Cape Cod Bay

“ One of the chief attractions in summer of the shore of Cape Cod, both on Buzzard’s Bay and on the outer southern coast, is the exquisite climate, not particularly bracing, but cool, and remarkably equable. The prevailing breeze is from the south-west, from off the Vineyard Sound, and the harshness of east winds is seldom felt. The water, too, is warmer by some twenty degrees than at Swampscott or Manchester, for example, and the sea-bathing, on that account, attracts a good many people. ”

“ In its progress it all but meets the equally erratic inlets of Chatham, and also the waters of Cape Cod Bay, with the result that any breeze there is from the sea. To the south stretches the Beach, a low straight wall of sand between Harbor and ocean, moulded by the Atlantic, worried by its storms, yet somehow withstanding the impact, and linking up at the sharp apex of Chatham with the sands of Monomoy that, again, are in line with Nantucket Shoals and the Island. It needs a wary seaman to know the safe [Pg 9] entrance to Vineyard Sound. ”

“ Leaving the beach to continue down Cape, you come suddenly upon the strangest scenery of all, where the moors of Wellfleet and Truro swell out of the Bay in fantastic shapes, and merely condescend to allow the old County Road to pass through them—which it does not do easily. The hills have been softly rounded by time and the wind, and they rise sometimes to great heights, only to fall off into sheltered valleys where the scrub pines grow. It is a crazy-quilt of topography and color, nearly smothered by a blanket of wild cranberry that is glossy-green in summer and scarlet in winter. ”

“ Some parents with young children prefer beaches on Cape Cod Bay to those on the Atlantic coast because the water is warmer and usually calmer and because the beaches slope more gradually into the water. ”

“ As the schooner crept across the bay, Hoppy’s gaze ranged along the low-lying shores of old Cape Cod. The long stretches of white strand glistened in the sunlight and the tiny hillocks, known as the dunes, seemed to be engaged in a brave effort to raise themselves above the tops of the sea pines and the stunted oaks of the neighboring groves. Billingsgate Point broke the sameness of the coastline and guarded the harbor of Wellfleet, the only important haven south of Provincetown, the other landing-places being small creeks and inlets. ”

“ Such clamor is unbelievable in the pearly haze of summer; but even then an infrequent nor’easter may whip the Atlantic into a hungry rage as if to send it leaping over the puny barrier that divides the outer uproar from the gray dogs of the bay that are showing their teeth to the gale.
Provincetown is a story in itself. The village, with its ingredients of old Cape Cod and a large proportion of handsome, gentle-mannered folk from the East Atlantic Islands, is curled comfortably about the edge of its harbor. ”

“ And still across the blue waters of the Sound you can hear the music of the little vessels on their way to the nets. Then you know that the men of the Cape are reaping the harvest for the appetite of the city—and most especially you know that it is spring.
[Pg 20]
Not All Fishing Is From A Boat
Not all weir fishing is done from a boat. Across the Cape from the Sound is Cape Cod Bay and there, taking advantage of their unusual oceanography, some ingenious north-siders have a different kind of weir-fishing operation which, so far as I know, is unique. ”

“ Cape Cod Bay.
165. They named it "le Cap Blanc," the White Cape, from its white appearance, while Bartholomew Gosnold, three years before, had named it Cape Cod from the multitude of codfish near its shores. Captain John Smith called it Cape James. All the early navigators who passed along our Atlantic coast seem to have seen the headland of Cape Cod. It is well defined on Juan de la Cosa's map of 1500, although no name is given to it. On Ribero's map of 1529 it is called C. de arenas. On the map of Nic. Vallard de Dieppe of 1543, it is called C. de Croix.
166. Wellfleet Harbor. ”

“ Wellfleet and Provincetown were Cape Cod’s premier whaling ports in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Some whaling ships sailed out of other Cape towns, but these 2 ports were crowded and bustling with ships and crews and related tradesmen and merchants. Both places eventually gave way to Nantucket and New Bedford, but many Cape captains continued to pursue the leviathan in distant seas. Settlers had been intrigued by whales since Native Americans taught them how to use beached whales for food and oil not long after the Mayflower anchored in Cape Cod Bay. ”

“ Between Highland and Race Point Lighthouses, on Cape Cod, stretches a long line of treacherous, dangerous sand bars. Situated midway between these points on the shore is the Coast Guard Building known as the Peaked Hill Bars Station. From this station the surfmen have rescued many lives and have seen many sailors go down to death in the raging sea.
On November 30th, 1880, a cold northerly gale was sweeping down the coast from Massachusetts Bay and lashing into fury the waters that pounded over the sand bars from Race Point to Wellfleet. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Whaling ships once worked out of Pamet Harbor on Cape Cod Bay, and until the 1860s the town was a major port with its related shipbuilding and fishing facilities and its saltworks. Most of the men made their living at sea, and in 1841 the town lost 57 fishermen in one storm. Today the small center of town has a few restaurants and other facilities for travelers.
Highland Light—also known as Cape Cod Light—is the second lighthouse constructed on the high bluff overlooking the Atlantic at Truro. ”

“ ACROSS THE CAPE
When we have returned from the seaside, we sometimes ask ourselves why we did not spend more time in gazing at the sea; but very soon the traveller does not look as the sea more than at the heavens. As for the interior, if the elevated sand-bar in the midst of the ocean can be said to have any interior, it was an exceedingly desolate landscape, with rarely a cultivated or cultivable field in sight. We saw no villages, and seldom a house, for these are generally on the Bay side. It was a succession of shrubby hills and valleys, now wearing an autumnal tint. ”

“ It is now known as Cape Cod Bay. Here they filled up with sassafras, and, carrying away also a bark canoe—the first, it would seem, taken to England—they arrived at Bristol on 2 Oct., where they reported the land they had visited to be ‘full of God's good blessings,’ and the sea ‘replenished with great abundance of excellent fish’ (Purchas, iv. 1654–6) . ”

“ The lifeboat was speeded for the mouth of Clinkerport Bay.
Chilled and almost water-logged, Ralph Endicott crouched with the other members of the rescued fishing boat's crew in the surf boat. The dash through the breakers at the entrance to the bay did not excite the party, for they were merely wretched and exhausted. It was one of the crew from the life saving station that hailed another motor-boat sputtering toward the cove between Clay Head and the Twin Rocks Light.
"Cap, there's that plucky girl and Tobe Bassett, I do believe. They are just getting back from across the bay." ”

“ But British ships dominated Cape Cod Bay, and the flagship, anchored off Truro, sometimes used the old mill on Mill Hill for a target. On such occasions, says Rich, the inhabitants preferred the eastern side of the hill. Again British seamen used Provincetown as their own, and, individually, established friendly relations ashore; officers often landed to buy fresh provisions for which they paid hard British gold to the considerable profit of the natives; and although some timid farmers kept their cattle in the woods, there is no record of any looting. ”

“ Here in the country it is only a few idle boys or loafers that go a-fishing on a rainy day; but there it appeared as if every able-bodied man and helpful boy in the Bay had gone out on a pleasure excursion in their yachts, and all would at last land and have a chowder on the Cape. The gazetteer tells you gravely how many of the men and boys of these towns are engaged in the whale, cod, and mackerel fishery, how many go to the banks of Newfoundland, or the coast of Labrador, the Straits of Belle Isle or the Bay of Chaleurs (Shalore the sailors call it) ”

“ The Editor dissents from the views given in this elaborate tract and adopted in the text of the present chapter; and thinks that Cape Cod, and not Sandy Hook, is the conspicuous peninsula which appears on the early maps. In the general coast-line Cape Cod is a protuberant angle, while Sandy Hook is in the bight of a bay which forms an entering angle, and, unlike Cape Cod, is of no significance in relation to the trend of the continental shore. There is the least difficulty, in the matter of the bearings of one point from another, with considering this feature to be Cape Cod ”

“ The main features of the coast are delineated. Cape Breton and the Strait of Canseau, with the Penobscot and Sandy Hook, are defined; but Cape Cod, the “Arecifes” of Rotz, appears only in name, though in its proper relation to the Bay of St. John the Baptist, a name given to the mouth of Long Island Sound, in connection with the Narragansett Waters. The word Norumbega does not occur, and the nomenclature is hardly satisfactory. It contains no reference either to Verrazano or Cartier. The so-called map of Cabot, 1544, does not touch the particular subject under notice. ”

“ It is a cottage colony supplemented by hotels and boarding houses that fit the purses of all classes.
At some of these places, either on Cape Cod itself or the islands, every person can find conditions suited to his or her individual taste.
Edward L. Smith
Cape Cod has many fine distinctions that make it stand out from a commonplace world and Wellfleet, as a town name, marks the Cape with a place-name known all over the globe, but in no other locality than on the coast of Barnstable 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. ”

“ Plymouth trade, not Only with the mother country, but with other colonies, grew apace. As early as 1627, in order to facilitate communication to the southward with the Indians and with the Dutch settlement on the Hudson, the Pilgrims may be said to have made the first move toward a Cape Cod Canal. “To avoid the compassing of Cape Cod and those dangerous shoals,” wrote Bradford, “and so to make any voyage to the southward in much shorter time and with less danger,” they established a trading post with a farm to support it, and built a pinnace, at Manomet on the river flowing into Buzzard’s Bay. ”

“ The sixth runs easterly from the harbor on the C. de Muchas yllas, or Cape Cod, one hundred and fifty leagues EASTERLY which include the opening of the great bay of twelve leagues and proceeds along the Arecifes or C. Sable on the coast of Nova Scotia to the Sarcales, probably Cape Canso at Chedabucto bay, WHERE THE COAST TRENDED MORE NORTHERLY.
The SEVENTH, from the Sarcales, fifty leagues MORE TO THE NORTH, extends along the tierra de los Bretones or island of C. Breton to the cape of that name, passing the R. de la buelta, the easterly limit of the voyage of Gomez. ”

“ There was an uncertain, troubled movement among Cap'n Abe's hearers. Even the fishfly stopped droning. Cap'n Beecher looked longingly through the doorway from which the sea could be observed as well as a strip of that natural breakwater called "The Neck," a barrier between the tumbling Atlantic and the quiet bay around which the main village of Cardhaven was set.
All the idlers in the store on this June afternoon were not natives. There were several young fellows from The Beaches—on the Shell Road to which Cap'n Abe's store was a fixture. ”

“ This rocky peninsula is truly a very wild and unworldlike little territory, jutting boldly out as it does into the mighty bay of Massachusetts, and commanding a view of its whole extent, from Cape Cod to Cape Anne, together with the many islands, towns, and villages scattered along the coast; whilst in front spreads out the Atlantic Ocean.
To sit within the upper gallery of this house upon the cliff, and watch the rising moon fling her golden bridge from the far horizon's edge, until it seems to rest upon the beach below, is a sight which would be worth something in a poet or a painter's eyes. ”