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From: Bobbie Hall <>
Subject: [MABARNST] Cape Cod Pilot, Ch. 7, part 4
Date: Sun, 03 Mar 2002 12:19:22 -0600
References: <200112191104.fBJB48Q10270@lists2.rootsweb.com>


======================================================================
Cape Cod Pilot, by Jeremiah Diggs, American Guide Series, published by
Modern Pilgrim Press, Provincetown, MA, 1937. This was a work
underwritten by the Federal Writers Project, Works Project
Administration (WPA) for the State of Massachusetts.
======================================================================

Chapter VII - ORLEANS [part 4]

If the newspapers come out with a story of a new sea serpent,
discovered on or off Nauset Beach, don't believe all you read in the
newspapers either. The finding of a sea serpent, his skull, his
tailbone, or his tracks, is almost an annual phenomenon along this coast.

A report of the first such discovery on record in Cape waters was made
by B. Franklin, uncle of Benjamin:

"Boston, Sept. 28, 1719 - On the 17 Instant there appear'd in Cape-Cod
harbor a strange creature, His head like a Lyons, with very large
Teeth, Ears hanging down, a large Beard, a long beard, with curling
hair on his head, his Body a bout 16 foot Long, a round buttock, with
a short Tayle of a yellowish colour, the Whale boats gave him chase,
he was very fierce and gnashed his teeth with great rage when they
attackt him, he was shot at 3 times and Wounded, when he rose out of
the Water he always faced the boats in that angry manner, the
Harpaniers struck at him, but in vaine, for after 5 hours chase, he
took to sea again. None of the people ever saw his like before."

And so, another big one gets away. A down-east shipmaster, in a
statement made in 1818 and "sworn to before a justice of the peace of
Kennebec County, Maine," gives us another noble specimen, in an even
more dramatic pose: *

"At six o'clock in the afternoon of June 21st, in the packet Delia,
plying between Boston and Hallowell, ... Captain Shubael WEST and
fifteen others on board with him, saw an object directly ahead which
he had no doubt was the sea serpent ... engaged in a fight with a
large hump-back whale that was endeavoring to elude the attack. The
serpent threw up his tail from twenty-five to thirty feet in a
perpendicular direction, striking the whale by it with tremendous
blows rapidly repeated, which were distinctly heard and very loud for
two or three minutes ... They went down for a short time, and then
came up to the surface under the packet's larboard quarter, the whale
appearing first and the serpent in pursuit, who was again seen to
shoot up his tail as before, which he held out of the water some time,
waving it in the air before striking, and at the same time, while his
tail remained in that position, he raised his head fifteen or twenty
feet, as if taking a view of the surface of the sea. After being seen
in this position a few minutes, the serpent and the whale again sunk
and disappeared, and neither were seen after by any on board.

"Professor" George Washington READY, of Provincetown, outdoes either
of these accounts with the most spectacular varmint yet placed on the
record. I shall give his story when we get there. But Orleans, Eastham
and Wellfleet are still shooting at his mark. Thus, in 1936:

THERE ARE SEA SERPENTS OFF
CAPE! - CARCASS PROVES IT

"Orleans, Jan. 17 - Somewhere in the briny deeps that wash the Nauset
strand, Orleans Coast Guards swear sea serpents with tongues shaped
like fish tails, swivel-jointed necks and 200 teeth mounted in
cavernous jaws stalk their prey. Surfman Fred MOLL found the remains
of such a critter on the beach below the station yesterday. All that
remains of the marine mystery is a grinning head with a few inches of
what appears to be a snake-like body attached."

One week later a biologist came along to spoil the story:

"Chatham, Jan. 24 - It was only a dolphin after all, according to Ed
TAYLOR, John NICKERSON and Everett ELDREDGE Jr., after two days of
research to identify the snaky skull picked up on the beach below the
Orleans Coast Guard Station a week ago."

The Coast Guards, during these long wintry afternoons, seem to develop
a strange preoccupation all down the Cape with phenomena in the animal
world, and they break into print with discoveries even more wonderful
than Surfman MOLL's dead sea serpent. In the same year another Orleans
surfman adopted a "light-fingered crow," and the bird's criminal
record on the Cape - thieving milk off doorsteps - was a matter of
public interest for weeks. He became Feathered Enemy No. 1, until the
morning the Cape read that he had tackled a bottle and found it to be
sour milk, whereupon in chagrin he had committed suicide. And there
was Joe (biologically Josephine) the duck mascot of the Monomoy
station, who went on a sea food diet exclusively and hatched out a
brood that would not swim in fresh water.

But if it's yarns you want, look up old Charley MAYO in Orleans -
Charley F., for there are half a dozen Charley MAYOs in town - or
perhaps by the time this book reaches you, a dozen. Charley, who will
be a hundred in 1950, is a walking encyclopaedia of fishing lore of
the Cape. He went to sea as a "salt-passer" when he was 12, and he has
been to the Banks on a score of vessels that have long since gone down
or gone out. But the chief claim to fame of this grand old
white-mustached Bankerman was his record as the fastest mackerel
splitter who ever sailed from a Cape port.

One day they held the watch on Charley, down at the wharf, about
thirty years ago. A vessel was in with a fare of mackerel fresh out of
Barnstable Bay. There was talk of splitting fish, and there were
arguments and finally there was money placed. In sixty seconds Charley
split 69 mackerel, and money changed hands. But he wasn't satisfied.
"Time me again," he said. "I can do a mite better. There was a soft
one in that bunch." That time he split 71.


*Rev. Henry T. Cheever, "The Whale and His Captors," NY 1864 (p. 122).

[more to come]
transcribed by and all errors attributed to
Bobbie Hall








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