By JOHN H. HOUGH
When you look out on the Cape’s sounds and bays you see pleasure craft crisscrossing the water, streaks of white against the blue-green of the sea. Sleek fiberglass-hulled sailboats meander, going nowhere in particular with no sense of urgency. The working waterfront shows itself seldom among the sport fishermen and weekend sailors. Fuel barges and towering car carriers occasionally traverse the canal and the ubiquitous ferries slide into the background.
As the 19th century gave way to the 20th our water presented a very different scene. Towering masts held vast sheets of canvas aloft as the schooner trade plodded determinately up and down the coast. Black streaks of coal smoke painted the sky as steamships moved through the sounds and around the Cape, having no canal to offer quicker passage or shelter from the open ocean. Booming industry and newfound prosperity of late-19th century America elevated Vineyard and Nantucket sounds on the lists of busiest waterways, by some estimates second only to the English Channel in terms of marine traffic. It was an era of transition; sail giving way stubbornly to steam and later oil as the dominant mode of propulsion. Paddlewheel steamers still abounded, but even their numbers dwindled year after year. The future was evident upon the waters.
Sailing down the sounds, as most coastwise vessels did before the canal, a captain fixed his positions using the lighthouses, buoys and lightships to thread the proverbial needle. The Cape and Islands are literal outposts of shifting sands and nowhere is this more evident than with the constantly changing shoals. The mariner traveling northward would first pass the Hens and Chickens lightship, named for the reef it warned against and threaded between lighthouses of Gay Head high above the beautifully colored cliffs in Aquinnah on Martha’s Vineyard and the now nonexistent light on the island of Cuttyhunk just across the sound. The reef known as Devil’s Bridge is marked by a buoy and the wise sailor gave it plenty of berth. Fixing on the lights at Tarpaulin Cove on Naushon and Nobska in Falmouth and rounding east and west Chop on Martha’s Vineyard brought the vessel from Vineyard Sound into Nantucket Sound, though mariners of the time generally made no distinction between the two.
Here the ship’s captain would guide his vessel using the lightships dotting the waterway at the ever moving shoals with names like Cross Rip, Horseshoe and Handkerchief before exiting Nantucket Sound between the Monomoy light and Pollack Rip. From there it was a northward journey along the Outer Cape, carefully minding the shoal waters along shore, spying Highland Light in Truro and giving way to Peaked Hilled Bars at the tip of the Cape. Woe be to the mariners caught in fog or strong wind that pushed them to shore. Scattered along this last leg of the journey were the lifesaving stations manned in the winter months by crews who regularly patrolled the beaches on the lookout for ships in distress.
Most abundant along this waterway were the trade schooners, coastal workhorses rooted deeply in the age of sail. They retained their place on the sea well into the 20th century for one simple reason: they were inexpensive to operate. Sailed by a relatively small crew with few overhead costs, the schooners dominated the cabotage market by the end of the 1890s. The end of the schooner era was evident even when their numbers reached their apex. Improvements in the railroad as well as increasing competition from schooner barges ate into profits. This last innovation, begun on the Great Lakes, involved either purpose-built barges with stubby schooner-like masts or old sailing ships, their days on the open ocean over, repurposed, their towering masts cut in half, and fore and aft sails affixed to the remains. Tugboats with lines of these barges sometimes up to a mile in length made their way up and down the coast. Each barge would have its own small crew to raise sails and steer, but they proved at times unwieldy and far too frequently deadly in foul weather. When a strong wind bore down on the tow the tugs could cut the lines and leave the barges to fend for themselves. In one instance in 1918 a German U-boat surfaced off Orleans and lobbed shells from its deck gun at one of these barges and the beach beyond.
Competition sparked the race for larger schooners and longer tows. By the beginning of the 20th century five-, six- and even one seven-masted schooners traversed the Cape Cod passage. Aided by small steam engines to raise and lower sails and anchors, these bemouths could move large amounts of cargo with the same small crew complement. Larger wooden ships presented problems, though. Every vessel on the water bends and twists in the sea, more when the wind is up. This effect, called hogging and sagging, becomes even more pronounced the larger the ship. As the schooners bent their seams opened up, with disastrous consequences. The largest wooden ship built, the six-masted schooner Wyoming, succumbed to this effect during a march northeaster in 1924 off Pollack Rip, taking all hands with her.
Another fading emblem of the 19th century maritime world found itself an increasingly rare breed: the paddle steamer. Propellers were supplanting the paddlewheel, especially on the open ocean. In 1818 the first paddle steamer crossed Nantucket Sound on what would turn out to be short-lived regular service. The 92-foot-long Eagle made the voyage from New Bedford to Nantucket in eight hours. The venture proved unprofitable and it ran for only three months. The first propeller-driven ferry, the Hellen Augusta, came on the scene in 1865, though without a storied career on the sound. The final paddle steamer to ply the sound, Uncatena, shuttling residents and visitors alike to the island, began service in 1902. She departed a relic 28 years later.
Larger coastal steamers such as those of the Fall River Line, which steamed through the waters between Fall River and New York, stubbornly stuck to the paddlewheel design. Their time was already at its end even as these “floating palaces,” as their admirers liked to call them, slid down the ways on into the sea. Rail had eaten heavily into the coastal passenger service. While American railroads were in their infancy, the comfort of an ocean passage appealed to travelers, who could board in the evening and enjoy a gourmet meal and drinks before retiring to a private stateroom to awaken at their destination. The alternative was an uncomfortable slow—and not always direct—route by rail, not to mention the trains’ propensity to wreck. When trains became quicker, even if their safety record didn’t follow as closely with their convenience, an on-the-go America of the late 19th century opted increasingly for transportation by land, and the age of palatial coastal steamers in the sound faded.
Amidst the wooden hulls and sheets of canvas naval vessels occasioned the sound, often passing through but also on target practice missions. The shelter of Menemsha bight at the southern end of Vineyard Sound offered smooth water for the North Atlantic Squadron to unlimber its big guns and send volleys out to moored targets at sea. The reports shook windows in their casings and disturbed island residents, especially during nighttime gunnery exercises.
As with so many other seagoing vessels, the grey steel warships were themselves at a point of transformation. In February 1906 a bottle of Australian wine shattered across the bow of the HMS Dreadnaught at her launch and virtually overnight rendered the battleships and cruisers transiting the sound were obsolete.
The grace of the private sloops darting about and the ever present masts the schooners and barges punctuated by the odd warship or passenger steamer painted the sound at the turn of the century. Streaks of black coal smoke and small wakes left by sailing vessels dwindled after the canal opened in 1914 and expanded in the ’30s. By the second World War the maritime picture had changed for good. The schooners and barges were gone; what coastal steamers remained were an endangered species and the larger modern warships wouldn’t lightly risk the changing shoals of the Cape Cod Passage. Today the island ferries ply their familiar route and the odd barge, mastless and under tow, laden with fuel, makes its appearance. Very occasionally a large cruise ship makes an appearance, but the once-commercial waterway has given over to sport fisherman and weekend sailor. Silent wooden hulls resting on the bottom of the sound are the lonely testament to a bygone age.