Chapter I

As is explained in the Notes to Chapter II, if such a headland as Webb’s Island ever existed, it had vanished before 1606. In fact, however, it must have disappeared centuries earlier. It is a geographical monstrosity for two points to exist close together and at right angles to each other on a coast like Chatham’s. The forces that create one would demolish the other. The alleged Webb’s Island Point was nearly at right angles to Monomoy Point, and close to it. The two, therefore, could never have been in existence at the same time; Webb’s Island Point must have been demolished before Monomoy was made. Monomoy was there in 1606; we can only guess how old it was then; perhaps a thousand years. But its age, whatever it was, must be subtracted from 1606 in order to get back to the date when Webb’s Island Point existed.

We are now confronted by the question whether or not, though the rest of this headland vanished at a very remote period, the extreme easterly end of it, Webb’s Island, was still above water in colonial times. An article in the ‘Massachusetts Magazine’ (III, 1791, page 151) says that such an island existed about 1700. This statement is said to be corroborated in Morse’s ‘Universal Geography,’ _I_, 357, ed. 1793 (Amos Otis, ‘Discovery of an Ancient Ship,’ page 10, note). To offset this testimony we have only the negative evidence that Champlain failed to mention such an island or to show it in his map. This oversight, however, is not very significant. The chances are, then, that Webb’s Island was visible when the first settlers arrived in Chatham, though there had been blue water between it and the mainland for centuries.