Captain Whelden was master of the coastwise schooner “Robert Graham Dunn”. He was another of the gallant men of South Dennis who chose a career at sea that gained success for himself and glory for his village. Unfortunately that career was cut off when, at the age of sixty-four, he contracted yellow fever in Florida and died aboard his vessel at Pensacola. With the same longing all Cape Cod men felt abroad, the Captain died with the single word, “home”, on his lips—and the First Mate of the “Dunn” was determined that the good Captain’s body should be taken to his beloved village for burial. But this was the eighteen eighties and the same superstitions that led Cape Codders to bury smallpox victims in an isolated spot (in the belief that this would stop the spread of the disease) held the crew in awesome fear of contracting the dreaded fever. They mutinied at the prospect of carrying the Captain’s body home.
The First Mate of the “Dunn” must have been a courageous, loyal, and determined man, for, at length, the ship’s mutiny was put down, and, in a metallic casket weighing well over a ton, the Captain’s remains began the sad journey back to the Cape. Captain Whelden succumbed to the fever on Memorial Day, 1888, and on July 4 he was laid to rest at South Dennis, just down the road from the home he loved so well. Twelve Captains carried the heavy casket. It was a fine tribute to the memory of the man whose big white house by the side of the road still graces the little village at the heart of the Cape.
East Is West
Not far from the houses of the two sisters the charming old Cape Cod homestead of Captain Alpheus Baker, Jr., sits beside the Upper County Road. It is a white Cape Codder, trim and snug and gracious, and it must look very much the same now as it did a century ago. Old trees throw a graceful pattern of shadows against it in the summer sunlight and there is a perpetual air of friendliness and serenity about it. The house would hardly be noticed by the stream of traffic that rushes by its dooryard in the summer months, but the house is complacent too, and wears the air of there being “nothing new under the sun”. One would not have to see the treasures within it to realize that it is a cosmopolitan house, content now to dream its dreams of a colorful past.
A “Short Trip Guide to America”, published as late as 1875, dismisses the Cape as a “wild and desolate”, but interesting, section of the Atlantic Coast,—this while devoting considerable pages to the description of the “wonders” of Lawrence and Lowell. It is curious that when a guide book was describing the peninsula as “wild and desolate”, perhaps because it did, indeed, lead a life quite apart from the Mainland, Cape Codders, themselves, were among the most cosmopolitan people on earth. For them, distances were measured in terms of days at sea, and days meant nothing while in pursuit of their fortunes. Through the medium of the wonderful clipper ship, and the blue seas that were always near enough to be seen from the rooftop of any house, the world was at their doorstep. The best illustration of this, which also throws light on Cape character, is the well-worn anecdote of the central Cape Captain who had travelled many times around the world but had never negotiated the twelve mile buggy ride to Chatham. When asked, “How come?”, by someone who must have been a Mainlander, he would reply, “I just never had any business there”. But the Captains did have business in Singapore and Hong Kong, in Java and the Indies, and in every important port throughout the world, and there they sailed often. At the time the “Short Trip Guide” was being written Captain Baker of South Dennis, still in his thirties, had already made several voyages to the Orient.
Once, on a return voyage from Hong Kong, Captain Baker brought with him to the Cape two Chinamen and one young Chinese woman. The woman was installed at the Baker homestead as a nurse for the Baker children, and, for what few stay-at-homes there were, a touch of the Orient came to South Dennis. The nurse was capable and attractive, and evidently her young charges were devoted to her. One can only guess at her thoughts as she stood on the bank of Bass River looking westward into the setting sun; or as she walked up the winding Main Street which must have seemed so silent and colorless after the bright hues and loud cries of Hong Kong. And one can only guess at the thoughts of the people of the town who looked through the curtained windows of staid, white houses at the strange figure in Oriental dress who walked their streets. It is to be hoped that they took her to their hearts and, if folks in the village then were as they are today, it is a certainty that they did. But one April, before the Cape burst into its myriad colors of coreopsis and broom, of lilac and daisy, and lupin, and all the wonderful signs of springtime that might rival the colors of China, she fell ill, and, in the little back parlor of the Baker home, she died.
At South Dennis, in the old cemetery on the hill, and hard by the Baker memorials, there is a plain white stone which reads, “Chinese Woman; Brought from Hong Kong by Captain Alpheus Baker, Jr.; April 5, 1872 at 31 years.” Not far away is a monument to the memory of Captain Baker, inscribed, “His sun is gone down while it is yet day”. For the Captain had outlived the Chinese woman by only two years and had died at the age of thirty-six. Strangely enough, he too had died in a foreign land and was buried in Sourabaya, Java, where another white monument denotes his final resting place.
The old cemetery on the hill at South Dennis is a quiet resting place, watched over by sentinel cedars and the towering steeple of the Captain’s Church. In summer there is the exotic perfume of wild roses, of fern, of sweet grass and of pine. It is very Cape Cod and, standing by the Baker plot in June sunshine, one feels the Orient is very far away. Still, if one took to the gleaming seas, and rode the wings of the clipper ships, Hong Kong was nearer than Chatham—at least if one had business there.
OF CAPE COD FENCES
Sometimes, riding around the highways and byways of the Cape, you become so conscious of the mass impression of uniqueness and beauty that you lose sight of some of the finer details that have gone into it. Of such details is the Cape Cod fence, a very important part of our landscape, but one that frequently goes unnoticed. Cape fences add to the air of security and independence and snugness that all Cape houses wear. They were the product of an age of hand craftsmanship and artistic imagination, and many of them were designed, and even whittled out, aboard ship, in all the four corners of the earth. Needless to say they bear no resemblance to the poor products of mass production which are labelled “Cape Cod Fences” and sold over the counters of department stores many miles from the Cape.