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From: Bobbie Hall <>
Subject: [MABARNST] Cape Cod Pilot, Ch. 7, part 6
Date: Sat, 09 Mar 2002 09:01:46 -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 6]

The unusual house on the Skaket Road (at left) with Ionic columns and
an enclosed captain's walk to top it all, was the home of one of the
Cape's most famous shipmasters, Captain Eben H. LINNELL. The captain
build it along the lines of a house that had taken his fancy in
Southern France.

Sailing a full-bodied ship, the "Buena Vista," Captain LINNELL raced
Levi STEPHEN's clipper, the "Southern Cross," San Francisco to
Calcutta in 1851, and made the voyage in 60 days, only four days
slower than the clipper's time. As his reward for proving that he
could drive a good old-fashioned hooker pretty near as fast as these
new fancy-cut clipper ships, his owners placed him in command of a
clipper. Later he sailed the speedy "Flying Mist," and in 1859 he gave
a grand ball aboard that vessel while she lay at Hong Kong, which
several sea captains attended with their wives. Captain Joshua SEARS,
of Dennis, was in Hong Kong, with his "Flying Hunter." He went to the
ball and wrote home to Mrs. Sears:

"I should like to have had you and Lulu there, for crinoline was very
much in demand, as there is only about fifteen ladies in port, and
some of them have got such d--d jealous husbands that they cannot let
them dance with anyone out of their sight."

At the shoreline on the Bay, in December of 1814, Orleans stood up and
defied England, and by virtue of her impossible marine approaches,
won the "Battle of Rock Harbor."

The British had been patrolling the coast with their ships, and
demanding ransom money all alongshore, threatening to destroy the
saltworks if they were refused. Eastham paid $1200 and Brewster
slavishly dug up $4000, taxing her poor, principally, to preserve the
large saltworks that belonged to her wealthier townsmen. But Orleans
stuck out her chin and told the British frigate "Newcastle" that she
could, in effect, go to hell. She very nearly went there, grounding on
the sandy bottom off Rock Harbor, and losing some of her spars and
rigging before she could clear. The townsmen of Orleans stood on the
shore and hooted, which annoyed the commander of the "Newcastle,"
whose position was undignified enough without all this. He dispatched
a barge into the harbor to seize a schooner and three sloops. Two
vessels were burned, two taken prize. An Orleans man, impressed to
pilot one of the prize craft, ran her aground at Yarmouth.

Your visit to Orleans should include a jaunt down the Chatham road
(Route 28) as far as South Orleans, though you will be retracing this
short drive on your way back. Following the first settlement of the
town, in 1644, the Indians were slowly crowded out of their lands and
into a part of this section known as Potanumaquut. A meeting house was
built for the "praying Indians" - those who were Christianized - and a
graveyard laid out beside it. The Indian church had disappeared before
1800; in 1890 the burying ground was still marked, but all trace of it
is gone now. These acres were used for truck gardens, and Orleans
folks say that many a man living today owes the nourishment he got
from home-grown vegetables to the last of the Nauset Indians.

Next door to the Episcopal Church, at the left, there is a relic of
"mooncussing days" - the deckhouse of a wrecked ship, which is now
used as one room of a gift shop. The vessel, now of disputed identity,
came ashore in 1858. For a time the deckhouse served as a cobbler's
shop, and later as part of the town clerk's dwelling.

A quarter-mile south of the South Orleans post office, on the right
side of the road, a Cape Cod cottage nestles behind a tall Labrador
spruce, nestles and smiles to itself, no doubt, over some of the yarns
that have been spun around it.

Built by Captain John KENRICK a few years after the Revolutionary War,
this little cottage is a well nigh perfect example of Cape Cod
architecture at its best, and it has been photographed several times
to illustrate magazine articles and other literature on the subject.

The house is all that the writers have claimed for it - pictorially -
and on such grounds it deserves your attention, in spite of all the
misinformation that has been printed about its builder. I have two
guide-books which call Captain KENRICK "the first American commander
to circumnavigate the world." He was not the world." He was not the
first to try it, and what is sadder, he didn't do it. KENRICK was sent
out by a Boston group in 1787 on a highly speculative venture - the
opening of the northwest fur trade. His 83-foot vessel, the "Columbia"
set sail accompanied by a sloop, the "Lady Washington." Their
projected route lay around the Horn, northward past California to the
Oregon coast, where the furs were to be taken aboard; thence to China,
where they were to be traded for silk; west through the China Sea,
across the Indian Ocean, and then around the Cape of Good Hope and
northwest across the Atlantic to Boston.

Thus poor John KENRICK's course did lie around the world - in a sadly
under-provisioned and under-equipped little vessel. The miracle of
working indefinitely without food was expected of her crew by the
ruthless Boston speculators who employed them, and before she had
rounded the Horn, the crew came down with scurvy. She finally arrived
in Nootka Sound, Vancouver Island.

"At this point, the Captain's character began to disintigrate."*
When he had obtained a full load of otter skins from the Indians, he
turned his ship over to Captain Gray - who had commanded the sloop
"Lady Washington" - and sent him on over the projected route. For
himself, he took the sloop, and proceeded on a series of madcap
adventures in the Pacific - fights with the natives, crossings to
China, loafing at Hawaii, and finally, having "abandoned all idea of
returning home," purchasing a great tract of wild land on Vancouver
Island and building a house there.

Captain KENRICK's exit was a spectacular as everything else he did. On
one last voyage over the Pacific, the sloop encountered a British
vessel, and in salute fired off a blank charge. The Englishman fired
to return the courtesy. By some mischance her gun was loaded, and the
American skipper was blown to bits.

*Henry C. Kittredge, "Cape Cod, Its People and Their History," (p. 239
ff.)

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






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