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Archiver > MABARNST > 2002-03 > 1017038556


From: Bobbie Hall <>
Subject: [MABARNST] Cape Cod Pilot, Ch. 10, part 3
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2002 00:44:04 -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 X - TRURO [part 3]

What may be of more importance to the nation's future than the spot
where the Pilgrims dug up corn is an unpretentious building a mile or
so north of Corn Hill where no brass tablets are allowed and where
publicity has gone uncourted. Beyond the juncture of the Long Nook
Road, the highway drops into a hollow, which is known as Whitmanville.
A road turns out left at the bottom of this hollow. It goes to the Bay
Shore, where is located the Marine Experimental Station of the
Lankenau Hospital Research Institute, of Philadelphia. Specialists
have been working in this laboratory since 1930, their main line of
investigation being the biological basis of cancer. The research,
supported by the International Cancer Foundation, is under the
direction of Dr. Frederick S. Hammett, who is known internationally
for his studies of this disease. These men are attacking the problem
of cellular growth, as a basic approach to the more specific study of
the disease itself. The "spade-work" that has been accomplished is
already widely recognized. Leading scientists come from all parts of
the world to ob- serve its progress.

Marine life is especially well suited for the experiments, and the Bay
waters are free of factory pollution and other conditions that would
tend to throw the tests off. What comes of this work may be of
tremendous interest eventually, to a public that cannot follow the
technical processes now. Visits to the laboratory are only by
appointment.

Lighthouses go back to the most ancient times, in other parts of the
world, but on Cape Cod, with its most perilous of shoal waters, we
took all of a hundred and fifty years in getting the first lighthouse up.


The idea of building special land-guides for sailors was not taken
seriously on the Cape until a Wellfleet minister began agitation for
the High Land Light. If the thought of safety at sea occurred to the
Cape at all, the profits of "wrecking" were an effective soft-pedal.

"That mountain of clay in Truro seems to have been erected in the
midst of sand hills by the God of Nature for the foundation of a
lighthouse, which, if it should be obtained, in time no doubt would
save the lives of thousands," wrote the Reverend Levi Whitman in 1794.
And knowing his people, he added that it would save "millions of
property." This was the first word put in for the beacon here on
Truro's "Clay Pounds," the peculiar cliff with the stratum of bluish
clay running through it.

Thus, the "High Land" was the spot chosen in 1797. Because this is the
first landmark picked up on the transatlantic route to Boston, a
primary light has been maintained here ever since. The road to the
High Land branches off the highway to the right.

Cape Cod Light, as this beacon is known officially, will continue to
be an important marker long after the usefulness of many other Cape
lights is outgrown. Already some of these have become superfluous and
have been sold to private owners. The Canal cutoff has diverted the
traffic, but even more important, the radio beacon now gives ships at
sea their positions. Small fishing vessels still steer by the lights,
but many of these craft are also equipped with radio compass, by which
they can pick up flashes sent out periodically from a series of
stations, and thus reckon their positions.

The radio beacon is in fact the modern-world replacement of the
picturesque white tower. It is more efficient, more dependable. The
usefulness of Cape Cod Light itself is now eclipsed by the radio
compass station that squats beside it.

A U.S. Naval radio station was established at High Land in 1904. Up to
the World War it was engaged largely in commercial work. In 1917, with
our entrance into hostilities, it became a point of great importance,
and during the war years was closely guarded by a detachment of
Marines. At this time the station began to concentrate on work with
the radio compass, just then coming into general use. At present it
devotes itself exclusively to this work, receiving more than a hundred
calls a day from ships within a radius of several hundred miles. There
are similar stations at Bar Harbor, Portland and Nantucket.

With the development of the radio beacon, however, as a part of the
lighthouse service, the radio compass has lost much of its old
importance. Radio beacon and radio compass operate on the same
principles, and with similar apparatus, but they are, so to speak, the
reverse of one another. A ship using the beacon tunes in her radio
compass to pick up the flashes sent out periodically and automatically
every twenty minutes from a series of stations. By a process of
triangulation, she can determine her position at sea every few
minutes, without being under the necessity of calling radio compass
stations and asking for her true bearing from each of them.

The radio beacon station at High Land is the master station of the
series which includes Boston Lightship and the station at Vineyard
Haven. Every hour, at precisely ten minutes after the hour, signals
are flashed in rotation by these three stations. The High Land station
begins by sending out the letter "Q" every two seconds for the period
of a minute, and then falls silent as the Boston Lightship sends out
"Z" for the following minute. Then "W", the call of Vineyard Haven,
goes out thirty times during the next minute. This rotation, governed
by synchronized automatic clocks, continues for ten minutes. Again at
twenty minutes to the hour, the beacons begin to operate in the same
rotation for another ten minutes; so that a ship equipped with radio
compass can take her bearings every twenty minutes.

The lighthouse now standing at High Land was built in 1857, replacing
an earlier structure. Up to 1931 it burned oil. Now, with electricity
installed, it burns a single 1,000-watt bulb, of 2,500 candlepower.
The huge bullseye lenses stretch this out to an equivalent Of
4,000,000 candlepower. Under normal conditions, Cape Cod Light can be
seen for twenty miles, and beyond that by reflection. The plant
operates an electric foghorn, audible fifteen miles out. Among
mariners a strange phenomenon is often mentioned, upon which there is
wide agreement. It is known as the "blind spot," which sometimes
develops around a fog station, and which no technician has ever been
able to explain; for this strange disability does not seem to come of
a change in the wind's direction. Failing to hear the signal from a
nearby station over a long period, a vessel will sometimes question
it, yet the same station may get complaints from ten miles away, that
people living ashore have had their sleep disturbed by its groans.

A lighthouse cannot check the force of vicious tides or square the
northeasters about, and to the end of sailing days such craft as were
caught off the lee shore here had a losing battle of it. A mile
off-shore, northeast of the Clay Pounds, the surf breaks over Peaked
Hill Bars, a crowded corner of Cape Cod's graveyard of ships. Only by
standing on this shore after a winter gale has whipped up great
marching seas beyond the outer bar can an inlander realize what forces
had to be withstood by those hapless wooden hulls. We have seen many
headlines announcing the crashes of air liners in recent years, but
for every one of these, Truro and Provincetown have heard a score of
times the dread cry, "Ship ashore and all hands perishing!"

The largest of the sailing vessels to come ashore at Peaked Hill was
the British ship-of-war, "Somerset." In a November gale of 1778 she
struck on the outer bar near Dead Man's Hollow, rode over on the high
tide, and beached herself for all time. Four hundred eighty of her
survivors were taken prisoner and marched all the way to Boston. While
the up-Cape towns jeered them and made merry, Provincetown and Truro
were too busy to do much celebrating.

"There is wicked work at the wreck, riotous doings," wrote General
Otis, who was sent to take charge of the situation. "The Truro and
Provincetown men made a division of the clothing, etc. Truro took
two-thirds and Provincetown one third. There is a plundering gang that
way." A Provincetown historian more delicately puts it, "The laws of
'Meum and Tuum' were being disregarded."

Like the "Sparrowhawk" at Orleans, this ship buried herself in the
sand and emerged a century later; "her massive timbers and six-inch
live-oak planking told plainly that it was the almost forgotten wreck
of the 'Somerset'."

Her reappearance in 1886 created something of a stir through the
country. The "New York World" carried a story on May i6, describing
the excitement in Provincetown and Truro, and the rush for the beach
by eager townsfolk, who apparently had changed no more in the hundred
years than the "Somerset" had. "Above her charred and crushed timbers,
old ocean had piled a cairn of sand thirty feet high. The wiry
beachgrass grew rank above it. The gulls made their nimble tracks
across it; the men of the life-saving service trudged over it daily. .
. . There is much local excitement about the ancient wreck. Everybody
in town has visited the 'back side' to see the exhumed frigate and to
secure some relic." The old-time mariners fought the war over again in
the ship-chandlers' shops, and "if they cannot tell you exactly how
the 'Somerset' was wrecked, they can at least inform you how she
should have been wrecked. The amateur wreckers and relic-hunters are
swarming the beach from near and far, and seem resolved upon carrying
away the whole hull in sections. . . . They come to the beach well
equipped with saws, axes and shovels, crowbars and wedges." The ship's
doctor aboard the Somerset, incidentally, had escaped arrest somehow,
had come ashore and had married a Truro girl, raised a family and
built up a local practice. Among the interested spectators a hundred
years later were many of his descendants.


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

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