CHAPTER I
I was born and brought up on Cape Cod. To me it is the only place on earth. In olden times, in times gone by, people away from here had the idea that Cape Cod was a narrow strip of land extending off into the ocean, consisting of sand dunes and fish shanties. But in recent years there has been a radical change in the opinion people have had about Cape Cod. Now they are looking at Cape Cod as it really is. The automobile, the chamber of commerce, boards of trade, and other advertising agencies have opened Cape Cod wide, and it has been explored from one end to the other by thousands and thousands. Now some of these people are prophesying the future of Cape Cod, but they are not only prophesying the future of Cape Cod but they are delving down into the past—down into its past records and past history. Recently, almost within the year, they have gone down forty-one years and have come up with the old Monomoy Disaster. Sometimes they come into the post-office and question me about the disaster. I not only have to admit that I had been associated with those men who were lost, but was familiar with the disaster itself, so I have been telling them and all others who were interested by an address. I appreciate the privilege of addressing so many distinguished gatherings.
It was the seventeenth day of March 1902, when the news spread—and it spread like wildfire all over—not only over the towns of Chatham and Harwich, the two towns most directly affected by the disaster, but over the surrounding towns and all over Cape Cod, for that matter. Women ran from one house to the other, telling the news—men congregated on corners, in stores and elsewhere, discussing the news. The report was that every surfman on the old Monomoy Lifesaving Station, with the exception of one, had been lost. They had perished off the back side of Monomoy Beach in the tide rips and the seas. In telling the story, I have entitled it, “The Tragedy of Monomoy Beach or the Graveyard of the Atlantic.”
Eight miles down from Harwich is the town of Chatham. Everybody knows that Monomoy Beach extends off from Chatham—off into Nantucket Sound in a southerly direction something like ten miles. It is approximately two miles wide, and is composed wholly of beach sand, a growth of beach grass, occasionally a brush swamp, and a few meadows. Its topographic makeup is sand dunes and hollows, hollows and sand dunes, all sizes and shapes, and the sand continues to blow and shift. Today there is a sand dune, tonight a dry gale of wind, tomorrow a piece of level ground. Today there is a piece of level ground, tonight a sand storm, tomorrow a hollow. So it is, year in and year out. The sand continues to blow and shift.
Monomoy Beach is bounded on the east by the broad Atlantic, and the seas—the seas—the seas roll in from an expanse of three thousand miles and break and pound and roar upon the strand in an unbroken line. Sometimes I tell my friends if they desire to see the ocean in its raw, if they desire to see those seas that roll in from this tremendous expanse and break and pound and roar upon the strand, if they desire to see the tide rips that break and boil and foam, if they desire to see the lightships off in the distance guiding the shipping down over the shoals, if they desire to see the tide as it sweeps out of Caleb’s Bay and meets the ocean, and produces those tremendous tide rips down there on the end of Monomoy Beach or Point Rip—if they desire to see all this, I suggest that someday in an easterly gale they take a trip down on Monomoy Beach—way down to Point Rip, and there they will see the ocean in its raw. Then, in good weather, look off and see the shoals—the shoals that extend way across to Nantucket cut down through here and there by false and major channels, and the tide rips, hundreds of them breaking and boiling and foaming—the same shoals and the same tide rips that turned the Mayflower back three hundred and twenty-one years ago. They are there today.
In the days gone by, in the olden times, the back side of Monomoy Beach was rightly called the “Graveyard of the Atlantic.” Why? Because more ships and more schooners grounded and pounded themselves to pieces and washed upon the beach—more men lost their lives and their bodies strewn along the back side of Monomoy Beach than any other like locality in all the world. Why, fifty, seventy-five, and a hundred years ago did our fathers brand the back side of Monomoy Beach the “Graveyard of the Atlantic?” Because of episodes like this that follow. This is but one episode, all others were similar.
CHAPTER II
Now come with me, if you will, to a country home somewhere, some place, in some land. Standing in the open doorway of that home is a mother and her son, the son a splendid specimen of physical manhood standing beside his mother his hand resting on a sailor’s clothes bag. That morning the mother had packed that clothes bag until it was full with warm stockings, warm mittens, warm underclothes, warm shirts, warm blankets, and everything a young sailor required. She was saying to her boy, “Now, Jimmy, you are going away to sea. You are going to stand on your own and I want you to be a good boy. As your mother, I’m concerned over your welfare. Your success is my life, your joys are my joys, and your sorrows are my sorrows. As your mother, I want to know where you are and how you are getting along. So I want you to promise me above all other things that you will write me from every port. Now you’re going out to face the world and experience life itself, and whatever happens I want you to be a man. Keep away from the saloons and the bar-rooms, and leave the booze alone. Remember the fate of your father—Booze, the damnable stuff called booze. From the time it issues from the poisonous coils of the distillery until it empties into a sea of crime, degradation, despair and death, it pollutes every substance and, in a measure, weakens every man, woman, and child who comes in contact with it. As your mother, I am asking you to leave it alone.” He answered, “Yes mother I am going away to sea. I am going to stand on my own and I promise you upon my word of honor that I will write you from every port. Now I’m going out, as you say, to face the world, and whatever happens I intend to play the part of a man. So far as possible I’ll keep away from the saloons and bar-rooms and leave the booze alone.” He picked up his clothes bag, threw it over his shoulder as young men did of yore, went down the path to the road and down the road until he came to a bend in the road. He stopped and looked back. His mother was still standing in the doorway. She waved her boy good-bye. He waved his mother good-bye, went around the bend in the road and was gone, and gone forever, leaving his mother still standing in the doorway.
That was sixty years ago. Sixty years ago ninety per cent of all the freight that went north and south, east and west, along the Atlantic seaboard went by water and ninety per cent of all the freight that went by water went under sail. This was the old sailing days and there was a tremendous fleet of those freighters or coasters as we called them, all rigs, sloop rigs, two-masted schooners, three-masted schooners, four-masted schooners, brigs and barks. Anyone who knows anything about the old sailing days knows that it was almost an impossibility to beat down over Nantucket Shoals when the wind was to the east or north as it is so often here on Cape Cod. They would anchor as far back as Menemsha Bight, Tarpaulin Cove, Vineyard Haven, and Woods Hole. They would anchor down off Falmouth, down under the breakwater at Hyannisport, down under the breakwater at West Dennis, and wherever there was an anchorage you would see those schooners tied up, anchored, waiting for fair wind. At last it would come, the wind would breeze up from the west. Then they would hoist their sails and anchors, get under way, and start out down over the shoals. You would see them coming—sometimes hundreds of them—with their white sails showing like clouds against the blue sky. In those days the only outlet going down over the shoals to the east and the north was the Pollock Rip Slew, a channel between two shoals. Moored at the entrance of the Pollock Rip Slew was the old Pollock Rip Lightship, number 47. It was the duty of the crew of a lightship in those days to count and log the shipping that went one way and the other over the shoals. The Old Pollock Rip Lightship, number 47, had the record of having counted and logged in her log book over five hundred sails in twenty-four hours going and coming down over the shoals. They would come down over the shoals, pass out through Pollock Rip Slew, and head up the back side of the Cape for their destinations.