But the sea that brought such bounty and prosperity to Cape Codders during the years between the War of 1812 and the Civil War was not always kind. There was a dark side to the Cape’s relationship to the ocean, a side reflected in the numerous slate and limestone markers in the Cape’s small burying grounds that bear the inscription “Lost at Sea.”
Over the years the sea has taken the life of many a Cape Cod fisherman. This stone, in the Burying Ground of the First Congregational Parish of Truro, honors Mrs. Rebecca Snow, who died Nov. 4, 1832, and her husband, Capt. Reuben Snow, who was lost at sea in January 1825. The inscription at the bottom reads: “Tho’ in the dust, or in the sea, their mortal bodies rest, their spirits dwell in paradise.”
The 30-mile stretch of land between the Monomoy Shoals on the south and Race Point on the north is one of several East Coast stretches known as “Graveyards of the Atlantic.” The Cape’s sandy outer shore does not look as menacing as, say, the rocky coastline of Maine or Nova Scotia. Its threats take more subtle shapes, in the form of submerged sandbars and treacherous rips, that can easily run a ship aground, and where in winter gales waves will pound a vessel to pieces as effectively as if it were on solid rock.
The first recorded shipwreck on Cape Cod was the Sparrowhawk, an English vessel that struck a sandbar off Orleans in 1626. Since then an estimated 3,000 vessels have been lost in the waters off the Cape, most on the stretch of open Atlantic from Chatham to Provincetown. One of the most famous of the early wrecks was the pirate ship Whydah, a 300-ton galley commanded by “Black Sam” Bellamy, which broke up on the bars off Eastham (now South Wellfleet) on May 8, 1717. More than 145 lives were lost in the wreck, and of the nine survivors, seven were tried for piracy and hanged on Boston Common.
Cape Codders early on recognized that those who went “down to the sea in ships” did not always come back. The most deadly areas were the shoals and rips off Monomoy—places known as “Cape Mallebarre” and “Tucker’s Terror”—and the infamous Peaked Hill Bars off the Atlantic, or back side, of Provincetown. Not all losses occurred close to shore, however. Once fishing vessels began making trips to the Georges and Grand Banks, entire fleets were sometimes caught in furious fall northeasters, winter gales, and hurricanes. Perhaps the worst single storm, in terms of its effects on local Cape communities, was the disastrous October Gale of 1841. Dozens of ships and more than 100 men were lost on Georges Banks. Truro alone lost 57 men. When Thoreau passed through Truro a decade after the storm, the community was still in mourning: “‘Who lives in that house?’ I inquired. ‘Three widows,’ was the reply.”
The first organized attempt to aid shipwrecked sailors was made in 1794, when the Massachusetts Humane Society began to build a series of Humane Houses, or Charity Huts, along the Outer Beach. Located at the “hollows” in the sea cliff for ease of access, these Humane Houses were at first no more than crude huts, irregularly stocked with straw, matches, and a few other items of survival that might see a shipwrecked sailor through the night. Later they were equipped with small boats and rope lines with mortars that volunteer crews might use to try to reach sailors stranded offshore.
Cape Cod, or Highland, Light, the first lighthouse on the Cape, was erected in 1796 atop the clay cliffs in North Truro. In the next 70 years others followed: the twin lights of Chatham in 1808; Race Point in 1816; Monomoy in 1823; Long Point in 1826; the original “Three Sisters of Nauset” in 1838; and Wood End in 1872. The establishment of these lights significantly reduced the number of wrecks off the back shore. But lighthouses and beacons were of little help during intense fogs or furious northeast storms when anchors dragged and sailing ships caught rounding the Cape could not manage to stay offshore. More often than not ships became trapped between the outer and inner bars, and Cape residents had to stand helplessly on the shore as men froze in the rigging or were washed overboard into icy seas only a hundred yards from land.
A major step in aiding these wreck victims was taken in 1872, when Congress established the U.S. Life Saving Service, the culmination of a series of federal measures that had begun in 1847 with an appropriation to subsidize the Massachusetts Humane Society. Nine stations were initially built, and eventually four others joined them. In 1915 the U.S. Life Saving Service was merged with the Revenue Cutter Service to form the U.S. Coast Guard.
Ironically, the sea disasters provided yet one more way of making a living for Cape Codders. Compassionate and selfless as they were in their efforts to save lives and aid victims of wrecks wherever possible, they were also pragmatic. Salvaging, or wrecking, as it was called, provided windfalls for the local populace. This practice gave rise to the legend of the nefarious “mooncussers,” men who deliberately lured ships to their doom with lighted lanterns on the beach on dark, moonless nights.