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From: Bobbie Hall <>
Subject: [MABARNST] Cape Cod Pilot, Ch. 7, part 8
Date: Sat, 09 Mar 2002 09:02:12 -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 8]

On the way around Town Cove is located the cable station of the
Campagnie Francaise des Cables Telegraphiques, terminus of a line
running across the Atlantic to Brest. The cable makes in at Nauset
Harbor, runs along the bottom of Town Cove, and up into a small white
cottage.

Despite the advent of transatlantic wireless, the cable line is still
one of several reasons why the government stresses the war-time
importance of the Cape Cod Canal. In the great Portland Gale, of 1898,
when land lines were down throughout the Cape region, the schooner
"King Philip" of Taunton was lost, presumably somewhere off Cape Ann.
The freak violence of this storm brought all that was left of her to
the Bay Side beach in Brewster - a small steam pump, with a serial
number on a brass plate, through which the vessel was identified. A
newspaperman in Brewster took down the number, but could not notify
Boston by regular channels. He cabled it via France, Ireland,
Newfoundland and New York. It was the only evidence on which the widow
of Captain DUNCAN of the "King Philip" was able to collect his insurance.

Throughout this country's participation in the World War the station
was closely guarded by a company of Marines. Again, at a crucial stage
of the Italo-Ethiopian War, it was bringing in widely awaited
bulletins, and at that time Captain James Van AMBURG of the fish
dragger "Andover" was working in Cape waters when his net and steel
lines became snared in the cable. The only way he could recover his
gear, which is no small item in a fisherman's equipment, would have
been to cut the cable. And the reason he didn't do that was that he
knew the whole western world was waiting to hear of the fortunes of
war in Africa. He sailed away minus several hundred dollars worth of
dredging gear.

In East Orleans you are brought to the shore of Pleasant Bay, and
close to Pochet Island. Probably, as you look across the inlet, the
waters out beyond Nauset Beach are rolling inward with the lazy rhythm
of summer surf. On a wild night of April, 1717, roaring mountains of
white water heaved and guttered beyond the bars under a northeaster
that overtook a great ship, whisked her like a toy boat onto Nauset
shoals, a few miles further down-Cape, and pounded her to pieces. She
was the proud London galley "Whidah," fallen into bad hands, and her
wreck ended the rocketing career of young "Black Bellamy" under the
"skull and bones-across." The beach was stewn for miles with wreckage
and the bodies of all 101 of Samuel Bellamy's crew. And at the same
time, here at Pochet Island, landed one of his "prize ships," the pink
"Mary Anne," with seven of Bellamy's youthful freebooters and three
captives on board.

The "Mary Anne," Andrew CRUMSTEY, master, was an Irish craft, bound
for New York with a cargo of Madeira wine. The "Widah" took her near
Nantucket Shoals, put seven young men aboard with Alex Mackonachy, the
"Mary Anne's" cook, John Dunavan and nineteen-year-old Tom Fitzgerald,
the mate, and added her to the fleet of prizes she was collecting, as
Bellamy headed northward.

Then came retribution. The northeaster drove the "Widah" and her prize
off their course, and the pink "Mary Anne" rocked and groaned in her
timbers and acted as if she would pitch-pole over the shoals.

"For God's sake, let us go down into the Hould and Die together!" Tom
Fitzgerald cried, And he no sooner left his trick at the wheel than
she struck. Below, the bungs were pulled from Crumstey's Madeira as
all seven pirates decided that if they must go to hell now, they might
as well go drunk. But at the coming of dawn, ten thick-toungued
mariners blinked and saw the sands of Pochet Island beneath their
vessel's riven keel.

Cook Mackonachy scared up a "mugup," with fine Madeira to wash it
down. And then a canoe came out from the mainland, and John COLE and
William SMITH, townsmen of the South Parish of Eastham, who knew
nothing of the capture of the "Mary Anne" by Bellamy's men, offered to
row them all ashore, and suggested, too, that it would be much safer
to ballast the canoe well with casks of the Madeira.

Under these conditions, John COLE was eager to show his hospitality
when they reached his house on the Bay Side, and again the "Mary
Anne's" cargo was broken out. The seven of Bellamy's men were now well
on their way to a fine "offing." All at once Alex Mackonachy, the
cook, stood up and with remorseful streams down his cheeks, declared
the seven were naught but a scurvy pack of pirates, "Bellamy's men, so
help me!" and no more would he drink with them!

Little Johnnie COLE, who had often been scared into good behavior at
the mention of "Black Bellamy," was eavesdropping. He ran like
everything, and finally he ran to the house of Justice DOANE. The
Justice, a late sleeper, was annoyed, but at mention of the cargo of
fine Madeira, he sprang up, gathered a posse and started for John
COLE's house. At their approach, the pirates scurried out, went
leaping over the headstones in the burying acre, and struck out up the
highway. Justice DOANE and his men went into the house.

The next day, staggering up the King's Road, were two befuddled
parties. The pirates were still too drunk to do anything but reel
up-Cape on foot, and the posse was too drunk to do anything but reel
after them. But at last the law triumphed. The fugitives were taken to
Barnstable jail, kept there through the summer, and on the fifteenth
of November, six of them were hanged in Boston, among them John Brown
of Jamaica, who listened to Cotton MATHER's preaching until he went
mad and gave back "blasphemes and Oathes." By that time, the cargo of
the "Mary Anne: was judiciously divided and resting in the cellars of
the law-abiding townsmen of the South Parish of Eastham.

At the north end of Pleasant Bay another pirate hoard, so the
townsfolk say, still awaits a resurrecting spade. One end of Hogg
Island is traditionally known as "Money Head" and there are
recollections of actual digging undertaken there. History is hazy on
the details of Captain Kidd's wanderings, yet I would definitely not
subscribe to the theory, advanced locally, that it was Kidd who put a
"box of gold" on Hogg Island. Kidd's "bagg put into a box, lockt and
nailed, corded about and sealed," was left in many places, among them
"on Gardiner's Island, at the eastern end of Long Island"; but the
treasures of Pleasant Bay are plentiful enough, as she stands

Your way around Orleans should lead you to Tonset, for a view of the
harbor. Two miles from the intersection of the Tonset and East Orleans
roads you pass an ancient little house bearing the inscription:
"Here Lived Joshua CROSBY, Who Commanded
A Quarterdeck Gun on the Frigate Constitution
During the Fight with the Guerriere
in the War of 1812."

The house was a century old when Joshua lived in it. One of its
tenants landscaped it with the bones of a whale.

There were two Cape Cod lads, as a matter of fact, aboard the
"Constitution" in that fight, and one, a son of Harwich, gave a
version of it which is included in the Chamber of Commerce booklet,
"Cape Cod Legends." This young man came back declaring that the brave
fight was really won by "a bar'l o' merlarses."

"So sure was the "Guerriere" that the fight was theirs, that they
placed a barrel of molasses on deck to be made into 'switchel' (a
mixture of molasses, ginger, rum and water) with which to 'treat' the
Yankees whom they expected to defeat. 'Switchel' was what was known as
a 'landlubber's' drink and to be offered it was a supreme insult to
the manhood of a tough jack tar in 1812.

"But good marksmanship raked the deck of the "Guerriere" early in the
engagement. By good fortune one of these shots smashed the barrel of
molasses. Over the deck the sticky mess ran, and, mixed with blood and
water, it made the deck so slippery, it was almost impossible to
obtain a foothold and man the ropes of the "Guerriere." This was a
serious handicap in maneuvering the ship, and so "Old Ironsides" won
the fight 'by a bar'l of merlarses.' "

The improved Orleans-Provincetown highway, smoothing your course
from this town to the Cape-end, cuts through a spot, about a mile
beyond the village, long known as Jeremiah's Gutter. It was once,
traditionally, owned by Jeremiah SMITH. At this point, one of the
narrowest parts of the "Narrow Land," your course turns northward.

When Bellamy's "Whidah" broke up off Wellfleet n 1717, there was a
wild scramble all along shore for her treasures, and the pickings were
talked of for years. Henry Thoreau, walking the beach in 1849, picked
up a French crown piece dated 1743, from a later wreck.

Cape folks living on the Back Side allowed no hundred-year tarnish to
gather on silver cons before they set out a-wrecking. At the time of
the "Whidah's" wreck, the Governor, knowing their habits, at
once dispatched a King's representative to the scene. Cape folk
chuckled. But Captain Cyprian SOUTHACK set sail, anchored in
Provincetown harbor, and then scratched his head. He wanted a horse.
Provincetown could offer him a whaleboat, but there was not a
"shipshape" horse in town. So he took the whale boat. He set out over
the Bay, intending to take a horse at Orleans.

When he came to Boat Meadow Creek, on the Bay Side at Jeremiah's
Gutter, the tide was still high. Iit was higher, in fact, than it had
ever been known to flow before. The Captain kept steering From Boat
Meadow Creek he steered through Jeremiah's Gutter to Town Cove - to
Nauset Harbor! He had - by the grace of God! - he had crossed the Cape
in a whaleboat!

When he got there, he sat down, scratched his head again, triied to
thiink how the deviil you spell "excellency," and then wrote a letter
to Governor Shute.

"At my Cominig theri Ii found the Rack all to Pices," he reported,
"North and South, Distance from one a Nother 4 Miles. Sir, whear she
Strock first I se one Anchor at Low water, sea being so Great Ever
sence I have ben here, Can not Come to se what may be their for
Riches, nor aney of her Guns."

Cape folk chuckled and hooted. When Captain SOUTHACK did finally "Come
to se what may be their for Riches," he found the "Whidah's" bones
picked clean.

[End of ORLEANS; Eastham next]
[more to come]
transcribed by and all errors attributed to
Bobbie Hall


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