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From: Bobbie Hall <>
Subject: [MABARNST] Cape Cod Pilot, Ch. 9, part 2
Date: Sat, 23 Mar 2002 22:56:33 -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 IX - WELLFLEET [part 2]

Wellfleet has recently lost an island. The ocean, like an indecisive
sculptor, putters around with Cape Cod, chipping off here and slapping
on there, to suit its mood of the moment; and the recent disappearance
of the island of Billingsgate is one of its most striking changes in
the design.

Half a century ago there were more than thirty houses, a school and a
lighthouse on Billingsgate, and people not only fished there; they
tilled the soil as well. But when southwest breezes began to salt the
clam-pie and the cod muddle with sea-spray, they moved to the
mainland. A Boston doctor bought the island for a summer home, and
built a clubhouse for gunners. When he sold it to another Bostonian
about twenty years ago, only five acres were left of it. Still later
the Federated Bird Clubs took over the shrinking remnant as a refuge
for wildfowl. In 1935 high tide began to cover the mudflat - all that
now remained of Billingsgate. And when a tax exemption form was sent
to the Bird Clubs to fill out, it was returned with a letter
explaining that the Clubs had made of Billingsgate Island "a gift to
the Commonwealth of Massachusetts." I do not know whether the
Commonwealth ever acknowledged the "gift." The tides acknowledge nothing.

"Billingsgate - abusive, violent invective (from the scolding of
fishwomen in Billingsgate market)."

The fish market near London Bridge began business in 1558, and was
well known to our own Pilgrim fathers. They called the whole Wellfleet
region after the place in London, and Wellfleet Harbor they called
Grampus Bay, because of the blackfish they saw stranded there.

In 1763, when Billingsgate set itself off from Eastham, as a town in
its own right, it was a busy settlement of fishermen, many of whom
were concerning themselves entirely with oysters. So important was
this branch of the trade that when they came to name the new town
after some village of old England, they chose Wallfleet, celebrated
for its excellent oysters. But they were more expert with their oyster
rakes than they were with their quill-pens, and Wellfleet was the
nearest they could get with their spelling.

Seven years later the native oysters of Wellfleet had all died -
possibly of mortification at being named after a bed of off-Cape
furriners - and from then on, oysters were shipped from the south to
be planted in Wellfleet Harbor. In late years the business found hard
going, and the final blow came in 1936 with the shutdown of D. ATWOOD
& Company, "Wellfleet oyster growers for the last thirty years." This
has probably meant the end of the Wellfleet oysterman in any
commercial capacity. The thing that finished the modern industry was a
tiny parasite, known as the "drill," which works its way through the
shell of the oyster, and for which an effective exterminant has not
yet been found.

Wellfleet has found the sea a capricious mistress indeed. The town has
been a center of fishing, ship-building, whaling and coasting. But
always the sea-ways changed, each time leaving Wellfleet's industries
hard aground. Men who went to sea for a living would give up in
disgust - with the resolve to walk inland, like Odysseus, with a pair
of oars "until somebody asks what they are for." The Wellfleeter can
still rake up a mess of quahaugs, and with her neighbors the town
shares in a fair amount of lobstering. A summer visitor once asked
"why all those chickencoops were stacked along the wharf;" and after
such an insult, the lobstermen declared, it wasn't any wonder that no
lobsters would walk into the pots for a month after!

But within the lobstermen's own circles, a question still burns, open
to fierce argument on both sides. If you can state and prove which way
a lobster goes into a pot - bow first or stern first - you will be
doing the trade a vast service.

Debate on this point can go on in a shanty for hours. One stove-side
orator declares that he has hung over the rail and watched lobsters in
two fathom of clear water, and the smaller fry have shot in bow-first
in their fright when a bigger fellow approached. But his dory-mate
counters that the big fellow went in stern-to. I have even heard a
compromise held out for a combination entrance, with the lobster
sliding into the anteroom head-on and then reversing to get into the
baitchamber. And at this point there is usually another round of
Portygee prune whiskey.

People who live near the Cape Cod Canal have found a simpler way to
catch lobsters. At low tide, just before the New York boat goes
through and stirs up the water, they lower a bait and stand by with an
eel spear. The law forbids traps in the Canal - which is trap enough
by itself - but there are plenty of lobsters there, and spearing a
salad is no great chore.

No one has yet determined how large a lobster can grow. It seems to
depend mainly on how long he can go on living before he is caught. One
has been preserved in the Museum of Natural History in New York, with
a live weight of 34 pounds. Aboard the Coast Guard cutter "Faunce,"
which often beats in Cape waters, there were preserved the claws of a
25-pounder, which measured a yard from tail to clawtip. A Cape fishing
vessel presented him to the cutter one day, out of gratitude for the
loan of a pilot.

Across Wellfleet Bay, and adhering to the Cape by a narrow thread of
beachway, lies a deserted fragment of land which the historians seem
to have overlooked. The place is called Great Island, and though it
has been reached by a few hardy motorists, there is no road. The ruins
of a building - some ancient structure with a stockade around it -
have been buried in these outlying sands, a discovery so unexpected by
the townsmen who chanced across it that they started excavations,
thinking perhaps it was once a Dutch trading post. They have been
puttering with it ever since.

The building was found to have been 100 feet long, the walls of
planking caulked with clay, and the windows heavily leaded. On the
site, a collection of knives, forks, spoons, clay pipes and pewter
buttons has been unearthed, plus one English coin dated 1723. The
local historian recalls that these islands west of the present
townsite were chosen for earliest settlement, particularly
Billingsgate, Great Island and Bound Brook Island. As long as they
keep their heads above tidewater, I should think the latter two would
offer fair possibilities to the treasure-seeker - unless his interests
are confined wholly to pirate gold. On searching for the latter, I
have no more practical hints to give here than I had at Orleans -
though Wellfleet, too, has run temperatures from this same fever.
Wellfleet's "pirate gold" lies somewhere on the ocean shore. There I
shall let it remain, at least until we get there.

I have heard that it is witch-haunted, this ground on both sides of
the town line as you enter Wellfleet from the south. Although several
witches have been mentioned as haunters of the place, investigation
reveals only one with proper credentials - the Sea Witch of
Billingsgate - but she has a number of exploits to her credit. They
pop up through several centuries of local lore, suggesting almost as
many lives for this creature as for the cat who was one of her
ever-present "familiars."

Her main interest appears to have been in the marine phase of the
business - contriving for the souls of lost sailors and such - but she
has taken many a flyer among landlubbers too. Wherever she may show,
you can spot her by her heels. They were a weakness with her, those
high red heels, and she affected them even at the risk of being
frequently betrayed. Also, if business should ever take her abroad o'
nights again, you will know her by her familiars running alongside - a
cat and a gray goat with one glass eye.

Frankly, the chances are against meeting her. She has become inactive
over these half-dozen decades just past. For one thing, business at
sea has fallen off; and then, these Portuguese people have brought
over effective countercharms from the Old Country. We know now that if
any witch should start cutting up didoes around our house, we can
drive her away once and for all by sticking pins in the heart of a
calf and dropping the heart down the chimney.

But the science of preventive conjury was unknown here in the heyday
of the Sea Witch of Billingsgate. Some said she was a red girl, some
said she was white. In her time, it is clear, she was both. Having
heard something of the talents of these creatures, I would not
begrudge her a Scot's plaid.

But her color or her form at a given time depended on the soul that
was "betaken" by her at the moment. The notion that there was more
than one witch operating in the territory is grossly unfair to the
Lower Cape towns. It is a libel, an old wives' tale. And I should
firmly refuse to believe anything - except, of course, that there was
a Sea Witch of Billingsgate, and that her familiars were a cat and a
gray goat with one glass eye.

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






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