Buzzards Bay

“ Three men are engaged for nine months each year in the oyster industry at Falmouth; while 5 or more run grants for their own use.
Buzzards Bay District.
The Buzzards Bay oyster industry is in a state verging on chaos. In some specially favored localities it is in a flourishing condition; in others hardly less favorable it is almost completely stagnant. Great natural advantages exist, which if properly utilized would create a business of immense proportions. These resources are for the most part but poorly improved, and in many cases are neglected altogether. ”

“ Our people have the calm fatalism of those who live perpetually under the shadow of disaster.
Buzzard's Bay is inland water. On the left side its harbors are small, the shore bordered with what, to our eyes, accustomed to our low-lying houses, looked like the infant progeny of the summer hotel. What with its yacht clubs and its "summer-people" air, it reminds one of Long Island Sound. Some serious-minded craft have always made their way to its head bound for Wareham, but until the canal went through most vessels having a business in the world stopped at New Bedford. ”

“ There is a white, sandy beach of a mile or more, banked by great sand-dunes and bordering a section of Buzzard’s Bay which is comparatively unknown, where there are no houses, not even bath-houses, and where the delighted squeal of the noisy girl or the guffaw of the blatant youth is rarely heard. ”

“ At the end of the canal, however, the traveler has his moment of victory, when the great bridges docilely lift themselves to let him into Buzzard's Bay.
They are so short, a distance apart—our bay and Buzzard's Bay—but they belong to different worlds. Provincetown is a serious and self-supporting town. And, though the summer colony splashes color on its streets, it lives by the sea; its crop is fish. Almost every one earns his living in some way connected with this industry. No year passes that this dangerous trade does not kill its men. ”

“ If they sailed from Narraganset bay, or Buzzard's bay, or from any harbor on that coast, east of Long Island, they would in the course of twenty leagues at the furthest, in an easterly direction, have reached the easterly extremity of the peninsula of Cape Cod, and keeping close to the shore would have been forced for one hundred and fifty miles, in a northerly and west of north direction, and thence along the coast of Maine northeasterly a further distance of one hundred and fifty miles, and been finally locked in the bay of Fundy. ”

“ We lived remote, a dour, harborless coast on whose length lie the bones of vessels—they call it the graveyard of the Atlantic—separating us from the Vineyard Sound and our sister towns. When the Cape Cod Canal joined our bay to Buzzard's Bay as with a silver wire, it made New Bedford our neighbor, Nantucket and Edgartown accessible, and our cruise became a reality. ”

“ In the south of Massachusetts Bay is Cape Cod Bay, fifteen or twenty miles in extent, lying between Cape Cod and Plymouth; within this are Barnstable and Plymouth Bays. In the south of the state is Buzzard’s Bay, on the south-west side of Cape Cod, twenty miles deep, and inclosing the harbor of New Bedford. ‘Buzzard’s Bay,’ says a recent and entertaining tourist, ‘has much that is interesting on its extensive shores. A beautiful little spot called Naushaw, will not fail to attract the attention of the voyager on his way to Nantucket. ”

“ You give a fellow the creeps. Just why should there be any one dead yonder? Buzzards are found everywhere in Florida, millions of 'em. I reckon the shack is deserted. To prove it, I'm going to paddle over and see, just as soon as we get fast to our mudhook again," remarked Jerry.
"And that will be right now," said Frank. "Give it a toss, Bluff. Here we seem to be in a little spot deeper than the rest of the bayou, and with room to swing around with a change of wind without fouling our anchor or going aground again on any miserable oyster bed." ”

“ Standing at the door of Bluefields, which from a slight elevation, commands a wide prospect of the beautiful Bay, I have often watched, in the evening,—while the sun, sinking among his gilded piles and peaks of cloud on the horizon-sea, leaves the air refreshingly cool and balmy, while the dying sea-breeze scarcely avails to break the glassy reflection of the surface,—the straggling flocks of Pelicans, from a dozen to forty or fifty, passing slowly along over the shore. ”

“ And no progress was made until the next morning, when, having a fresh breeze, we reached an anchorage in a bay on the north side, and close under the base of Mount Bedwell. On our way we steered through strong tide-ripplings in which, at times, notwithstanding the strength of the breeze, the cutter was quite ungovernable. Off the bay is a low mangrove island which I had the pleasure to name after the Reverend James W. Burford, of Stratford, Essex, and the bay in which we had anchored was called after W. Aiton, Esquire, of the Royal Gardens at Kew. ”

“ The Elizabeth group is a range of sixteen islands, stretching in a long line from the Cape Cod shore for eighteen miles southwest to the extremity of Cuttyhunk. It makes the southeastern boundary of Buzzard's Bay, with Martha's Vineyard beyond, there being between them the long and rather narrow channel of Vineyard Sound. The mariner going eastward out of Long Island Sound passes Sakonnet Point at the eastern verge of Narragansett Bay, and finds in front a chain of beacons posted across the route. ”

“ But the buzzard never attacks live game, or feeds upon new flesh when old can be had.
In May, like the crows, they nearly all disappear very suddenly, probably to their breeding-haunts near the seashore. Do the males separate from the females at this time, and go by themselves? At any rate, in July I discovered that a large number of buzzards roosted in some woods near Rock Creek, about a mile from the city limits; and, as they do not nest anywhere in this vicinity, I thought they might be males. ”

“ After dinner Jack got one of the yacht's boats, and took Dick and young Smith with him to the mouth of the bay to get a view of the reefs.
For some little distance they could not see the opening of the bay on account of its windings, the hills preventing them from getting a view of the sea, but at length in rounding a wooded point they came in sight of it.
There were reefs in front of them, at some little distance, and points of rocks on both sides, the outer bay being of considerable size, but generally exposed to the weather, which they were not in the inner bay. ”

“ In 1815 a September gale that equalled Bradford’s Great Storm swept Buzzard’s Bay, piled the tides higher than had ever been known, and all but excavated a Cape Cod Canal. Trees were uprooted, salt-works destroyed, and vessels driven high on land. In 1831, to vary the story, unprecedented snows were fatal to deer in the Sandwich woods where they fell easy prey to hunters on snowshoes who brought in no less than two hundred, forty of them trapped alive.
All up and down the Cape, in every village and town, as the years passed, the sea took its toll of men. ”

“ If the shipmaster wishes to enter Buzzard's Bay for New Bedford, 144 he sails between these two unromantic shoals, passing a lightship on either hand, and being further guided by a lighthouse on the extremity of Cuttyhunk. But if he wishes to follow the great maritime route to the eastward around Cape Cod, he gives the "Sow and Pigs" a wide berth to the northward and passes between it and the splendid flashing red and white beacon on Gay Head, the western extremity of Martha's Vineyard, south of Cuttyhunk. ”

“ Blake to the Point Road, the peninsula which juts out like a forefinger from the south end of New Bedford into Buzzard’s Bay. We walked along the grassy foot-path, near the low wall, past the shimmering sea, the flying, croaking gulls, and a parade of scallop boats. My companion had a very ambitious moustache which was trying hard to mature, and he had a trick of unconsciously aiding the ends by pulling them as he talked. ”

“ Here in New England, the sailing fraternity may be divided into those who prefer the Maine coast and those who cling to the Cape and Buzzard’s Bay. As one of the latter class, I always claim our supremacy by stating two points which I believe to be true: first, that we have more wind, and second, that we have less fog. To me this is convincing. The southwest wind which cools the Cape, blows nearly every day [137] in summer and with a strength that often requires reefing. Rarely between ten in the morning and five at night will the mariner find himself becalmed in Buzzard’s Bay. ”

“ The northern face of the Sá Leone peninsula is fretted with little creeks and inlets, bights and lagoons, which were charming in a state of nature. Pirate's Bay, the second after the lighthouse, is a fairy scene under a fine sky; with its truly African tricolor, its blue waters reflecting air, its dwarf cliffs of laterite bespread with vivid leek-green, and its arc of golden yellow sand, upon which the feathery tops of the cocoa-palms look like pins planted in the ground. To the travelled man the view suggests many a nook in the Pacific islands. ”

“ At high tide the surface of the Bay is unbroken by rock or shoal, and stretches glittering in the sunlight from the beach at one’s feet to where the New Brunswick shore is just visible, appearing like a low bluish cloud on the horizon. At times the opposite shore is apparently brought nearer and made more distinct by a mirage, which inverts it, together with any ships which are in sight. A brig may be seen sailing along keel upward, in the most matter-of-fact way. ”

“ Were the harbour of Burlington, which is situated to the westward of the Bay, enlarged and deepened, its importance, as a place of refuge for vessels compelled to leave the Bay from the wind changing to the eastward, would be very greatly increased. Could it be so enlarged as to admit one hundred vessels, of from 200 to 300 tons each, it would, with the Bay, afford a place of refuge in all storms from north-east to south-east, which are generally the most destructive on the eastern coast. ”

“ It is doubtful if the fleet sailing from Buzzard’s Bay twenty-five years hence is half the size of the fleet of to-day; for vessels that are lost, sold, or broken up are seldom replaced. The astonishing decline in this industry is shown by the fact that three hundred and eleven whaling vessels were owned in New Bedford in 1855. ”

“ We anchored on the north shore, off a sandy bay, which I think as good a birth as any in the bay; Cape Banks bore east-south-east, and Point Solander south-south-east, the ground clear and good. The wind, either from the north-east or south-east quarters, set in a prodigious sea. Higher up the bay there is a spot of four fathoms, where a few ships might be laid in tolerable security, but they must be lightened, to enable them to pass over a flat of twelve feet, and that depth but of narrow limits. ”

“ Passing from the ultramarine deeps of the Rubicon Point, we round a sharply jutting promontory and glide into the jade-green waters of Emerald Bay, a long, oval-shaped inlet at the southern end of the lake. Surely, it is rightly named, for here green predominates, from the steep sides of the encircling hills to the very center of the shallow bay. At the upper end of the bay, rising almost sheer from the green water, is a rocky, scantily-wooded island where for many years an eccentric Englishman made his home. ”

“ They knew with whom they had to deal, and the issue proved their sagacity, for when the poor fellow arrived at the fort and related what he had seen, there was nobody to believe the story but Burroughs, and he would not put much faith in it, although he had reason to think well of the man; for how were the savages to get across the Bay in such a clear still night—with a sea like the sky, and a sky like the air that men breathe in their boyhood or when they are happy—without being discovered by the boats? ”

“ Along the east and north part of the bay there is a long reef that makes at a short distance from the shore, upon which a heavy surf is always breaking. In entering the bay, the whole habitable part of this section of the island is presented at one view, and forms a most grand and beautiful landscape. It is nearly semi-circular, and rises like an amphitheatre, in fruitful and populous circular ranges of hills, until at the distance of several miles, it terminates in a circumference of high and gloomy mountains, the tops of which resemble a massive wall. ”

“ The out was about three feet deep, and at half tide there was upwards of six feet at the entrance: with any other wind than between south-west and north-west, there is a surf on the beach, which often breaks with so much violence, as to render any attempt to land highly dangerous. As I found every thing done at this place, which could be effected with the small number of men I had, we returned to Sydney-Bay on the 3d. ”

“ March 24th, we took the steamer Kilauea. It rained as we sailed out of the bay,—Byron's Bay as it is called. The surf rolls in here terrifically, and beats upon the shore with an incessant booming sound. The view of Hilo, as you enter the bay, is said to be very fine; but we were so unfortunate as to come in, in the night, and to go out in a rain-storm. The natives play in the surf a great deal. They have what is called a surfboard perhaps four or five feet long. ”

“ Sailing thence to the southward towards the large island, we discovered a very large bay, well peopled, and very fertile in yams and fruits, hogs and fowls. They are all black people and naked. They fight with bows, darts and clubs. They did not choose to have peace with us, though we frequently spoke to them and made presents; and they never, with their goodwill, let us set foot on shore.
This bay is very refreshing, and in it fall many and large rivers. It is in 15 2/3° S. latitude, and in circuit it is twenty-five leagues. ”