Edward Collins’ career has all the elements to make an
exciting novel or a Hollywood movie--for the lad of 15 who went to
New York to become the nation’s mightiest ship operator--launching
“the most ambitious and spectacular attempt of the American merchant
marine to challenge British supremacy”--finally ended up as a hum-drum
land-bound provision dealer, yet “rosy, hearty and not careworn as when
he had those mighty American steamships resting on his shoulders.”
Seafaring was deep-rooted as the trade of the Collins family. Edward
began with his father in the shipping and commission business; they
operated a service to Vera Cruz and New Orleans. The father died, then
the E. K. Collins & Co. firm was founded and its sign was prominent
on the New York waterfront for almost a half century. Associated with
Collins was a Count Foster of New Orleans.
CALLED “THEATRICAL LINE”
The spectacular Cape Codder and his partner established the Dramatic
Line, to run packets between New York and England. Capt. Lorenzo D.
Baker of Wellfleet, Cape Cod, was scoffed at when he announced he was
going to popularize the banana in the United States and so was Collins
when shipping men heard he was building ships of 1000 tons. His critics
argued there would not be cargoes large enough to fill them, nor
would merchants trust their goods in them. So, in their hoots, they
coined a name for the Dramatic Line. They called it the “Theatrical
Line” because Collins named his vessels for famous authors and actors:
Shakespeare, Siddons, Garrick, Sheridan and Roscius, to mention a few.
Collins had become one of New York’s richest men when the curtain
raised on the era of steam. He visioned the possibilities and watched
closely after England gave Samuel Cunard a subsidy mail contract in
1838. The Cunard Line berthed its first ship at this shore on July 18,
1840. Collins, according to the record at this point, saw a challenge
in the British enterprise. He barged into a financing spree, determined
“to drive the Cunarders out of business.”
Collins went to the nation’s capital for the money he needed. There
he began on a grandiose scale and gradually descended with a series
of headaches to ultimate ruin. His first triumph was the granting of
a government subsidy of $385,000 a year for a period of ten years.
He and his associates were pledged to build five steamers in the
Collins-style, which would make twenty round trips annually, carrying
the mails. In 1852 fortnightly service was established and the subsidy
was increased to $858,000 annually.
The Collins Line prospered for two years. Then the clouds began to
gather.
THE TRAGIC DECLINE
On Sept. 27, 1854, off Cape Race, New York, a Collins steamer, the
Artic, collided with a small French steamer, the Vesta. The Arctic went
down with a loss of 233 passengers and 135 members of the crew. Among
the victims was Edward Collins’ wife, the former Mary Ann Woodruff,
and his son and his daughter. The master of the Arctic, Capt. James C.
Luce, of Martha’s Vineyard ancestry, held his own child in his arms
through the awful scenes of panic. As he was about to launch a raft,
some debris from the paddlebox struck and killed the child.
Then came the second blow. The steamer Pacific of the Collins Line put
out from Liverpool on January 25, 1856, with 45 passengers and a crew
of 141. She was never heard from again. No clue to her fate was ever
turned up.
Meanwhile Collins had been having his troubles in Washington, and now
they were piling up. A public clamor was on; the general theme was
that the Cunard Line competition was too keen. Congress withdrew the
second subsidy. A contract was made with the rival line of Cornelius
Vanderbilt. Gradually the Collins Line sank to failure and the panic of
1857 put a period to its glorious adventuring. Fortunes were lost by
investors in the line.
PROVINCETOWN----
_Its Town Seal Reads,
“Birthplace of American Liberty”_
Millions of Americans do not know the complete story of the founding
of our nation. Many history books and most orators fail to begin at
the beginning when the pioneering of the Pilgrim Fathers is related.
Plymouth Rock is the accepted symbol and the starting point. The
important, earlier events on Cape Cod are passed up, particularly the
contribution the Pilgrim Fathers made to our form of free government
during their Cape Cod stay, before sailing across the bay to establish
their settlement at Plymouth.
If you began at the beginning of the Pilgrims’ story on this continent,
you would find that the Mayflower did not sail direct to Plymouth,
as is the common impression. She first put in at the outer end of
Cape Cod on Nov. 11, 1620, (O. S.), after a violent, 63-day voyage
from Holland, and it was on the sands of what is now Provincetown
that her weary passengers first set foot on American soil. Here they
found haven for a full month, here they signed the historic Mayflower
Compact, establishing their system of self-government. They began their
reconnoitering, found their first drinking water, their first corn and
had their first encounter with the Indians on Cape Cod.
HOW OUR FREEDOM BEGAN
But, all this is not to deny Plymouth her fame, even though the town
seal of Provincetown does bear the words, “Birthplace of American
Liberty.” That claim has been a bone of contention for a long time.
And, when a Massachusetts State official was asked some years ago why
the Provincetown phase in the story of the founding of the nation
had received so little attention, he could only suggest, “Perhaps it
happened that way because Plymouth was 300 years ahead of Provincetown
in her advertising.”
Actually, however, the signing of the Mayflower Compact was not the
first step taken to establish free Government in the New World. Our
democratic government was first introduced at Jamestown Colony the year
previous to the Pilgrims’ arrival on Cape Cod. There, on June 30, 1619,
America’s first legislative body convened.
John Quincy Adams said of the Mayflower Compact: “This is perhaps the
only instance in human history, of that positive, original social
concept, which speculative philosophers have imagined as the only
legitimate source of government.”
In Mourt’s Relation there is Governor Bradford’s simple, though
picturesque description of Provincetown Harbor and ancient Cape Cod as
the Pilgrims discovered the scene:
WHAT THE PILGRIMS FOUND
“It is a good harbor and pleasant bay, circled round, except in the
entrance, which is about four miles from land to land, compassed to
the very sea, with oaks, pines, juniper, sassafras, and other sweet
wood. It is a harbor wherein a thousand sail of ship may safely ride.
There we relieved ourselves with wood and water, and refreshed our
people while our shallop was fitted to coast the bay, to search for an
habitation; there was the greatest store of fowl that we ever saw. And
every day we saw whales playing hard by us, of which, in that place, if
we had instruments, and means to take them we might have made a very
rich return, which to our great grief, we wanted. Our master and his
mate, and others experienced in fishing, professed that we might have
made three or four thousand pounds worth of oil; they preferred it
before Greenland whale fishing and purposed the next Winter to fish for
whale here.”
The first of the exploring Pilgrims “were forced to wade a bow-shoot or
two in going aland, which caused many to get colds and coughs, for it
was many times freezing cold weather.” Much sickness developed in the
first harsh Winter and some deaths occurred later in Plymouth.
WILL ROGERS ON THE PILGRIMS
Some years ago Plymouth and Provincetown engaged in a harmless tiff
over the rightful ownership of the title, “Birthplace of American
Liberty.” The late Will Rogers, cowboy humorist, who was of Indian
descent, was drawn into the controversy via the radio. Said Will:
“What makes my Cherokee blood boil is that the Pilgrims were allowed to
land anywhere. As a race the Pilgrims could never be compared with the
Indians. I’m sure that it was only through the extreme generosity of my
ancestors that the Pilgrims were allowed to land at all.
“Anyhow, Provincetown says the Pilgrims found some corn buried there,
and that this saved them from starving to death. Then they shot the
Indians. That was because they had not stored any more corn.
“Next they prayed. You know one thing the Pilgrims always did was to
pray, but you never saw a picture of a Pilgrim who didn’t have a gun
beside him. That was to see that he got what he was praying for!”
CAPE COD FISHING----
_Excitement of Catching Tuna
In The Traps_
A hefty axe is the main implement of a trap-fishing crew when the tuna
run is on in Cape Cod waters. A tuna may weigh 50 to 1,000 pounds and
often a net is crowded with them. A crew of five men, operating a
50-foot boat, have their hands full when they move into the confines
of a big pole-net to take the clumsy and frantic fish. So, the
stout-handled axe is brought into play before the tuna are brought
aboard.
The killing technique is a thoroughly gory business. The axe-swinger, a
seasoned hand, rarely misses when he aims a lusty blow at the lump that
is atop the tuna’s head. One expert blow on this vital spot usually
kills the fish instantly, but, the process of maneuvering the tuna for
the kill is highly active, calling for a nimble foot and split-second
judgment. Thereon the blood flies freely and profusely.
Sometimes, in these wild jousts, a man goes overboard. Occasionally an
arm or a leg is broken during the topside excitement. But the tuna,
for all its size, does not attack. The fisherman has only to keep a
weather eye peeled to keep clear of its mighty tail.
A trapper relates an experience he had when he tried “a new way” of
dispatching a tuna. “I shoved the gaff down his mouth with everything
I had. A few minutes later I woke up in the bottom of the boat with a
big goose-egg on my head.” Another trapper was dragged overboard, gaff
and all, and the tuna towed him clear out of the trap. He let go as the
tuna dived under and escaped, gaff and all.
FIND WHALES, TOO
Once in a while old leviathan himself stumbles into one of Cape Cod’s
fish traps. He’s usually a finback whale, valueless to present-day
fishermen, and just a nuisance. His great, threshing flukes threaten
death. The trap has to be partially dismantled so that the crew,
working at a safe distance, can shoo him out. Then follows a whole
day’s work of repairing the damage.
In Cape Cod waters there are more pole-traps, or weirs, than in any
other section of the Atlantic coast. Most of them are off Provincetown,
and part of the large profits they yield help enrich the town
government coffers. Long poles of tough hickory are shipped in from
Connecticut. Seventy of these are needed to drape the nets of a single
trap. First in the structure of a trap is the “leader”, a 900-foot
subterranean fence. This fence begins in shoal water and extends
offshore to the main body of the trap. When fish swim into it, they
do not turn inshore. As a rule they follow along the fence and swim
offshore.
Thus, the schools obligingly move into the mouth of the trap. From
there they go into the trap “heart”, which is the first stage of their
captivity, and thence into the “bowl”. Once inside the bowl the
baffled finny tribes are completely hoodwinked and rarely escape into
open water. Here they swim around and around until the trapping crew
pays the morning visit and the net is hauled up and pursed for the
bailers to go into action.
Commercial fishing in Cape Cod Bay provided the means for establishing
Massachusetts’ public school system. The Pilgrims appropriated the
profits to public uses. Portions of the fishery fund were allocated to
various towns. Barnstable, Cape Cod, being one of the beneficiaries in
1683.
When the Pilgrims went to King James to get his consent for the
Mayflower voyage to America, the King, according to Edward Winslow’s
narrative, inquired, “What profit might arise?” A single word was the
Pilgrims’ response: “Fishing.” James was satisfied: “So God have my
soul, ’tis an honest trade, ’twas the Apostle’s own calling.”
ROMANTIC EARLY DAYS
Subsequently, Captain John Smith, after he had pocketed a profit of
$7500 on a shipment of dried Cape Cod fish to Spain, is credited with
the statement that the richest mine in Spain was not as valuable as the
Cape Cod fisheries.
Whales first were caught in these waters. When they became scarce
vessels were fitted to go out in search of them. On one voyage, Capt.
Jesse Holbrook of Wellfleet, active in the Revolutionary War period,
killed 52 sperm whales. His skill was so good a London company employed
him for 12 years to give instruction to their employees.
Franklin Atkins was a Cape Codder who had a rare experience while
whaling in West Indies waters. Leviathan’s flukes struck the small boat
he was in and sent the boat kiting from the sea. In his descent Mr.
Atkins fell directly into the whale’s gaping mouth. He was gashed and
bruised, but managed to free himself. A boat crew picked him up and he
lay in a critical condition for four weeks. In later years Mr. Atkins
would boast, “Jonah and me were the only two persons that have been in
a whale’s mouth and come out alive.”
Ambergris, a secretion found in the intestines of an occasional sperm
whale, and worth more than its weight in gold, was a prize the old
whalemen always were on the alert for. The story is told of how a Cape
Cod crew, jittery with excitement over an ambergris find in a whale
they were spading alongside the vessel, lost it. In their eagerness of
hauling up the treasure they fumbled. The ambergris chunk slipped from
the slings. The crew stared with blank dismay as they watched the prize
worth $25,000 slowly vanish in 60 fathoms of water.
It’s small boat, inshore fishing in these modern times. Yet there
is a constant yield of millions of pounds of fish taken by net or
hook. There are whiting, mackerel, cod, haddock, herring, butterfish,
bluefish, squid, sea bass, pollock and many other species.
ON CAPE COD----
_Is the Second Most
Powerful Beacon on
the Atlantic Coast_
The second most powerful beacon on the Atlantic coast is located on the
far end of Cape Cod. Highland Light is situated near the edge of a high
bluff on the ocean side of North Truro. Its nightly beam, revolving and
flashing to all points of the compass, has guided mariners for almost
150 years.
The champ of all beacons on this coast is Neversink Light, at Sandy
Hook.
Countless summer visitors would look over Highland Light in peacetime,
but now, of course, visitors are barred. They came from every state
in the union and from foreign places, for this faithful landmark has
always been a standard attraction for the Cape Cod sightseer. Chief
Boatswain’s Mate William Joseph, who has been in charge of the light
for a long while, recalls they asked some odd questions. For example:
“Is the light lit in the wintertime?”
“Do you stay here year ’round?”
“Does the fog start up the foghorn?”
“Why do you keep ‘blankets’ on the lenses in the daytime?”
“Does the tide ever come over the banking (the edge of the banking is a
mere 140 feet above the shoreline)?”
“Did you ever help catch rum-runners with the light?”
“How do you keep awake all night long?”
COVER LENSES TO PREVENT FIRES
But, the lightkeeper, his assistants and their womenfolk take it all in
stride with cheerful patience.
The mighty lenses are covered up in daytime, but not with “blankets”.
The lightkeeper gives the reason for this: “Every morning we put a
linen covering over the lenses and over that a covering of starched
linen. There is no covering on the north side of the light because the
sun doesn’t hit there.
“The coverings are necessary to protect surrounding property. The
lighthouse lenses, if they were left uncovered, would set afire a
building 25 feet away, or anything else that would burn.”
There have been numerous other lamps before the present electrically
operated one, with its $30,000 French glassworks and four revolving
bullseyes. The original light, established in 1797, was stationary and
burned whale oil in wick lamps, much like the old-fashioned sitting
room lamp. The light has always stood on the present site.
Ashore the great beacon is always referred to as Highland Light. “But,”
remarks the keeper, “if you were lost out there and tried to locate
Highland Light on the chart, you’d be plum out o’ luck. The official
name is Cape Cod Light and that’s the name all the mariners go by.”
Highland Light has cast its flash over many a dramatic event in its
long lifetime. Almost within its shadow, the first piece of wreckage
that revealed the fate of the Steamer Portland--New England’s most
appalling sea tragedy to this day--was washed ashore in the terrible
gale of November, 1898. Countless rescues by the breeches buoy, and
the foundering of old-time sailing ships were witnessed there. Mighty
gales, 75 to 80 miles an hour, have belabored the lighthouse, but it
has breasted them all.
A MARKER FOR ZEPPELIN
The German Zeppelin, burned at Lakehurst, N. J., made a practice of
pointing its course directly over Highland Light on its return trips to
Germany.
The light has one implacable enemy--fog. When the heavy vapor banks
roll in, the beam is practically invisible. In a real thick fog not
even the glow of the lamp can be seen by one standing at the base of
the tower.
Many visitors, noting the close proximity of the lighthouse to the edge
of the shore embankment, have inquired whether there is danger the sea
will some day undermine Highland Light. Keeper Joseph has never worried
about this. When, in 1796, the Government purchased the tract of land
for the erection of the lighthouse, the reservation comprised ten
acres. Storms and pounding surf have swept six acres of the original
site into the sea.
FIRST REAL GLIDER FLIGHT IN U. S.----
_Witnessed Over Cape Cod Waters_
The invasion of Sicily was begun with glider transports. And, the
beginning of glider-flying in the United States was witnessed on Cape
Cod. Sixteen years ago the first extended glider flight in America was
demonstrated by a German expert.
On July 29, 1928, at Corn Hill, Truro, near the outer end of this
historic peninsula, Peter Hesselbach of Darmstadt, Germany, was
catapulted over the brink of a 100-foot bluff in a Darmstadt-made
glider. He remained aloft for four hours and five minutes. A few days
before this, Hesselbach smashed Orville Wright’s record of soaring nine
minutes and forty-five seconds. A group of helpful American citizens,
hauling on a rope, snapped him into the ether on the ocean side of
Truro. He maintained a motorless flight for 55 minutes.
Glider flying has progressed a great deal since those pioneering
flights. Soon after a school was established at South Wellfleet,
but it didn’t last long. Much activity developed in California and
in the East. Elmira, N. Y., became the headquarters of motorless
flying enthusiasts. Before our entry into the war, Parker Leonard of
Osterville, Cape Cod, was the chief glider experimenter in this area.
Now he is serving his country as a glider specialist.
STUDIED THE GULLS
Peter Hesselbach and his German comrades who accompanied him to this
country were a companionable lot and popular with the Summer folk
that Summer of 1928. Corn Hill is situated in a primitive setting,
with unbounded spaces of hills, marsh land, and beach, and faces the
great sweep of Cape Cod Bay. It is a lofty hill and on its top is a
bronze tablet attesting that here the reconnoitering Pilgrims found
the Indians’ cache of corn which enabled them to survive the first
hard year in Plymouth. And, looking out over the waters one discerns
the outline of Provincetown Harbor where the Mayflower was anchored
and where the Pilgrim fathers signed their Compact, the genesis of
our American form of free Government. A group of rude cottages are
perched atop Corn Hill. Two of them were occupied by the German glider
experts. A haus frau, brought in from somewhere, served up hearty
German dishes and all in all it was a very pleasant Summer. For
recreation, the visitors whizzed into Provincetown for ice cream cones
and gingerale--“gingeraley” they called it. Often they would sit for
long periods at the end of a Provincetown wharf, studying the soaring,
wheeling, dipping flight of the gulls.
Sometimes their American neighbors would pull on a rope and lift the
glider into the air on the numerous practice flights. Setting off on
his four hours and five minutes-flight, Peter Hesselbach was propelled
over the edge of Corn Hill by a rubber slingshot and a tail-tripper
arrangement that was clamped to a planking and worked by a lever.
Several hundred Summerers and natives from surrounding towns witnessed
that epochal event. A good representation of Boston newspaper cameramen
took pictures of the 55-minute flight. Newsreel men also made a
recording.
It was a beautiful, bright day when Hesselbach got off on his long
flight at 9:55 A. M. He was hoping to be able to beat the world record
for a soaring flight at that time--14 hours, 23 minutes. A series of
bonfires stretching for two miles along the beach would have guided him
on the nocturnal part of his adventure. For sustenance he took with him
a few sandwiches and some coffee.
TRAVELLED 120 MILES
Spectators exclaimed at the graceful serenity of the fine glider craft,
wafting silently with the air currents over their heads against a blue
and cloud-flecked sky. The Darmstadt wafted northward and southward on
a one to two miles’ course, going back and forth over the white-capped
bay or surrounding hills and banking gracefully over Corn Hill on each
return trip.
Once, as Peter Hesselbach circled Corn Hill, Captain Paul Roehre, a
gliding comrade, roared up to him:
“Are you hungry?”
With a wave of his hand, Hesselbach responded, “What’s the use?”
Finally he landed at Wellfleet, an adjoining town. The writer picked
him up at a crossroads and brought him back to Corn Hill. These were
his first words:
“I came down because I could not fly for the hills and gain altitude
after the wind changed more to the north. I went off my course
purposely. I wanted to study air conditions. This territory is ideal
for soaring. It has much better possibilities than Rossiten, which is
one of the best soaring places in Germany.”
“My altimeter shows I reached a maximum altitude of 350 feet. The wind
velocity was about 30 miles an hour. I soared a total of 120 miles.”
It’s a far cry from Cape Cod to Sicily. But that’s how glider flying
actually got its springboard start in America.
[Illustration]
Transcriber’s Notes
Perceived typographical errors have been silently corrected.
Colloquial spelling in dialog has been retained as in the original.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation and compound words have not been
standardized.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STORIES OF CAPE COD ***
Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will
be renamed.
Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United
States without permission and without paying copyright
royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™
concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following
the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use
of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very
easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation
of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project
Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you may
do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected
by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark
license, especially commercial redistribution.
START: FULL LICENSE
THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
Project Gutenberg™ License available with this file or online at
www.gutenberg.org/license.
Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg™
electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in your
possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
Project Gutenberg™ electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person
or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works if you follow the terms of this
agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg™
electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the
Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the individual
works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
that you will support the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting
free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg™
works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
Project Gutenberg™ name associated with the work. You can easily
comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg™ License when
you share it without charge with others.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
other Project Gutenberg™ work. The Foundation makes no
representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
country other than the United States.
1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must appear
prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg™ work (any work
on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the
phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed,
performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws
of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is
derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg™
trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
will be linked to the Project Gutenberg™ License for all works
posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
beginning of this work.
1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg™
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg™.
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg™ License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg™ work in a format
other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official
version posted on the official Project Gutenberg™ website
(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain
Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the
full Project Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™ works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
provided that:
• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the method
you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, but he has
agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation.”
• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™
License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™
works.
• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
receipt of the work.
• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than
are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of
the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set
forth in Section 3 below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
cannot be read by your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right
of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
without further opportunities to fix the problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO
OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in
accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
or any Project Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, or
additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any
Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg™
Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
from people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg™’s
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™ collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg™ and future
generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.
Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.
The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500 West,
Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up
to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website
and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation
Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread
public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular state
visit www.gutenberg.org/donate.
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate.
Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
Gutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could be
freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
distributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose network of
volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
edition.
Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
facility: www.gutenberg.org.
This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
