Cape Cod History

1935: Fishing Schooner jams prop in nets, needs aid

Fishing Schooner in trouble;

Above is a typical Grand Banks fishing schooner of the era

Cutter Sent to Help Vessel With Fouled Propeller.

On this day in 1935 a Grand Banks Fishing Schooner, the "Babe Sears", got its propeller snarled in a fishing net a 100 miles east of Cape Cod. She hailed a passing merchant ship to ask for help from the Coast Guard which subsequently towed her into Boston. Read the newspaper report from that day on the right. 

The Marconi Station in Wellfleet and WCC in Chatham Port were still relatively new aids to mariners back then, and the old schooners seldom had radios aboard, but the merchant ship did have one and radioed the Cape stations for help.

The Grand Banks Schooner

As the New England fishing industry grew in the 18th and 19th centuries, so did other related industries and technology. Once the US gained independence, New England soon became a commercial power. This affluence can be attributed to fishing and the ever-improving design of the schooner. The fishing schooner had been invented in 1713, and their design gradually improved, allowing for faster travel and larger catches. Support industries also prospered by making gear, boat parts, and tools for the fishermen. As fishing techniques evolved, so did society.  The graceful, elegant schooner shown above is among the ultimate in that class which was made obsolete by gas powered fishing boats.

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Cape Cod was named today in 1602

Gosnold sailed the coast of Maine and arrived here on May 15

Albert Beirstadt's 1858 Oil Painting entitled: "Gosnold at Cuttyhunk, 1602", where the adventurers set up a camp but gave it up when they were unable to find sufficient food for the winter, and sailed back to England. Note the bark Concord moored offshore on left.

He named Cape Cod and probably Martha's Vineyard too

On this day in 1602, Bartholomew Gosnold sailed into Provincetown Harbor and named the peninsula "Cape Cod" for the huge schools of fish sighted.  He didn't "discover" the Cape as many references cite. Champlain had a fight with our Nausets in Chatham in 1609, and others had visited our shores before him including the Portuguese who had set up fishing camps here for decades.  But Gosnold is the man who named us and the Pilgrims who stayed for a week in 1620. By 1638 "eight men from Saugus" took refuge from the crowded mainland, and Cape Cod had its first permanent settlement in what is today's Sandwich.

He pioneered a new route to the New World

Gosnold had sailed from Falmouth, England in a small Dartmouth bark, the Concord, with thirty-two crew on board, and like the Pilgrims fourteen years later in 1620, they had come to North America to establish a colony in New England, which was then known as Northern Virginia.

Bartholomew Gosnold pioneered a direct sailing route due west from the Azores to New England, arriving in early May 1602 at Cape Elizabeth in Maine near today's Portland (Lat 43 degrees). He skirted the Maine coastline for several days before anchoring in York Harbor, Maine, on May 14, 1602.

The next day, he sailed across Massachusetts Bay into Provincetown Harbor, where he is credited with naming Cape Cod. Following the Atlantic coastline south for several days, he discovered Martha's Vineyard, and named it perhaps after his daughter or wife. He established a small post on one of the Elizabeth Islands, which is now called Cuttyhunk Island and is part of the town of Gosnold. The post was abandoned when the settlers decided to return the ship to England because they had insufficient provisions to last over the winter.

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1978: Entire P'Town Post Office staff arrested

Entire Provincetown Postal Staff Arrested
Postmaster Jasper Stoddard, five clerks charged with embezzlement & fraud

On this day thirty years ago,  newspapers all over America reported that the postmaster of the Cape Cod resort town of Provincetown and his entire clerical staff had been arrested and charged in connection with embezzlement of post office funds.

The culprits faced ten years in prison and a $10,000 fine if convicted.

It was thought to be the only time in US history when an entire US Post Office staff was arrested.
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1948 - Kathleen Kennedy, Marchioness of Hartington, died

 Dies in a plane crash on way to seek father's blessngs on her wedding
"Most exciting debutante of 1938" she was dead ten years later

On this day in 1948, Kathleen Cavendish, Marchioness of Hartington, the second daughter of Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., sister of U.S. President John F. Kennedy and widow of the heir to the Devonshire dukedom, died in a plane crash en route to secure her father's blessings on her second marriage. She was born on February 20, 1920, and was only 28 at the time of her death.

Background

Kathleen, Marchioness of HartingtonWhen President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed JFK's father Joseph Kennedy ambassador to the Court of St. James, his daughter Kathleen spent a year and a half living in London. She was educated in London at Queen's College.

Beautiful and spirited, she was named the "most exciting debutante of 1938." In 1943 she returned to England to work in a center for servicemen set up by the Red Cross.

Despite the opposition of her intensely Catholic mother, Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, Kathleen Kennedy, known to friends as "Kick", married William John Robert Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington, a Protestant and the eldest son and heir of the 10th Duke of Devonshire on May 6, 1944.

1944 was a year of deaths

Other than her eldest brother Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. who died in a plane crash three months after the wedding, no one from the Kennedy family attended the marriage ceremony. Her husband was killed in action only four months later in World War II, and his younger brother Andrew Cavendish, married to Deborah Mitford, became the heir to the dukedom.  See the newspaper report of her death on right.

Popular on the London social circuit and admired by many for her high spirits - though more traditional members of British society found fault with her boisterousness - the dashing young widow eventually became the mistress of Peter Wentworth-FitzWilliam, 8th Earl FitzWilliam. The couple planned to wed after Fitzwilliam's planned divorce. Instead, while on a trip to visit Joseph Kennedy Sr. and gain his blessing for their relationship, Lord Fitzwilliam and Lady Hartington died in an airplane crash in Saint-Bauzile, Ardèche, France.

Religious prejudice to the grave and beyond

Only her father represented the Kennedy family at her funeral. Her mother, Rose, declined to attend supposedly because of Kathleen's intention to marry outside the Catholic Church a second time. It is also said that Rose Kennedy also discouraged Kathleen's siblings from attending for the same reason. Rose apparently forgave Kathleen not long thereafter, and in 1951, she was reportedly delighted that her first grandchild, Robert F. Kennedy's daughter, Kathleen Hartington Kennedy, was named after her late daughter. However, the family requested that the child not be nicknamed Kick.

The Marchioness of Hartington is buried in the Cavendish family plot at Saint Peter's Church, Edensor, near Chatsworth in Derbyshire, England. Among the wreaths that covered her coffin was one with a handwritten note from Sir Winston Churchill. The gymnasium at Manhattanville College is named in her honor.

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May 12, 1997 - Divorce, Kennedy-style

Michael Kennedy has five-year affair with a girl who baby-sat his three children
A new book and another scandal may finally hit the Kennedys where it would hurt - in the ballot box

On this day in 1997 another Kennedy divorce rocked the Cape.  As Time Magazine wrote it;
"What remains of a once powerful dynasty is good teeth, good hair and the best public relations a trust fund can buy""When you look at the third generation of Kennedy men, much of what remains of a once powerful dynasty is good teeth, good hair and the best public relations a trust fund can buy. Some of the boys grew from being spoiled and bratty--belittling the help, once chasing the cook up a tree at Hickory Hill--into full-blown debauchery, driving fast, drinking hard, club hopping like wild men. Most of this got spun by family retainers into the playful high jinks of a raucous clan. But the escapades got seamier over time and the spinning harder: a joyride with Joe Kennedy II left a young woman paralyzed after an accident on Nantucket. Bobby Jr. was arrested for possession of heroin. David died in a Florida hotel of a cocaine, Demerol and Mellaril overdose. William Kennedy Smith was accused and acquitted of rape, after a night out with Uncle Ted, who can never erase Chappaquiddick.

Now Michael Kennedy, the sixth child of Robert Kennedy, who once seemed to have his father's quiet passion without the Kennedy sense of entitlement, finds himself at the center of a new scandal--that he allegedly had a five-year affair with a girl who baby-sat his three children at the family home in Cohasset, Mass., beginning when she was 14. At the same time, Joe II, a six-term Congressman planning to run for Governor, is trying to weather a just published book, "Shattered Faith, A woman's struggle to stop the Catholic Church from annulling her marriage", by ex-wife Sheila Rauch Kennedy that depicts him as a narcissistic bully and protests his efforts to have their 12-year marriage annulled.

In Kennedyland, where everyone is his brother's keeper, the blowback from Michael's scandal and publicity surrounding Shattered Faith have sent Joe's popularity sinking. In Boston Herald polls, 17% of voters said they are less likely to vote for Joe based on Michael's problems alone, and 1 in 4 has a less favorable view of Joe as a result of the book. Suddenly, worthy but dull attorney general Scott Harshbarger looks like a strong Democratic candidate for Governor in 1998. And the heretofore impossible in Massachusetts seems plausible: an office a Kennedy wants could be kept from him...  TIME.

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1908: Marconi sends messages 1,700 miles to sea from Cape Cod

WIRELESS WAVES TO BRITAIN
Marconi Secretary Says Signals Have
Frequently Crossed Atlantic

On this day in 1908 the Marconi station in Wellfleet was sending wireless messages to vessels at sea as far offshore as 1,700 miles.  In 1900, Marconi set up a high-powered transmitting station at Poldhu, on the English Coast at Cornwall. In 1901, Marconi built a wireless station at Signal Hill, Newfoundland and on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. On the right is a photograph taken that year of his station in South Wellfleet.

Marconi selected Cape Cod since it had been described by Henry David Thoreau as a place "where a man may stand and put all of America behind him." After passing up a location in Barnstable and being denied permission to build his wireless station near the Highland Light, Marconi settled for an eight-acre site on a high bluff in South Wellfleet. Marconi set up headquarters at the Holbrook House in Wellfleet.

The South Wellfleet station was similar to the Poldhu one with a circular series of twenty 200-foot ship's masts set back 165 feet from the edge of the bluff.

Storms blew down the aerials at Poldhu on September 17, 1901 and a Nor'easter toppled the aerials on Cape Cod on November 25th. Nevertheless, Marconi received the first transatlantic signal - the three-dot Morse code letter "S" tapped out from Poldhu on December 12th at the Newfoundland station. The aerial at Poldhu was held aloft by a canvas kite. (Read More)

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2004: P'town defies Mitt Romney on Gay Marriage

Town Set to Defy Governor on Same-Sex Marriage Issue

On this day in 2004, one week before same-sex marriage became legal in Massachusetts, Provincetown voted to issue marriage licenses to out-of-state same-sex couples even if they have no intention of moving to Massachusetts. The move contradicts a directive by Gov. Mitt Romney, who has said that no same-sex couples residing out of state would be allowed to marry here.

Romney invokes 1913 law to stop out of staters

Mr. Romney, who opposes same-sex marriage, has invoked a 1913 law that says that the state will not marry couples if their marriage would be "void" in their home state. The governor has interpreted that to mean that since no other state performs same-sex marriages, only Massachusetts same-sex couples are eligible to marry here.

Couples applying for marriage licenses in Massachusetts are required to fill out a form asking where they reside and where they intend to reside, and to sign it under penalty of perjury. Town and city clerks have been instructed by the governor's office to issue licenses to out-of-state same-sex couples if they intend to move to the state, but not those who plan to return to their home states.

But the board of selectmen in Provincetown, a town with a large gay population, voted unanimously to issue the licenses even if the applicants declare on the form that they do not intend to live in Massachusetts. The new policy reads: "The town clerk may issue marriage licenses to any persons - whether residents of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, non-commonwealth residents that intend to reside in Massachusetts, or non-commonwealth residents that do not intend to reside in Massachusetts." The couples must sign the form, attesting that they have been truthful on their application and that they know of no "legal impediment" to their marriage.

"To start to say yes to certain couples but not others doesn't make sense," said the Provincetown town clerk, Douglas Johnstone...  New York Times.

Read the last Sunday NY Times Magazine article about "Gay Marriage in Massachusetts" four years later here.

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Huge fire threatens Cape Cod homes

Arson suspected in huge Cape Cod forest fire

On this day in 1957 the front page of the New York Times screamed this headline:

FOREST FIRES RAGE IN DRY NORTHEAST
State of Emergency Ordered in Massachusetts--Cape Cod Fire Uncontrolled
              __________

ARSON IS INVESTIGATED

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Woods in Seven States and Ontario Afire--Dry Spell Is Near a Drought

Forest fires raged in seven Northeastern States and a province of Canada last night.  At least 30,000 acres of tinder-dry woodland was blackened.  Massachusetts declared a state of emergency and Maine imposed restrictions.

Then Massachusetts Governor Foster Furculo ordered 200 National Guardsmen, 200 state employees and convicts from state prison out to fight the fire.

The fire which started in the Miles Standish State Forest and quickly raced towards the canal and Cape Cod, was called "definitely arson" by the Plymouth Fire Chief.

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Militia called out to fight forest fires

CALL MILITIA TO FIGHT FOREST FIRES IN EAST
Biddeford, Me., Saved After Three Square Miles of Land Had Been Burned Over.
Fires Spread Near Chatham, Massachusetts

A fire fighting apparatus of the era.On this day in 1911 fires in timber districts where the undergrowth had become unusually dry from lack of rain caused damage at many points in New England, sweeping over thousands of acres of valuable woodland and burning thousands of feet of prepared lumber. 

In several instances the flames spread to dwelling houses and other buildings.

There were fires here on the Cape near Chatham... The Cape fire burning over two square miles of forest and farm.  See the complete story below.

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Canada throws 330 bottles into the sea and a dozen wash up here

On this day in 1921, the Canadian Government tossed 330 bottles into the Bay of Fundy to test the ocean current. Two years later seven of the bottles washed up on our beaches.

The distance between Cape Cod and the Bay of Fundy is 300 miles indicating the bottles which reached here traveled at about 4 miles a day.

The Biological Survey of Canada began their research in the Summer of 1919. Sixteen of these were picked up on the shores of the Gulf of Maine.

Each contained a postcard on which was printed, besides the address of the biological station, an offer of a reward for those who would write down the time and date the bottles were found.  Read the complete story below.

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