Chapter II: Part 2

He would just “set” in a decrepit old chair by the stove or putter about the house long winter nights. He’d while away the tedious hours reading sea stories and cowboy yarns and go through three or four magazines in a night. But, his mother’s glasses didn’t serve him as well toward the end and time became more of a burden. Around 3 a.m. he would brew a pot of tea and make himself a sandwich. Moonlight nights in the spring and summer were welcomed, for then he was able to get outdoors and do a few chores.

Bill-Ike said he first discovered the capacity to go without sleep when he was a youth working in the cranberry bogs during a rush season. He worked night and day for three months that time and discovered that he could get along with only an hour’s snooze in the morning before breakfast. But, he didn’t really begin to make a habit of staying awake until 1928.

HOW HE “EXPERIMENTED”

That year Bill-Ike happened to read in a magazine, “Nobody can go 80 days without sleep.” Just to prove this wasn’t so, the old gentleman began by denying himself sleep for a continuous stretch of 83 days. In 1929 he “experimented” again, keeping awake 147 days. Then the sleeplessness became more of a habit. But, each year he bettered his own record and in 1933 he rounded out his first full year of going without sleep. Finally, Bill-Ike achieved the amazing five-year record, and he was going into his sixth year when he passed on.

He was in fine fettle almost to the end, a firm believer in the gospel of hard toil. During vacation seasons he kept busy tending the gardens and being the handyman for summer cottagers. A bachelor--“always been willin’ but the right gal ain’t ever showed up”--Bill-Ike lived with his brother, Fred, in a century-old house in a spot remote from the town. Fred would have his regular eight or nine hours in bed, undisturbed by Bill-Ike’s poking about the house at all hours of the night.

“Sure, I could enjoy a full night’s sleep,” was the old insomnia champion’s mournful comment. “But, I just can’t, that’s all. Doctors say it has something to do with my nerves.”

There were people in Orleans who took Bill-Ike’s sleepless story with a pinch of salt. But Bill-Ike got the publicity just the same, and the New York excursion and ballyhoo didn’t change him a bit. And, at the peak of the newspaper excitement, another oldster of the community bobbed up with a new and original claim. He slept, all right, but his eyelids never seemed to come down. All of his sleeping was done with eyes wide open. He just lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling, all night long.

ORLEANS----

_The First German U-Boat
Attack On American Soil_

In the last war, the one and only attack on American soil by the Germans was at Orleans, Cape Cod.

On a quiet Sunday morning, July 21, 1918, the submarine, U-156, rose from the ocean waters a few hundred yards off the Orleans shore. In full view of numerous cottagers, the enemy sub leisurely began shelling the defenseless tug Perth Amboy and her three barges.

Exactly why these craft, of no particular military value, were chosen for attack has never been made known. It may have been an impulsive act of bravado by the Kaiser’s marauders or, possibly, a scare stunt to give Americans at home the jitters.

The Americans attacked, managed to get ashore in dories, while the firing continued. “One observer counted 147 shots.” There are conflicting versions, naturally, but it is agreed there was considerable shooting, and the U-boat operated throughout without meeting resistance.

FIRED ON COAST GUARD

At least one shot was aimed directly at the tower of a Coast Guard station. It missed by a small margin and landed in a marsh, according to the description given me by a former Coast Guardsman who was standing the tower watch at the time. The three barges were sunk. The Perth Amboy, while badly burned, was subsequently towed in for repairs, and she may even be in service today.

A Cape Cod man, strange as it may seem, was skipper of the Perth Amboy--Capt. Joe Perry hailed from Provincetown. Another Provincetown man, Henry J. James, son of a fishing captain in that old port at the tip-end of the Cape, was moved to write a significant book after the Orleans attack.

Of interest even today, this book--“German Subs in Yankee Waters”--came out not long before Pearl Harbor, though James (when I last heard from him he was superintendent of schools in Simsbury, Connecticut) had negotiated with publishers for a long time to get it into print.

Many American developments for defense in the present war coincide with suggestions made by James--small, fast boats for coastal defense, beam-trawlers for minesweeping, the registering of all small craft for coastal protection and other aids lacking in the last war.

The Cape Cod attack and its implications made a strong impression upon James in his youth; this spurred him on to devote many years of patient research to complete his book.

He relates that in 1918, during the final action of the last war, Germany had six U-boats operating in our waters and these alone sank 91 ships and took a toll of 368 lives. All this happened within a brief six months.

These half-dozen underseas boats operating along the Atlantic shore--3400 miles from their base at Kiel, Germany--all got away safely after their destructive work. All but one--this struck a mine in the North Sea, not far from Kiel--got back to the home base.

STRANGE MEETING AT SEA

A complete, authentic record of the Cape Cod U-boat attack is still lacking. Occasionally, however, a new bit of information is added to the story by one who was at the scene. One of the best anecdotes was told me by a physician who had a cottage on the shore and sat with a telephone in his hand, observing the shelling and giving a running account of the attack to the _Boston Globe_.

After the war this gentleman made a crossing on the Leviathan. He fell into conversation with a German steward, mentioning that he was from Cape Cod. The German asked if he had, by chance, ever heard of a U-boat attack there during the war, and then proceeded to give an accurate description of the Orleans attack. Thus, the doctor-reporter, who had scored the biggest newspaper scoop in Cape Cod journalism and an erstwhile member of the U-156 crew met in mid-Atlantic.

The German chuckled: “Yah! we had some fun on that cruise. You didn’t know, did you, that some of us went ashore one night in a rubber boat and attended a movie in your Beverly, Massachusetts!”

The only effort to repulse the attacking U-boat was made by a lone flier from a Naval station at nearby Chatham. He lacked ammunition and had to resort to bold bluffing. After diving a couple of times over the submarine, he made a final low swoop and let fly a monkey wrench at the heads of the crew standing on deck.

Some time ago an article I wrote about the Cape Cod attack was reprinted in a digest magazine. A retired navy officer, in a little town in Pennsylvania, read it. He wrote me: “Well do I remember that dull overcast Sabbath morning, as I was the fellow who threw the monkey wrench.” And, he invited me to drop in, if I ever got around his way, and he’d tell me “the whole story.”

EASTHAM----

_Local Boy Makes Good On
First Bombing of Tokio_

Eastham, Cape Cod, has a real claim to present-day fame. This unexciting, though historic little settlement, near the outer end of the sickle, is the home of Master Sgt. Edwin W. Horton, Jr., member of the Doolittle party on the first bombing of Tokio in World War II.

On his return to this country, Horton, at the first opportunity, hastened back to little Eastham for a quiet visit. And brought his bride to introduce to the home folks.

Eastham is small but historically she is important. The original name was Nauset. Here the Pilgrims, exploring after their arrival on the Mayflower, had their first encounter with the Indians. The forefathers focused particular attention on the fertile soil, Thomas Prence, Governor of Plymouth Colony, describing it as the “richest soyle, for ye most part a blackish & deep mould, much like that wher groweth ye best Tobacco in Virginia.” Today Eastham is still outstanding as a farming place, noted especially for her asparagus production.

_Provincetown for beauty,
Wellfleet for pride,
If it wasn’t for milk cans
Eastham ’d’ a died._

Thus the sing-song went when, later, the lush Nauset dairy herds provided milk for a good part of the Cape. And Eastham, truly farming-minded, would fling back these better known lines:

_The Cape Cod girls they have no combs,
They comb their hair with codfish bones;
The Cape Cod Boys they have no sleds,
They slide downhill on codfish heads._

PILGRIM’S TREE STILL BLOSSOMS

Life still springs from at least one of the plantings of those far distant days of the forefathers. Thomas Prence, who first set foot on the Cape in 1621, subsequently built a house for himself and his bride near Fort Hill. He planted a little pear tree there; it had been brought over from England.

Each Spring a pear tree blossoms on this site. Thoreau, in the book on his Cape Cod travels, refers to the planting by Thomas Prence and states the tree had been blown down a few months previous to his visit to the scene. A modern historian, however, records that Thomas Prence’s pear tree is still bearing, a sapling having been planted after the old tree had been swept down in a gale. Thoreau quotes the following tribute by a Cape Codder, a Mr. Herman Doane:

“_That exiled band long since have passed away,
And still, old Tree! Thou standest in the place
Where Prence’s hand did plant thee in his day,--
An undersigned memorial of his race._”

THE LAST WORKING WINDMILL

The lone workable windmill on Cape Cod is located in Eastham. Before Pearl Harbor there would be a ceaseless trek of Summer visitors to the Seth Knowles’ windmill and Miller John Fulcher would demonstrate its ancient workings with true professional eclat. He’d set her sails, swing her into the wind, give the lift wheel a deft spin, and, in jig time, Miller John would turn out a bushel of ground corn before the eyes of the intrigued city folk. Those who seemed to know asserted that Miller John had the “miller’s thumb”. Dipping his thumb into the trough, he would decide just when the corn was properly ground.

The story of the old windmill is vague. Some say it gave service originally in Plymouth and then was “flaked” across the Bay to be re-erected in Eastham. The date 1793 is nailed inside, but this still leaves unanswered the point as to when and where its story begins.

There’s a tablet near a stretch of Eastham beach that memorializes the “First Encounter.” The event is described in William Bradford’s narrative:

“But, presently, all on ye sudain, they heard a great & strange crie, which they knew to be the same voyces they heard in ye night, though they varied their notes, & one of their company being abroad came runing in & cried, ‘Men, Indeans, Indeans’; and withall, their arrowes came flying amongst them. Their men rane with all speed to recover their armes, as by ye good providence of God they did.... The crie of ye Indeans was dreadfull, espetially when they saw ther men rune out of ye randevoue towourds ye shallop, to recover their armes, the Indeans wheeling aboute upon them. But some runing out with coats of malle on, & cutlesses in their hands, they soon got their armes & let flye amongst them, and quickly stopped their violence.”

Bradford’s narrative reveals, also, why the redskins were in a war-making mood.

Six years previous “one Hunt, a mr. of a ship” had visited this scene. Hunt had seized 24 of the Nauset Indians and taken them to Spain in slave chains and, it is elsewhere related, he “sold these silly savages for rials of eight.”

What changes are wrought by the years! Where slavery was introduced in the early 17th century, a native son now is ranked with America’s great heroes in a global war for freedom.

SOUTH WELLFLEET----

_Our World Communications System
Began with Marconi’s Triumph
On a Lonely Ocean Bluff_

How many Americans know that our world radio system was given birth on Cape Cod?

Guglielmo Marconi achieved his great goal on the oceanside of South Wellfleet, out near the end of the Cape. Here, on the Sabbath night of January 19, 1903, he got through the first trans-Atlantic wireless telegraph message. Modern radio developed from that beginning.

The overseas wireless message was a greeting from President Theodore Roosevelt to King Edward. It read:

White House, Jan. 19, 1903

His Majesty Edward VII
London, England

In taking advantage of the wonderful triumph
of scientific research and ingenuity which has been
achieved in perfecting a system of wireless telegraphy,
I extend on behalf of the American people,
most cordial greetings and good wishes to you and
to all the people of the British Empire.

Theodore Roosevelt

King Edward’s response came several days later--proof that Marconi had completely succeeded in his long work of experimenting.

THE FIRST-HAND STORY

Then Charlie Paine, gaunt Cape Cod native, entered the scene. He had been engaged to get the King’s message to the Wellfleet telegraph office, whence it was to be dispatched to the White House. But, Marconi’s horse-and-buggy courier, holding to an old Cape Cod trait, showed not a twitch of emotion--“he wasn’t goin’ to kill his horse for nobody.” Old Charlie Paine passed on about two years ago in his native South Wellfleet. This is how he related his part in the big day of excitement:

“The first message Marconi ever got through from the other side of the ocean I took from his hand to carry to the telegraph office. I’d waited about six days to get it, with Black Diamond hitched up in the buggy most of the time. We jes stayed there, ready to go any minute.

“It was winter and colder’n Greenland. Dimey had two blankets over her and I was wearin’ Steve Paine’s wolf coat that he shot up in Alaska. All of a sudden I see Marconi come rearin’ out of the plant with both hands full of tape. He was jes like a crazy man.

“‘You wait there, Paine, and I’ll be with you in a minute,’ he shouted, and started for his office. I got my buggy turned around ready. The nearest telegraph office was Wellfleet, four miles away. When he came out again he had two big envelopes in his hand. They were messages to be telegraphed to Washington and New York. I found out later that it was a message from King Edward to President Theodore Roosevelt, for one envelope was addressed to the White House and the other to a New York newspaper.

“‘Drive like the wind!’ says Marconi. ‘If you kill your horse I’ll buy you another.’

“Well, I started off for Wellfleet as fast as I could make Dimey go. But when I got over the dunes, out of sight, I slowed down. I couldn’t see any need of goin’ crazy over a telegraph message. ’Twas four miles of hard goin’ and I wasn’t goin’ to kill my horse for nobody. Jim Swett was telegraph operator at Wellfleet railroad station then and I gave him the two envelopes. And that’s all there was to it.”

MARCONI WAS JUST 29

Marconi was not yet in his 30th year. First he had proved wireless practicable by communicating across the French channel from his native Bologna in 1899. Working at Cornwall, he made contact with Newfoundland. His Cape Cod transmission of President Roosevelt’s message was the crowning achievement of his career. Thereon the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America became absorbed in a brisk overseas business. The _London Times_ received part of its American news through this Cape Cod station.

The term Marconigram became familiar to American ears. Marconi’s system was adopted by the British and Italian navies. He took charge of wireless operations of the Italian government during the last war. He was awarded the Nobel prize for physics in 1909, and the J. Scott medal for the invention of wireless telegraphy on June 5, 1931.

The pioneering was done on a high bluff overlooking the endless sweep of the Atlantic. Work was started in 1901. Twenty immense spars, 200 feet high, were erected in a circle. The station proper was a one-story bungalow. Marconi and his crew slept and ate in a cottage a few paces away. The big poles hadn’t been up long when a nor’easter howled down on the exposed spot. They were knocked over like matchsticks. Ice contributed to the damage and the loss ran into $50,000. Then four towers of steel and wood, rooted with blocks of cement and cables were erected, and they stayed put.

FAMOUS SITE UNMARKED

Mrs. Eliza J. Doane of South Wellfleet cooked for Marconi and his men. She said: “Mr. Marconi could play the piano something grand, and he had a pleasing voice. He was especially fond of ‘Old Black Joe’. He and the others would sing that almost every time they got around the piano.”

A few years ago, when I last visited the scene, only the twisted ends of cable, the broken cement blocks, studded with bolts, and a few heavy timbers, revealed the historic scene. Unless the storm-lashed tides have crumbled the embankment, the important debris is still there. There was talk of establishing a “Marconi Park,” with a suitable tablet. Prof. Frederick C. Hicks of Yale Law School led a group of summer cottagers sponsoring the project. But, something stymied the plans.

During its commercial career, the South Wellfleet station had a range of about 1600 miles. At night, under favorable conditions, it transmitted messages to a distance of 3500 miles. The government closed this and other wireless stations for the duration of the last war. When peace came the Chatham station of the Radio Corporation of America, a few towns up the Cape, took over the Marconi commercial business.

ADMIRAL NIMITZ----

_Cape Cod’s Most Famous
Summer Resident_

Cape Cod’s most distinguished summer visitor--Admiral Chester W. Nimitz--plans to resume his summer vacationing in Wellfleet, Cape Cod, after the war.

The great Naval leader who is directing the defeat of Japan manages to keep up correspondence with his sister-in-law, Miss Elizabeth E. Freeman of Wellfleet. Miss Freeman, who is Mrs. Nimitz’s sister, says he has written her how he misses the Cape and that he looks forward to his return.

For many years the Admiral and his family have vacationed in Wellfleet. Their haven is deeply secluded in the woods on Gull Pond Road. The inaccessibility of the place is the reason why, perhaps, so few people are aware of the Cape Cod ties of one of the illustrious figures of modern world history.

The Admiral’s efficient and courageous son, Lieut. Commander Chester W. Nimitz, Jr., who has been twice decorated for heroism, calls Wellfleet his home. He has done so in making out his personal Naval records ever since his graduation from Annapolis, Miss Freeman informed me. As late as last summer Commander Nimitz managed to get in a Wellfleet visit, and his wife and child spent all the summer there.

FISHING HIS RECREATION

The last time Admiral Nimitz and Mrs. Nimitz vacationed at Wellfleet was in April, 1941. Members of his family, however, continue to visit there at least once or twice every year. The two older Nimitz daughters, Catherine, who is head of the music division in the Washington, D. C. Library, and Nancy, who is in the Information Division of the library, were at Wellfleet for a week last spring--they brought with them some Navy friends and people of the musical world. Catherine and Nancy plan to return next September and spend a month.

A Cape Cod story on Admiral Nimitz reflects the same quiet dignity and staunchness of character that folks at home vision when they read of him in the great war dispatches out of the Pacific. Fundamentally, he is a man of simple tastes. He has done nothing on the Cape to cause a personal headline in the newspapers and, from summer to summer, has moved among his less gifted Wellfleet neighbors practically unnoticed. Which is the way he seems to like it.

“Most of his time in Wellfleet is spent walking in the woods and fishing. These are his chief pleasures. He reads of course, but he doesn’t spend as much time at it as he does roaming in the outdoors. He is a good fisherman,” relates Miss Freeman.

The Admiral and Mrs. Nimitz, nee Catherine Vance Freeman, daughter of the late Richard R. Freeman, a Boston ship broker, were married in 1913. She was born in Wollaston, Mass. Since birth she and others of her family have summered at Wellfleet. After her marriage, however, she travelled far to be with her husband, living on the West Coast and in China, Germany and other foreign places.

At first the Nimitzes spent their summer visits at the old Freeman family house, outside Wellfleet, on Route 6. During the last war the family summer home was re-established in the remote Gull Pond section, one of the most primitive and lovely spots on Cape Cod. Here Mrs. Nimitz’s sister makes her year-round residence. The former residence is now owned by Edmund Wilson, literary critic of _The New Yorker_ magazine.

ADMIRAL KING’S JOB HERE

Some time ago a large picture was on the front page of the _New York Times_, showing Admiral Ernest J. King, Commander-in-Chief of the United States fleet, presenting the second Distinguished Service medal to Admiral Nimitz. Forming an admiring audience were Admiral William F. Halsey, Mrs. Nimitz and 13-year-old Mary Nimitz. It is an interesting coincidence to set down in a Cape Cod story that Admiral King also is no stranger to Cape Cod. He used to take many a long walk to stretch his sea legs on Provincetown’s Commercial Street when he was a Captain in the Navy and in charge of salvaging the tragic submarine S-4, sunken outside Provincetown harbor with a loss of 40 lives.

TRURO----

_The “Blond Norseman”--Cape
Cod’s Most Ancient
Ghost Visitor_

Ten years ago, approximately, the Blond Norseman came out of his spirit world to re-visit Cape Cod. That is the latest report on this most ancient member of Cape Cod’s gallery of wraiths.

The setting is the wild, beach-grass country of Corn Hill, Truro. Here, close by the far-flung shore of Cape Cod Bay, where only the seagull’s lonely cry breaks the silence and sand peeps skitter to and fro on their ceaseless foraging, stands a weather-battered, sprawling frame structure known as “The Fish House.” For a long time the sea harvesters used it for a headquarters; later it became the loved dwelling of a large family who would remain there as long as the winds and the rains of late fall would permit.

On one of these late fall nights, the lady of the household was awakened abruptly from a sound sleep. Sitting up, her gaze was drawn to the door that faced the noisy surf of the bay shore. The door was flung wide. A “startling blue light” illumined the figure of a tall, distinctly blond man, so powerful of stature and awesomely erect, that he filled the door frame. The apparition did not move, its presence was only momentary, for, in the next instant, the lady was staring at the gaping door. She got up, closed the door and spent the rest of the night in wakeful wonderment. But, to this day, the vivid impression of the brief visit of the Blond Norseman remains with her.

The following day she mentioned it to a friend. He was not greatly surprised, for he recalled a nighttime stroll along the beach some weeks previous and related how he had discovered a bright light that loomed up not many yards ahead of him. Thinking it was a man with a lantern, the stroller called out. He got no answer, and the light disappeared instantly. He was sure, that night, he had witnessed something supernatural.

ANCIENT GRAVE MAY BE CLUE

Then the lady mentioned the incident to the owner of a large fish business, whose plant is two or three miles up the beach. He, too, was sympathetic. “Oh, yes,” he responded, “that’s the Blond Norseman. My men have talked about him often. It’s an old story to them.”

Commander Donald B. MacMillan, the Arctic explorer, of Provincetown, likewise gave a respectful ear and even suggested that the grave of the Norse warrior who had returned to this hurly-burly world might be located near the Fish House. Norsemen colonized along the North Atlantic coast. Historians say that Leif Ericson and his men were the earliest settlers on the Cape and that Thorwald died from an Indian’s arrow in Yarmouth on the Bay side. It is said that as he lay mortally wounded, Thorwald told his men, “Bury me here; place a cross at my head, another at my feet, call it ‘Crossness’ forever more.”

DIGGING PARTY UNCOVERS SKELETONS

The grave that might be that of the Blond Norseman was found by a Mayflower party of explorers, according to Mourt’s Relation. The discovery was made after the Pilgrims found the Indians’ cache of corn on the lofty eminence now called Corn Hill. Two skeletons were turned up by the second digging party, one a man’s and the other, possibly that of an Indian child. The man’s skull “had fine yellow hair still on it.” Norse scholars have shown much interest in this grave and there has been considerable conjecture concerning it. But, little of real factual value on the Blond Norseman has turned up thus far.

It might be assumed that this daddy of all Cape Cod ghosts merely returned to this earthly world to go over scenes dear to his heart. For it is generally established that spirits that have stalked the Cape are not the vengeful kind, but rather companionable and of a comradely mood for returning to places fragrant in their memories.

A FRONT-PAGE GHOST

This reporter once covered a dramatic spook-story in the early part of his Cape Cod newspaper career. The incident was unusual because it involved a trouble-brewing spook and made unhappiness all around.

A lady from New York had rented an old house facing the highway in North Truro and had paid $200 down, intending to operate a summer tea room. But her uneasiness grew following each night she spent alone in the old house. There would be the slamming of a door at an eerie hour after midnight, or the frequent tread of creaking footsteps up and down the narrow little front staircase. Finally there came the morning when a blanket-fog came down into the valley and enveloped the quaint old house.

The New York lady sat chatting in the kitchen with a Portuguese neighbor and as they talked the weird thing happened. A big, sturdy rocker that stood in a corner of the room began to rock. Back and forth, with an even motion, just as though someone was in the seat, the rocking continued.

Spellbound, the two women watched the strange business for at least two or three minutes. It was the last straw for the lady from New York. She made the door in two bounds and didn’t even bother to grasp up a handbag on the table that contained a sizeable sum. She forfeited the $200 rental payment and returned to Manhattan the next day after a more courageous neighbor had ventured into the haunted house to retrieve the abandoned handbag.

A CAPE CODDER----

_Pioneered Our
Trans-Atlantic Steamship Service_

Truro, Cape Cod, looks out over the heaving Atlantic to the horizon, and beyond lies Spain. Great romance colors the adventures of Truro’s seafaring men of long, long ago. There is also, in consistent fashion, the darkest tragedy.

Truro is the birthplace of Edward K. Collins, who established the first trans-Atlantic steamship service from the American shore. His elegantly equipped paddle-wheel steamer, “Atlantic”, embarked on the first crossing on April 27, 1850 and completed the voyage within 11 days.

The story of Edward Collins’ career has all the elements to make an exciting novel or a Hollywood movie--for the lad of 15 who went to New York to become the nation’s mightiest ship operator--launching “the most ambitious and spectacular attempt of the American merchant marine to challenge British supremacy”--finally ended up as a hum-drum land-bound provision dealer, yet “rosy, hearty and not careworn as when he had those mighty American steamships resting on his shoulders.”

Seafaring was deep-rooted as the trade of the Collins family. Edward began with his father in the shipping and commission business; they operated a service to Vera Cruz and New Orleans. The father died, then the E. K. Collins & Co. firm was founded and its sign was prominent on the New York waterfront for almost a half century. Associated with Collins was a Count Foster of New Orleans.

CALLED “THEATRICAL LINE”

The spectacular Cape Codder and his partner established the Dramatic Line, to run packets between New York and England. Capt. Lorenzo D. Baker of Wellfleet, Cape Cod, was scoffed at when he announced he was going to popularize the banana in the United States and so was Collins when shipping men heard he was building ships of 1000 tons. His critics argued there would not be cargoes large enough to fill them, nor would merchants trust their goods in them. So, in their hoots, they coined a name for the Dramatic Line. They called it the “Theatrical Line” because Collins named his vessels for famous authors and actors: Shakespeare, Siddons, Garrick, Sheridan and Roscius, to mention a few.

Collins had become one of New York’s richest men when the curtain raised on the era of steam. He visioned the possibilities and watched closely after England gave Samuel Cunard a subsidy mail contract in 1838. The Cunard Line berthed its first ship at this shore on July 18, 1840. Collins, according to the record at this point, saw a challenge in the British enterprise. He barged into a financing spree, determined “to drive the Cunarders out of business.”

Collins went to the nation’s capital for the money he needed. There he began on a grandiose scale and gradually descended with a series of headaches to ultimate ruin. His first triumph was the granting of a government subsidy of $385,000 a year for a period of ten years. He and his associates were pledged to build five steamers in the Collins-style, which would make twenty round trips annually, carrying the mails. In 1852 fortnightly service was established and the subsidy was increased to $858,000 annually.

The Collins Line prospered for two years. Then the clouds began to gather.

THE TRAGIC DECLINE

On Sept. 27, 1854, off Cape Race, New York, a Collins steamer, the Artic, collided with a small French steamer, the Vesta. The Arctic went down with a loss of 233 passengers and 135 members of the crew. Among the victims was Edward Collins’ wife, the former Mary Ann Woodruff, and his son and his daughter. The master of the Arctic, Capt. James C. Luce, of Martha’s Vineyard ancestry, held his own child in his arms through the awful scenes of panic. As he was about to launch a raft, some debris from the paddlebox struck and killed the child.

Then came the second blow. The steamer Pacific of the Collins Line put out from Liverpool on January 25, 1856, with 45 passengers and a crew of 141. She was never heard from again. No clue to her fate was ever turned up.

Meanwhile Collins had been having his troubles in Washington, and now they were piling up. A public clamor was on; the general theme was that the Cunard Line competition was too keen. Congress withdrew the second subsidy. A contract was made with the rival line of Cornelius Vanderbilt. Gradually the Collins Line sank to failure and the panic of 1857 put a period to its glorious adventuring. Fortunes were lost by investors in the line.

PROVINCETOWN----

_Its Town Seal Reads,
“Birthplace of American Liberty”_

Millions of Americans do not know the complete story of the founding of our nation. Many history books and most orators fail to begin at the beginning when the pioneering of the Pilgrim Fathers is related. Plymouth Rock is the accepted symbol and the starting point. The important, earlier events on Cape Cod are passed up, particularly the contribution the Pilgrim Fathers made to our form of free government during their Cape Cod stay, before sailing across the bay to establish their settlement at Plymouth.

If you began at the beginning of the Pilgrims’ story on this continent, you would find that the Mayflower did not sail direct to Plymouth, as is the common impression. She first put in at the outer end of Cape Cod on Nov. 11, 1620, (O. S.), after a violent, 63-day voyage from Holland, and it was on the sands of what is now Provincetown that her weary passengers first set foot on American soil. Here they found haven for a full month, here they signed the historic Mayflower Compact, establishing their system of self-government. They began their reconnoitering, found their first drinking water, their first corn and had their first encounter with the Indians on Cape Cod.

HOW OUR FREEDOM BEGAN

But, all this is not to deny Plymouth her fame, even though the town seal of Provincetown does bear the words, “Birthplace of American Liberty.” That claim has been a bone of contention for a long time. And, when a Massachusetts State official was asked some years ago why the Provincetown phase in the story of the founding of the nation had received so little attention, he could only suggest, “Perhaps it happened that way because Plymouth was 300 years ahead of Provincetown in her advertising.”

Actually, however, the signing of the Mayflower Compact was not the first step taken to establish free Government in the New World. Our democratic government was first introduced at Jamestown Colony the year previous to the Pilgrims’ arrival on Cape Cod. There, on June 30, 1619, America’s first legislative body convened.

John Quincy Adams said of the Mayflower Compact: “This is perhaps the only instance in human history, of that positive, original social concept, which speculative philosophers have imagined as the only legitimate source of government.”

In Mourt’s Relation there is Governor Bradford’s simple, though picturesque description of Provincetown Harbor and ancient Cape Cod as the Pilgrims discovered the scene:

WHAT THE PILGRIMS FOUND

“It is a good harbor and pleasant bay, circled round, except in the entrance, which is about four miles from land to land, compassed to the very sea, with oaks, pines, juniper, sassafras, and other sweet wood. It is a harbor wherein a thousand sail of ship may safely ride. There we relieved ourselves with wood and water, and refreshed our people while our shallop was fitted to coast the bay, to search for an habitation; there was the greatest store of fowl that we ever saw. And every day we saw whales playing hard by us, of which, in that place, if we had instruments, and means to take them we might have made a very rich return, which to our great grief, we wanted. Our master and his mate, and others experienced in fishing, professed that we might have made three or four thousand pounds worth of oil; they preferred it before Greenland whale fishing and purposed the next Winter to fish for whale here.”

The first of the exploring Pilgrims “were forced to wade a bow-shoot or two in going aland, which caused many to get colds and coughs, for it was many times freezing cold weather.” Much sickness developed in the first harsh Winter and some deaths occurred later in Plymouth.

WILL ROGERS ON THE PILGRIMS

Some years ago Plymouth and Provincetown engaged in a harmless tiff over the rightful ownership of the title, “Birthplace of American Liberty.” The late Will Rogers, cowboy humorist, who was of Indian descent, was drawn into the controversy via the radio. Said Will:

“What makes my Cherokee blood boil is that the Pilgrims were allowed to land anywhere. As a race the Pilgrims could never be compared with the Indians. I’m sure that it was only through the extreme generosity of my ancestors that the Pilgrims were allowed to land at all.

“Anyhow, Provincetown says the Pilgrims found some corn buried there, and that this saved them from starving to death. Then they shot the Indians. That was because they had not stored any more corn.

“Next they prayed. You know one thing the Pilgrims always did was to pray, but you never saw a picture of a Pilgrim who didn’t have a gun beside him. That was to see that he got what he was praying for!”

CAPE COD FISHING----

_Excitement of Catching Tuna
In The Traps_

A hefty axe is the main implement of a trap-fishing crew when the tuna run is on in Cape Cod waters. A tuna may weigh 50 to 1,000 pounds and often a net is crowded with them. A crew of five men, operating a 50-foot boat, have their hands full when they move into the confines of a big pole-net to take the clumsy and frantic fish. So, the stout-handled axe is brought into play before the tuna are brought aboard.

The killing technique is a thoroughly gory business. The axe-swinger, a seasoned hand, rarely misses when he aims a lusty blow at the lump that is atop the tuna’s head. One expert blow on this vital spot usually kills the fish instantly, but, the process of maneuvering the tuna for the kill is highly active, calling for a nimble foot and split-second judgment. Thereon the blood flies freely and profusely.

Sometimes, in these wild jousts, a man goes overboard. Occasionally an arm or a leg is broken during the topside excitement. But the tuna, for all its size, does not attack. The fisherman has only to keep a weather eye peeled to keep clear of its mighty tail.

A trapper relates an experience he had when he tried “a new way” of dispatching a tuna. “I shoved the gaff down his mouth with everything I had. A few minutes later I woke up in the bottom of the boat with a big goose-egg on my head.” Another trapper was dragged overboard, gaff and all, and the tuna towed him clear out of the trap. He let go as the tuna dived under and escaped, gaff and all.

FIND WHALES, TOO

Once in a while old leviathan himself stumbles into one of Cape Cod’s fish traps. He’s usually a finback whale, valueless to present-day fishermen, and just a nuisance. His great, threshing flukes threaten death. The trap has to be partially dismantled so that the crew, working at a safe distance, can shoo him out. Then follows a whole day’s work of repairing the damage.

In Cape Cod waters there are more pole-traps, or weirs, than in any other section of the Atlantic coast. Most of them are off Provincetown, and part of the large profits they yield help enrich the town government coffers. Long poles of tough hickory are shipped in from Connecticut. Seventy of these are needed to drape the nets of a single trap. First in the structure of a trap is the “leader”, a 900-foot subterranean fence. This fence begins in shoal water and extends offshore to the main body of the trap. When fish swim into it, they do not turn inshore. As a rule they follow along the fence and swim offshore.

Thus, the schools obligingly move into the mouth of the trap. From there they go into the trap “heart”, which is the first stage of their captivity, and thence into the “bowl”. Once inside the bowl the baffled finny tribes are completely hoodwinked and rarely escape into open water. Here they swim around and around until the trapping crew pays the morning visit and the net is hauled up and pursed for the bailers to go into action.

Commercial fishing in Cape Cod Bay provided the means for establishing Massachusetts’ public school system. The Pilgrims appropriated the profits to public uses. Portions of the fishery fund were allocated to various towns. Barnstable, Cape Cod, being one of the beneficiaries in 1683.

When the Pilgrims went to King James to get his consent for the Mayflower voyage to America, the King, according to Edward Winslow’s narrative, inquired, “What profit might arise?” A single word was the Pilgrims’ response: “Fishing.” James was satisfied: “So God have my soul, ’tis an honest trade, ’twas the Apostle’s own calling.”

ROMANTIC EARLY DAYS

Subsequently, Captain John Smith, after he had pocketed a profit of $7500 on a shipment of dried Cape Cod fish to Spain, is credited with the statement that the richest mine in Spain was not as valuable as the Cape Cod fisheries.

Whales first were caught in these waters. When they became scarce vessels were fitted to go out in search of them. On one voyage, Capt. Jesse Holbrook of Wellfleet, active in the Revolutionary War period, killed 52 sperm whales. His skill was so good a London company employed him for 12 years to give instruction to their employees.

Franklin Atkins was a Cape Codder who had a rare experience while whaling in West Indies waters. Leviathan’s flukes struck the small boat he was in and sent the boat kiting from the sea. In his descent Mr. Atkins fell directly into the whale’s gaping mouth. He was gashed and bruised, but managed to free himself. A boat crew picked him up and he lay in a critical condition for four weeks. In later years Mr. Atkins would boast, “Jonah and me were the only two persons that have been in a whale’s mouth and come out alive.”

Ambergris, a secretion found in the intestines of an occasional sperm whale, and worth more than its weight in gold, was a prize the old whalemen always were on the alert for. The story is told of how a Cape Cod crew, jittery with excitement over an ambergris find in a whale they were spading alongside the vessel, lost it. In their eagerness of hauling up the treasure they fumbled. The ambergris chunk slipped from the slings. The crew stared with blank dismay as they watched the prize worth $25,000 slowly vanish in 60 fathoms of water.

It’s small boat, inshore fishing in these modern times. Yet there is a constant yield of millions of pounds of fish taken by net or hook. There are whiting, mackerel, cod, haddock, herring, butterfish, bluefish, squid, sea bass, pollock and many other species.

ON CAPE COD----

_Is the Second Most
Powerful Beacon on
the Atlantic Coast_

The second most powerful beacon on the Atlantic coast is located on the far end of Cape Cod. Highland Light is situated near the edge of a high bluff on the ocean side of North Truro. Its nightly beam, revolving and flashing to all points of the compass, has guided mariners for almost 150 years.

The champ of all beacons on this coast is Neversink Light, at Sandy Hook.

Countless summer visitors would look over Highland Light in peacetime, but now, of course, visitors are barred. They came from every state in the union and from foreign places, for this faithful landmark has always been a standard attraction for the Cape Cod sightseer. Chief Boatswain’s Mate William Joseph, who has been in charge of the light for a long while, recalls they asked some odd questions. For example:

“Is the light lit in the wintertime?”

“Do you stay here year ’round?”

“Does the fog start up the foghorn?”

“Why do you keep ‘blankets’ on the lenses in the daytime?”

“Does the tide ever come over the banking (the edge of the banking is a mere 140 feet above the shoreline)?”

“Did you ever help catch rum-runners with the light?”

“How do you keep awake all night long?”

COVER LENSES TO PREVENT FIRES

But, the lightkeeper, his assistants and their womenfolk take it all in stride with cheerful patience.

The mighty lenses are covered up in daytime, but not with “blankets”. The lightkeeper gives the reason for this: “Every morning we put a linen covering over the lenses and over that a covering of starched linen. There is no covering on the north side of the light because the sun doesn’t hit there.

“The coverings are necessary to protect surrounding property. The lighthouse lenses, if they were left uncovered, would set afire a building 25 feet away, or anything else that would burn.”

There have been numerous other lamps before the present electrically operated one, with its $30,000 French glassworks and four revolving bullseyes. The original light, established in 1797, was stationary and burned whale oil in wick lamps, much like the old-fashioned sitting room lamp. The light has always stood on the present site.

Ashore the great beacon is always referred to as Highland Light. “But,” remarks the keeper, “if you were lost out there and tried to locate Highland Light on the chart, you’d be plum out o’ luck. The official name is Cape Cod Light and that’s the name all the mariners go by.”

Highland Light has cast its flash over many a dramatic event in its long lifetime. Almost within its shadow, the first piece of wreckage that revealed the fate of the Steamer Portland--New England’s most appalling sea tragedy to this day--was washed ashore in the terrible gale of November, 1898. Countless rescues by the breeches buoy, and the foundering of old-time sailing ships were witnessed there. Mighty gales, 75 to 80 miles an hour, have belabored the lighthouse, but it has breasted them all.

A MARKER FOR ZEPPELIN

The German Zeppelin, burned at Lakehurst, N. J., made a practice of pointing its course directly over Highland Light on its return trips to Germany.

The light has one implacable enemy--fog. When the heavy vapor banks roll in, the beam is practically invisible. In a real thick fog not even the glow of the lamp can be seen by one standing at the base of the tower.

Many visitors, noting the close proximity of the lighthouse to the edge of the shore embankment, have inquired whether there is danger the sea will some day undermine Highland Light. Keeper Joseph has never worried about this. When, in 1796, the Government purchased the tract of land for the erection of the lighthouse, the reservation comprised ten acres. Storms and pounding surf have swept six acres of the original site into the sea.

FIRST REAL GLIDER FLIGHT IN U. S.----

_Witnessed Over Cape Cod Waters_

The invasion of Sicily was begun with glider transports. And, the beginning of glider-flying in the United States was witnessed on Cape Cod. Sixteen years ago the first extended glider flight in America was demonstrated by a German expert.

On July 29, 1928, at Corn Hill, Truro, near the outer end of this historic peninsula, Peter Hesselbach of Darmstadt, Germany, was catapulted over the brink of a 100-foot bluff in a Darmstadt-made glider. He remained aloft for four hours and five minutes. A few days before this, Hesselbach smashed Orville Wright’s record of soaring nine minutes and forty-five seconds. A group of helpful American citizens, hauling on a rope, snapped him into the ether on the ocean side of Truro. He maintained a motorless flight for 55 minutes.

Glider flying has progressed a great deal since those pioneering flights. Soon after a school was established at South Wellfleet, but it didn’t last long. Much activity developed in California and in the East. Elmira, N. Y., became the headquarters of motorless flying enthusiasts. Before our entry into the war, Parker Leonard of Osterville, Cape Cod, was the chief glider experimenter in this area. Now he is serving his country as a glider specialist.

STUDIED THE GULLS

Peter Hesselbach and his German comrades who accompanied him to this country were a companionable lot and popular with the Summer folk that Summer of 1928. Corn Hill is situated in a primitive setting, with unbounded spaces of hills, marsh land, and beach, and faces the great sweep of Cape Cod Bay. It is a lofty hill and on its top is a bronze tablet attesting that here the reconnoitering Pilgrims found the Indians’ cache of corn which enabled them to survive the first hard year in Plymouth. And, looking out over the waters one discerns the outline of Provincetown Harbor where the Mayflower was anchored and where the Pilgrim fathers signed their Compact, the genesis of our American form of free Government. A group of rude cottages are perched atop Corn Hill. Two of them were occupied by the German glider experts. A haus frau, brought in from somewhere, served up hearty German dishes and all in all it was a very pleasant Summer. For recreation, the visitors whizzed into Provincetown for ice cream cones and gingerale--“gingeraley” they called it. Often they would sit for long periods at the end of a Provincetown wharf, studying the soaring, wheeling, dipping flight of the gulls.

Sometimes their American neighbors would pull on a rope and lift the glider into the air on the numerous practice flights. Setting off on his four hours and five minutes-flight, Peter Hesselbach was propelled over the edge of Corn Hill by a rubber slingshot and a tail-tripper arrangement that was clamped to a planking and worked by a lever. Several hundred Summerers and natives from surrounding towns witnessed that epochal event. A good representation of Boston newspaper cameramen took pictures of the 55-minute flight. Newsreel men also made a recording.

It was a beautiful, bright day when Hesselbach got off on his long flight at 9:55 A. M. He was hoping to be able to beat the world record for a soaring flight at that time--14 hours, 23 minutes. A series of bonfires stretching for two miles along the beach would have guided him on the nocturnal part of his adventure. For sustenance he took with him a few sandwiches and some coffee.

TRAVELLED 120 MILES

Spectators exclaimed at the graceful serenity of the fine glider craft, wafting silently with the air currents over their heads against a blue and cloud-flecked sky. The Darmstadt wafted northward and southward on a one to two miles’ course, going back and forth over the white-capped bay or surrounding hills and banking gracefully over Corn Hill on each return trip.

Once, as Peter Hesselbach circled Corn Hill, Captain Paul Roehre, a gliding comrade, roared up to him:

“Are you hungry?”

With a wave of his hand, Hesselbach responded, “What’s the use?”

Finally he landed at Wellfleet, an adjoining town. The writer picked him up at a crossroads and brought him back to Corn Hill. These were his first words:

“I came down because I could not fly for the hills and gain altitude after the wind changed more to the north. I went off my course purposely. I wanted to study air conditions. This territory is ideal for soaring. It has much better possibilities than Rossiten, which is one of the best soaring places in Germany.”

“My altimeter shows I reached a maximum altitude of 350 feet. The wind velocity was about 30 miles an hour. I soared a total of 120 miles.”

It’s a far cry from Cape Cod to Sicily. But that’s how glider flying actually got its springboard start in America.

Transcriber’s Notes

Perceived typographical errors have been silently corrected.

Colloquial spelling in dialog has been retained as in the original.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation and compound words have not been
standardized.