Cape Cod History

Today in Cape history: Anxiety over gasoline shortage

On this day in 1974 as reported by The Christian Science Monitor -

HYANNIS - Cape Cod businessmen anticipate bankrupt businesses and soaring unemployment if the gasoline shortage continues into the summer without special provision for their tourist-based economy.

But it tourists can be moved to, from and around the cape - even without adequate gasoline - the cape's tourist industry could continue to prosper.

So Cape Cod businessmen and town officials seek renewed rail service and more bus and air service while they also push for additional gas supplies to all Massachusetts resort regions.

Their efforts so far have not met with great success.

(photo credit, www.aliciapatterson.org)

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Today in Cape and islands history: Worst snowstorm in 50 years

On this day in 1952, at least 10 people were killed, several thousand Cape Cod homes left without heat and more than 100 miles of Cape highways rendered impassable "after one of the worst northeast snowstorms to hit southern New England in 50 years," the Associated Press reported.

Electrical power was lost to an estimated 80 percent of Cape residences, businesses and public buildings, according to the AP, while "drifts as high as 12 feet halted all modes of transportation."

The storm stranded nearly 1,000 automobiles on main highways and knocked down scores of telephone and utility poles.

The 20-inch snowfall "was piled into virtually impenetrable drifts" by northeast winds gusting to 60 mph, the AP reported.

The storm also caused the loss of all telephone and electrical service on Nantucket and knocked over a 120-foot Loran Tower used by the Coast Guard as a navigational aid to vessels in the Atlantic.

(photo credit, www.wellfleetchamber.com)

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Today in Cape and islands history: Nantucket Shoals becomes one of last three lightship stations in nation

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n this day in 1975, the Portland, Maine lightship was replaced by an automated buoy, leaving Nantucket Shoals as one of three remaining lightship stations in the nation.

A month later, the Boston lightship was also retired and the stations were narrowed to two -- one off Nantucket, the other at the mouth of the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest.

"In a way, I'm sad to see them pass," Coast Guard captain and lightship commander Alfred Fearing told the Associated Press in 1975. "It's a tradition that's going to be gone."

The Nantucket posting had long been considered the most dangerous lightship assignment in the Coast Guard because it was so far from shore, 200 miles east of New York City. It is "the first point of contact in the United States for ships crossing the Atlantic bound for New York," the AP reported. "Its flashing light, radio beam and foghorn guide vessels through the stormy, treacherous waters."

In January 1959, hurricane-force winds and 50-foot seas blew the Nantucket lightship 80 miles off station and knocked out communications for several days.

Lightships served as beacons to mariners off the US for 163 years, from 1820 to 1983. In that time, 116 stations were established along the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf coasts. The first station was in Chesapeake Bay; the last to be automated and its crew removed was Nantucket.

Lightship 112, known as Nantucket I, was also decommissioned in 1975. The vessel had served 39 years at the Nantucket station, the longest of any vessel. In 1989 Lightship 112 was designated a National Historic Landmark. Efforts are underway to renovate the lightship for use as a permanent museum berthed at Staten Island.

Lightship 612, also known as Nantucket II, was the last lightship to serve off Nantucket, until 1983, and the last US lightship in commission. After decommissioning, the vessel passed through a number of owners. As of the summer of 2007, it was a bed-and-breakfast in Nantucket harbor.

(photo credit, wikipedia.com)

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Today in Cape history: Coalition for Buzzards Bay expresses qualified support for Cape Wind

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n this day in 2005, the environmental non-profit Coalition for Buzzards Bay announced "its satisfaction with the current review" for the Cape Wind to build a wind farm in Nantucket Sound, according to a statement released by the coalition.

The coalition said its qualified support for the Nantucket Sound wind farm was based on a "thorough review of the Army Corp of Engineers' Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS)." This led coalition members to conclude that the project would bring about "significant environmental benefits" for Buzzards Bay and the region while "any environmental impacts are likely to be minor, temporary, and/or outweighed by the significant environmental benefits of developing such a renewable energy facility."

"This project presents us with an opportunity to significantly reduce our reliance on dirty fossil fuel burning plants," said Ben Bryant, marine policy specialist for the coalition. "In reviewing the DEIS, we have not found reason to oppose the project and in fact believe the project will have significant environmental benefits for our Bay and our region."

Continued support for the project, the coalition stated, would be based on "a satisfactory review of the Final Environmental Impact Statement, due out this summer, and a successful implementation of mitigation and monitoring plans to minimize any potential environmental impacts."

The coalition also updated its wind power policy statement "to recognize the potential for a future project sited in Buzzards Bay." Sure enough, a year later, Quincy developer Jay Cashman proposed a wind project for Buzzards Bay consisting of three separate turbine arrays.

In a June 2006 op-ed in the Cape Cod Times, coalition executive director Mark Rasmussen and John Bullard, coalition president, outlined their reasons for skepticism about the Cashman proposal. 

"This issue is not as simple as being 'for' or 'against' - the appropriate siting of wind farms will make all of the difference," Rasmussen and Bullard wrote. "Based on the limited information available, the Cashman proposal creates significant conflicts with busy navigation routes (sitting at the intersection of the main channel and the New Bedford channel), the safe transport of oil and other hazardous cargo through the bay, near-shore fishing and recreational uses, and endangered species nesting areas."

(photo of Horns Rev wind farm off Denmark; photo credit, http://www.evworld.com/)

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Today in Cape and islands history: Another big snowstorm in blustery winter of '69

On this day in 1969, residents of the Cape and islands awakened to yet another snowstorm in a very snowy winter.

A howling nor'easter that stalled off Nantucket dumped more than two feet of snow in some areas before tapering off.

"This was the second major storm to hit New England in two weeks," the Associated Press reported. "The results had a similar ring: Logan International Airport closed, cars abandoned on clogged highways, stranded motorists seeking shelter in police barracks, and power failures."

Schools across the region were forced to remain closed on the first day of the work week, resulting in an unexpected day off for students and teachers.

(illustration credit, www.borinvanloon.co.uk)

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Today in Cape history: Press run in Hyannis for New Bedford Standard Times

On this day in 1968, as reported by the Associated Press -

 A power outage in New Bedford forced the New Bedford Standard-Times to call upon its sister paper in Hyannis, the Cape Cod Standard-Times, to print the newspaper on the Cape.

As the New Bedford paper was "part way through its first edition, lights went out, clocks stopped, teletypewriters went silent and typesetting machines went dead," the AP reported.

Power was lost at 11:14 a.m. and not restored in the business district of the Whaling City until 7:30 p.m. Officials with the New Bedford Gas and Edison Light Co.  attributed the outage to insulator failure at a power plant.

Faced with the specter of the next day without a newspaper, an editor in New Bedford "gathered up page mats and news copy and flew to Hyannis where the edition was completed on the presses" of the Cape Cod Standard-Times.

(illustration credit, www.metaltype.co.uk)

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Today in Cape history: Praise for longevity of 'Biblical proportions' among 'Orleanals'

On this day in 1934, as expressed in an editorial titled "Cape Cod" in The Morning Herald of Philadelphia-

Whether it is cranberries or the succulent Cotuit or the tonic quality of the tea shoppe industry that may account for it, the fact stands that longevity as achieved by the inhabitants of the town of Orleans on Cape Cod is of virtually Biblical proportions.

Had Methuselah been an inhabitant of the Cape he would doubtless have exceeded even his own tidy record of  nine hundred years, since the average age of the Orleanals appears from the record to be seventy-four. Once you pass twenty-one on the Cape you have a more than even chance of seeing a comfortable eighty-five or a ripe ninety, unless "The Boston Evening Transcript's" correspondent errs.

In an admirable article some months ago in "The American Mercury" Jonathan Norton Leonard opined that Cape Cod was the last place in America where individuality was not penalized and where authentic eccentricity flourished, and if this is the case - and it probably is - it may be that the reason for longevity on the Cape is simply that life is worth living.

Not being hectored and badgered and regimented by the fatuous design of high-voltage civilization, the Orleanals, their gastric juices unimpaired by the spectacle of the social, political and economic times and their being nourished on oysters that rank among the finest known to this world, continue peacefully and happily toward ultimate but postponed disintegration.

Next to its cranberries and oysters, the Cape's most characteristic asset is what has been described as its "loud-speaking indifference." Directed against the discordant tempo of a brash and unmellow age, this indifference would seem to be a quality which should interest the statisticians of the life insurance companies.

"Come to Cape Cod and live as long as you please" may soon be a motto exploited by up and coming Cape chambers of commerce.

(photo credit,  www.eugeneleept.com)

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Today in Cape history: Swedish tanker runs aground off Provincetown

On this day in 1960, Provincetown residents awakened to discover that the 285-foot tanker Monica Smith had run aground overnight off Race Point.

Two tugboats tried in vain to free the 1,744-ton ship at high tide while thousands of sightseers, many from off-Cape, watched from the shoreline. The ship had dropped off a cargo of cement in Fall River before running aground on a sandbar.

The Monica Smith's 37 crew members "waved cheerfully back to the crowds, then adjourned to the forecastle to listen to hillbilly music on the radio," according to a United Press International story.

The tanker remained stranded for three more days until it was extricated through a combination of the crew's own efforts and steady pulling of the tugboat Orion.

The crew used an old mariner's trick of kedging, which involves fastening anchors in deep water and winching toward them from the vessel itself.

After the ship was once again afloat, its skipper said he intended to resume his interrupted journey to Halifax, Nova Scotia.

(photo credit, Associated Press)

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Today in Cape history: birthday of actor and Bourne resident Joe Jefferson

On this day in 1828, Joe Jefferson, one of the great comic actors of the 19th century and a familiar figure to Cape Codders, was born in Philadelphia.

A close friend and fishing buddy of President Grover Cleveland, Jefferson is remembered for his definitive portrayal of Rip Van Winkle, a role he first played in 1865. For several years Jefferson had acted in the Laura Keene theatrical company and more than 150 performances of "Our American Cousin" (though he was not on stage at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C., in when John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln).

By the 1880s, Jefferson was spending summers at a manor house he called the Crow's Nest along the shores of Buttermilk Bay, roughly a mile across Cohasset Narrows and Monument River from Cleveland's house at Gray Gables, the nation's first summer White House. Jefferson and Cleveland spent many carefree hours hunting and fishing on the Upper Cape and were especially fond of Wakeby Pond in Mashpee.

The Crow's Nest burned down in 1893, the year of Cleveland starting the second of his two non-consecutive terms in the White House (only president to do so). Jefferson rebuilt his house on a bluff near Electric Avenue facing south toward Buzzards Bay. The structure later became the Joseph Jefferson Inn and, in its final incarnation, The Inn at Buttermilk Bay. 

The names of streets near where the Crow's Nest houses stood still resonate with Jefferson's memory - Crow's Nest Drive, Rip Van Winkle Way, Jefferson Shores - as does a neighborhood across Buttermilk Bay, Jefferson Shores.

Before his death in 1905, Jefferson appeared in several silent films and is considered a pioneer of early cinema.

According to local legend, Jefferson initially wanted to buy a house in Sandwich but the owner wouldn't sell to him. Jefferson proceeded to buy a burial plot in Sandwich, according to Donald G. Trayser's "Cape Cod Historical Almanac, and said that "tThey wouldn't let me live here in Sandwich, but they can't prevent my burial here."

On the boulder over Jefferson's grave at Bay View Cemetery, a bronze tablet quotes from the closing lines of his autobiography -

And yet we are but tenants. Let us assure ourselves of this, and then it will not be so hard to make room
for the next administration; for shortly the great Landlord will give us notice that our lease has expired.

(photo credit, www.joejeffersonplayers.com)

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Today in Cape history: "Cape Cod Ditch" 75 percent complete

On this day in 1914 as reported by The McKean (Pa.) Democrat under the headline "New Canal Nearly Cut - Small Craft Will Be Allowed to Pass Through Cape Cod Ditch Shortly"  -

Sandwich, Mass. - The Cape Cod Canal is likely to be open for small craft within six months. This six-mile ditch connecting Cape Cod Bay with Buzzards Bay is 75 percent completed, according to the engineers, and it is believed that the waters of the two bays will meet the coming summer.

When first opened the canal will not be sufficiently deep to admit coastwise vessels, but power boats and other small craft will be allowed to go through. Already several New England yacht clubs are planning cruises with the canal passage in view.

Two big dredges that entered the canal, one at each end, are now within 8,000 feet of each other in Bournedale. Between them, for nearly a mile, is a fifteen-foot trench which will be flooded when the dredges cut the barriers.

The canal officially opened five months later on July 29, 1914.

(The photo shows the dredge Governor Herrick working in the land cut of the canal in 1914; photo credit, www.nae.usace.army.mil)

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