Chapter II

Few authorities doubt that Gosnold’s Tucker’s Terror and Point Care were parts of a point of land that formerly projected from the Eastham shore. Captain John Smith, though he never saw this point, had been told of its existence by the Indians, and named it Île Nauset. What Gosnold called Tucker’s Terror was the surf on the north side of this point, and Point Care was its eastern extremity.

As to identification of Point Gilbert, authorities differ. It has been argued that this point was the end of another peninsula about nine miles long, something like Île Nauset, that is said to have stretched easterly from Chatham and terminated in Webb’s Island. It is possible that such a peninsula existed at a very remote period, but certainly it had vanished before 1604, when Gosnold arrived, for no trace of it appears on the excellent map of the Chatham region that Champlain made in 1606 (Champlain’s ‘Voyages,’ II, opposite page 122), only two years later, and not even the most careless cartographer could have missed such an important feature. The exponents of the Webb’s Island theory for Point Gilbert cannot have seen this map, for they go on to say that Monomoy Point had not been formed in Gosnold’s time. Champlain, however, shows it on his map substantially as it is to-day. These considerations eliminate Webb’s Island and its peninsula as a possible identification for Point Gilbert.

There remains Monomoy, which answers all the requirements save one. Archer, who accompanied Gosnold and wrote an account of the voyage, estimated the distance from Point Care to Point Gilbert as six miles. If he meant from headland to headland, this is too short. But none of the distances recorded by early navigators are to be trusted. Furthermore, it should be remembered that breakers do not confine their attentions to the _end_ of Monomoy Beach; they break indiscriminately along its whole length; and breakers were what occupied Gosnold’s mind in connection with Point Gilbert. Six miles is near enough for a guess at the distance between Île Nauset and the nearest part of Monomoy Beach--which being white with breakers, like the rest of its length, was from Gosnold’s point of view as much a part of Point Gilbert as the southern end of it was. The actual distance is about eight miles.

Some authorities, disturbed by another discrepancy in distance, push the whole scene of Gosnold’s activities farther west and make Tucker’s Terror and Point Care, Monomoy instead of Île Nauset, and contend that Point Gilbert was the southeastern corner of Great Island, off Hyannis Harbor, now called Point Gammon. One statement supports this theory; Archer says that the distance from Cape Cod to Point Care was twelve leagues; and that is about the right distance from the outer Beach at Provincetown to Monomoy. But, as has been suggested, we must be very cautious in accepting any mileage mentioned by early mariners. It is well known that distances are deceptive when men are navigating unfamiliar waters and are constantly watching for something ahead. Even so accurate a cartographer as Champlain calls the distance from Nauset to Chatham eighteen miles, whereas in fact it is about six. If Archer’s guess of twelve leagues was right, it is the only instance of its kind in the history of early Cape Cod navigation.

Point Gammon, too, is high and rocky, and Archer mentions no rocks until the expedition reached the Elizabeth Islands. Furthermore, he writes as follows of Point Gilbert: ‘We sent forth the boat to sound over a Breach (that in our course lay) of another Point, by us called Gilbert’s Point.... The nineteenth we passed over the breach of Gilbert’s Point in foure or five fadome.’ The phrase ‘the breach of the Point’ means the breakers rolling in over shoals that lay off the point. Such shoals, as every seaman knows, lie off Monomoy, and Gosnold sent his ship’s boat to try the depth of the water on them. If it had been blowing, this would have been a suicidal maneuver. But Archer tells us that the day was ‘faire.’ There are no such shoals off Point Gammon.