“The position of this wreck in reference to the salt meadows and to the beach, is the best possible evidence of its antiquity. If driven there it must have been by a westerly wind, which would cause a low tide. Admitting that the vessel of which this wreck is the remains, was, by some unknown cause, forced on the meadows, how was the wreck buried below the line of the surface?
“To suppose that she was so buried on hard meadows by natural causes is an impossibility. That the wreck was there first, and the meadows formed over it, seems a self-evident truth, and judging from the rate at which similar meadows have formed, two hundred and thirty-seven years is not an unreasonable length of time to assign for the formation of the Potanumaquut meadows, and consequently the length of time that the wreck of the Old Ship, at Orleans, has remained in its present position.
“Those who are not aware of the remarkable geological changes that have occurred on the eastern coast of Cape Cod since its discovery, doubt the truthfulness of Archer, who was the historian of Gosnold’s voyages. I have in this article assumed that he was a careful and an accurate observer, and faithfully recorded what he saw. Great geological changes make their own records; they leave in the strata and in the various deposits, the footprints which the scientific student of nature can trace and follow.
“Cape Cod was discovered by Bartholomew Gosnold, May 15th, 1602, O. S. He anchored at first near the end of the Cape, which he called Shoal Hope, but afterwards changed to the name it has since retained. Afterwards he anchored in the harbor, in latitude 42°. On the 16th he sailed round the Cape. After proceeding twelve leagues in this circuitous course, he descried a point of land ‘a good distance off’ with shoals near it. He ‘kept his luff’ to double it, and after passing it ‘bore up again with the land’ and at night anchored, where he remained that night and the following day, May 17.
“He saw many shoals in that vicinity, and ‘another point that lay in his course.’ On the 18th he sent a boat to sound around the point, and on the 19th passed around it in four or five fathoms and anchored a league or somewhat more beyond it, in latitude 41° 40′.
“Nothing is named in this account that the most careless observer would not have seen and noted. When he discovered the first point he was off Eastham, a little north of the beach where the ‘Three Lights’ are now located. He saw the danger, and like a prudent mariner kept his luff to avoid it. The shoal he called Tucker’s Terror, the headland, Point Care. After passing Point Care he bore up again to the mainland. This description of the coast is simple and truthful. To determine the exact position of Point Care, is attended with some difficulty. That it was the north end headland of the island named by Capt John Smith ‘Ile Nawset,’ there appears to be no reason to doubt. The only difficulty is in determining precisely where the north end of that island was in 1602. The northern end of it, which persons living remember, was opposite the present entrance to Nauset Harbor. In 1602 it probably extended half a mile further north, that is, as far north as the low beach extended, that persons now living remember. John Doane, Esq., now seventy years of age, was born in the immediate vicinity of Point Care, his father and grandfather, in fact all his ancestors from the first settlement, owned the land and meadows between Ile Nawset and the main. He says that within his recollection Point Care has worn away about half a mile. When his grandfather was a boy, Point Care extended much further into the ocean than it did when he was young.”
These are not vague and uncertain recollections. Mr. Doane points to monuments, and the exact distance that the ocean encroached on the land within his recollection can be ascertained. He states that fifty years ago a beach extended from the present entrance of Nauset harbor half a mile north, where the entrance then was. Within this beach his father owned ten acres of salt meadows, on which he for several years assisted him in cutting and raking the hay. Now where that beach was there are three or four fathoms of water, and where the meadows were is a sand bar on which the waves continually break, and make Nauset harbor difficult of access. Within his memory the north beach, connected with Eastham shore, has extended south one mile, and the whole beach has moved inward about its width, say one fourth of a mile. Formerly there were navigable waters between Nauset and Potanumaquut harbors. It is about a century since vessels have passed through, and about fifty years since the passage was entirely closed. This is caused by the moving of Nauset beach inward. Dunes always travel inward, never outward, let the direction be what it may.
“Mr. Doane says that his grandfather informed him, that when he was young, a rocky, swampy piece of land, known as Slut’s Bush, was about in the middle of Isle Nauset; that many berries grew there, and that he had repeatedly been there to pick them. When the present John Doane was a lad, only the western edge of this swamp remained. The roots of the trees and bushes that grew there ran under and between the rocks and stones, and when the waves undermined the rocks, the whole, rocks, stumps and roots, settled together. Slut’s Bush is now some distance from the shore, in deep water; vessels pass over it, and on a calm day the stumps and roots may be seen at the bottom. The fisherman sometimes gets his line entangled with them and pulls them up. During violent gales of wind they are sometimes loosened and driven to the shore.
“Beyond Slut’s Bush, about three miles from the shore, there is a similar ledge called Beriah’s Ledge, probably formed in precisely the same manner as Slut’s Bush ledge is known to have been formed. Six nautical miles south of Point Care, Gosnold discovered another headland, which he named Point Gilbert. Archer furnishes us with all the particulars respecting the soundings, the straits, his passing round it, and anchoring a league or more beyond, in latitude 41° 40′. We have historical and circumstantial evidence that Point Gilbert existed in 1602; it united with the main land at James Head, near Chatham lights. From James Head on its south shore, it extended nine miles on an east-by-south course, to its eastern terminus, afterwards known as Webb’s Island, situate where Crabb’s Ledge now is. Cape Care was worn away by the gradual abrasion of the waves; over Point Gilbert the sea, during a violent gale, swept, carrying away long sections in a single day. The inner ledge on the line of Point Gilbert is known as Island Ledge, and the name indicates that the sea broke over the point at two places about the same time. Rev. Dr. Morse states that Webb’s island at one time contained fifteen acres of rocky land covered with wood from which the early inhabitants of Nantucket procured fuel.[9] The process which has been described as having occurred at Slut’s Bush ledge also occurred at Crabb and Island ledges; the stumps and roots of the trees were carried down by the superincumbent rocks. Mr. Joshua Y. Bearse, who resided many years at Monamoit point, and has all his life been familiar with the shoals and ledges near Chatham, informs me that it is very difficult to obtain an anchor lost near either of these ledges; the sweeps used catch against the rocks and stumps at the bottom where the water is four fathoms deep. He also states that after the violent gale in 1851, during which the sea broke over Nauset Beach where the ancient entrance to Potanumaquut harbor was, and where the entrance to Chatham harbor was in 1775, with a force which seems almost incredible, sweeping away banks of earth twenty feet high, cutting channels therein five fathoms deep, moving the sea around to its very bottom, and tearing up the old stumps which had been there more than a century,—Mr. Bearse states that more than one hundred of these drifted during that gale to the shore at Monamoit beach, and that he picked them up for fuel. A part of these were stumps that bore the marks of the axe, but the greater part were broken or rotted off.
“These old stumps did not grow under the water; they did not float to the positions from which they were dragged up; they grew in a compact rocky soil overlying a loose sand. The waves and the currents removed the loose substratum, and the rocks and the stumps went down together into the deep water where they are now found. From the place where Gosnold anchored, a league or more from Point Gilbert, there was an open sea to the southwest. Monamoit beach, which projects out eight miles south from Morris island, did not then exist; there was nothing there to impede navigation.”