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Historic attractions, shipwrecks and solitude on Cape Cod
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Many things come to mind when you mention Cape Cod – JFK walking the beach at his summer White House at Hyannisport, a getaway for the well-to-do, the arts and alternative lifestyle of Provincetown. But an incredible amount of history has washed up on Cape Cod’s shores.
One of the largest barrier islands in the world and shaped like an arm flexing its bicep, Cape Cod protects much of the Massachusetts coastline from the unforgiving waves of the north Atlantic. Between Chatham and Provincetown, a distance of around fifty miles, over 1,000 wrecks are recorded, leading to its designation as an ocean graveyard.
The Sparrowhawk was the first recorded shipwreck on Cape Cod’s shores, back in,1626. That tale had a happy ending, with all the passengers reaching safety and the ship being repaired, only to sink again before it could be relaunched. Over the next few hundred years, shipwrecks became a form of income for the locals, salvaging the cargo, and sometimes the human cargo which washed ashore. Typically ships would flounder during storms however, and it was seldom that the hapless passengers reached the beaches of Cape Cod. As lifesaving techniques improved, when possible, lifesaving crews took specially equipped boats to ships in distress. When the surf made this impossible, they would attempt to fire a small cannon called a Lyle gun with a line attached to its shell to the ship. Sailors and passengers were then brought to shore in a basket above the waves. It was a dangerous task for those charged with saving lives as well, and their motto was “you have to go, but you don’t have to come back.”
Native Americans also were known to rescue stranded mariners, whose ships piled up on Cape Cod’s shore. The Wampanoag tribe has called Cape Cod home for many years, though they only received official recognition from the U.S. government in 2007. Originally numbering around 7,000 at the time of the pilgrim’s landing in Massachusetts, it was the Wampanoag you might remember, which helped them survive their earliest years on the new continent. The arrival of white people on the Cape had devastating consequences on the native American population, as the tribe was hit hard from Eurasian diseases for which they had no natural immunity.
And forget Plymouth Rock. The pilgrims made their first landing on these shores near Provincetown on November 11, 1620. It was there that the Mayflower Compact was drawn up, and a scouting party sent ashore to look for a suitable area for their colony. They encountered Indians near Eastham, and found no spot suitable for habitation, so once again the Mayflower set off, before finally settling on Plymouth.
And it’s believed that the pilgrims weren’t the first Europeans to come ashore on Cape Cod. There is evidence that the Promontory of Vinland mentioned by the Norse voyagers of 985-1025 was Cape Cod. Some believe that in 1006, Leif Ericson and his Vikings started a colony near Dennis. Archeological evidence has been found which might support the theory that it was here that the Norsemen built a form of dry dock to repair their ships. Whether the Vikings reached as far south as Cape Cod will probably never be known for certain however.
Henry Thoreau’s incredibly dry travelogue Cape Cod paints a picture of the area in the years 1849-1857. By then the land had been denuded of trees, and firewood had to be shipped in from Maine. The sand encroached on farm land and ground available for pasture, so much so that farming was abandoned on the Cape by the late nineteenth century, it’s inhabitants concentrating instead on the whaling and fishing industries.
By the end of the nineteenth century, tourism was coming to life on the Cape. Today it’s a major form of income for the locals, with much of the island’s commerce being shut down after the summer months. Which for me is the time to visit Cape Cod.
In late October and early November, you can feel the winter blowing in from the Atlantic winds, which while I was there never seemed to lie down, The colors were changing, far later than most of the rest of the northeast, and the sunsets were truly spectacular. You have the beaches to yourself, bed and breakfasts are off-season and you can get a sense of what Cape Cod was like before it became gentrified. Colonial era houses and buildings, as well as residences built for sea captains dot the landscape, and there are fewer roads which scream New England like Route 6A, which skirts serpent-like along the coast. It’s there in the solitude that the ghosts of Cape Cod speak to the traveller, of a time long gone but still out there. Below the sands and below the waves.
Posted in New England
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Historical attractions in Gotham City: A gin-soaked stroll through New York City’s Manhattan Island
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For nearly eight years, I lived only an hour’s train ride to New York City. Yet I seldom visited there, and developed a true love/hate relationship with the place. The names associated with the place now don’t ring with the same sweet tones as the ones that came before them. There are no Gershwins, Cohens, Mailers – Dorothy Parker isn’t spilling her wit all over and under the tables of the Algonquin Hotel – even Woody Allen is increasingly abandoning the place for new inspiration.
There’s no doubt in my mind that New York is the most egotistical town in the world. Whereas Paris might consider itself the center of the art world, Milan might consider itself the center of the fashion world, New York skips the modifier and is the only city I know that calls itself the center of the world. Come to think of it, New York would try to lay claims to both those titles as well.
About a year or so ago I read a fascinating book, The Island At the Center of the World, by Russell Shorto on the founding of the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, and how it shaped the history of what would eventually become known as New York. It turns out that American qualities such as religious freedom and tolerance of ethnic groups other than your own got their start in this country in the original Dutch colony. As well as more tawdry aspects of society such as getting loaded on strong drink and falling into the company of women of ill-repute. While their English brethren at the time living north in Massachusetts were practicing a strict, puritan form of government, the Dutch colony was allowing people to live according to their conscience, or lack thereof, and a fairly lax set of laws.
Keep this in mind the next time Christmas rolls around and people are harping about how Christmas is losing its importance and how the pilgrims who came to this country to worship as they saw fit would be appalled. Those same Christians did not tolerate any deviance from their laws, and the celebration of Christmas was outright banned. That we celebrate Christmas in this country today is a relic of the Dutch colony, whose concept of religious tolerance lives on. This is doubly curious when you consider that Holland was the country the pilgrims sailed from in order to found a new nation based on religious freedom. In other words, that Christmas exists in this country today is because of that heathen bastion now known as New York City.
Anyway, this article isn’t about religious freedom and tolerance, it’s about New York City, and where to see the history of the place, as well as historical attractions there today. It’s not as easy as you think. The original Dutch colony is almost completely gone. In fact, there are more signs of the Viking period in Dublin than there are of the Dutch in New York. When the Dutch occupied Manhattan, there were over 21 fresh water ponds and 66 miles of streams. There was a sandy beach at the southern tip of the island, and the landscape was one of gently rolling hills. The growth of Manhattan has obliterated the very landscape that the Dutch settlers found. There are the occasional discoveries of a piece of road, the foundation of a house or well, and nearly all of it is then covered over with new construction. The best place to see New Netherlands is by looking at a map, where the street layout of lower Manhattan is much the same.
The colonial period doesn’t fare much better. Even the balcony where George Washington was sworn in as our first president, outside the building where the Bill of Rights was enacted, is now remembered by a single stone tucked away in a museum. In New York, history usually plays second fiddle to real estate values.
Walking the streets of Manhattan today isn’t much different than walking the streets of any major city. You have the same chain stores – the high costs of doing business there has pushed out all but the largest retailers. There are restaurants of course, as New Yorkers increasingly define themselves by choices of eateries, few of which reflect any ethnic origins native to a particular neighborhood. The city is still a melting pot of course, but the people you see walking the streets are more than likely living elsewhere in the city or beyond, or tourists, as the cost of living has grown beyond the reach of most mere mortals.
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So where do you find history in New York? Look up. Once your gaze rises above the first or second floor, the architectural history of the city comes alive. Get off the train at Penn Station and make your way to the Flatiron Building and head down Broadway for some of the best historical architecture the city has to offer. Pass the temple to one man’s retail dreams, the Woolworth Building – as intricate as a child’s dollhouse, past the looming bulk of the Municipal Building complex and wander the archetypical canyons of the financial district in lower Manhattan. Swing by Saint Mark’s Church of the Bowery, a remnant of the days when this land was owned by New Amsterdam’s last governor, Peter Stuyvesant, and the Stuyvesant-Fish house nearby which he had built as a wedding present for his daughter. Say hello to Alexander Hamilton in his final resting place outside of Trinity Church, a structure itself hoary with history. Dine at Delmonico’s which fed such figures as Mark Twain, or at Fraunces Tavern where Washington said goodbye to his officers at the end of the revolution. Or choose any of the outdoor restaurants on Stone Street which has a fairly medieval air, and get casually fed and watered before staggering your way back up the island.
Head up Fifth Avenue and see what used to be the center of the shopping world. Look up at the Empire State Building’s shorter, Art Deco sister the Chrysler Building for a peek at what skyscrapers could be when people actually gave a damn about such things as aesthetics. Stroll into the Plaza in the footstep of the stars of long ago and hold your head high as they kick your ass back out on the pavement. Stroll along Central Park West where notables still live in buildings that might as well be temples. As for Central Park itself – eh, it’s a park. It’s trees and grass and sure, it’s notable for being in the midst of one of the largest cities on earth, but in the end, it’s a park. It’s a living space for those who live here, who’ll you see in expensive recreational uniforms, or just sitting dazed knowing they’re supposed to get sun, but not entirely sure what they should do when the sunshine hits them. And of course a place for buskers to sell their wares and incredibly high priced bottles of water and soft drinks to tourists. It’s a simulation of nature, and for me, I prefer the real thing.
In short, history is still in abundance, but you have to know where to look. And you have to realize it’s not going to be coherent, nor even make sense in the modern sprawl of the city.
Perhaps New York City is best experienced in small doses. Get there in the afternoon and wander the streets into the night. Try seeing it from the top of a tour bus and avoid the lower stories altogether. See it bleary eyed from drink when emotions might be more likely to take over, and the people might seem a bit less irritating. Yes, the fabled rude New Yorker. There are certainly as many assholes per square foot in NYC as Paris. But just as I found most Parisians to be quite charming, the true New Yorker is really quite friendly as well, eager to chat or to help you find your way.
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So it’s late in the night, my last trip there, days before fleeing the east coast and New York for good and I had been walking the streets for hours, my pockets full of cash that was a going away present from the office where I worked, feeling like an emigrant in reverse, fleeing west from the city instead of eastward across the ocean. I always felt like an emigrant here, fleeing my home and poverty for a chance at a better life in the promised land. I was looking to say goodbye to the Chrysler Building when a man came stumbling onto the sidewalk in front of me, mussed-up hair and dressed in his P.J.’s, cursing each step he took, as though he was sent out by a shrew wife on some trivial errand. And yet when stopped by some tourists who had lost their way, he was as friendly and courteous as anyone I’ve met anyplace. I dined in the building which inspired Edgar Allan Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado, and spent more on it than I would a week’s worth of groceries. A black man outside of Penn Station bummed a cigarette from me and in exchange we walked down Broadway and smoked his marijuana. Waiting for the train I fell in with a group of strangers, ranging in age from 21 to 71 in a small bar and drank toast after toast, as I prepared to leave a place I could never feel a part of, but would certainly never forget. I lived in the shadow of that city for almost eight years, and never felt a part of it. But for a few hours, I was a New Yorker. I missed that train and the next, and as the little group who met as strangers and parted as friends drifted apart and I found myself slouched in a seat on the Long Island Railroad, an old song by the Pogues drifting through my fractured mind …
In Manhattan’s desert twilight
In the death of afternoon
We stepped hand in hand on Broadway
Like the first man on the moon
And “The Blackbird” broke the silence
As you whistled it so sweet
And in Brendan Behan’s footsteps
I danced up and down the street
Then we said goodnight to Broadway
Giving it our best regards
Tipped our hats to Mister Cohan
Dear old Times Square’s favorite bard
Then we raised a glass to JFK
And a dozen more besides
When I got back to my empty room
I suppose I must have cried
Lyrics from Thousands are Sailing, by Philip Chevron, recorded by the Pogues.
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Posted in Hudson River Valley, New York City
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Historical Attractions: A stroll through time in the downtown preservation district in Evansville Indiana
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I was in Beaufort, South Carolina recently which prides itself in its old homes and architecture. And yep, it’s something to be proud of. But I couldn’t help but think that if you take away the Spanish moss, what you’re left with is heat and stunning architecture.
In short, we’ve got that at home.
Evansville, Indiana grew up on a bend of the Ohio river, and summers there rival the lowcountry for hot, muggy weather. Unknown to most people in the area, so does the architecture. Much of the city is pretty typical suburban fare, though the downtown district still retains quite a bit of early twentieth century charm. But where you can truly step back in time is in the preservation district, just off downtown, a block inland from the riverfront.
The riverfront, now growing with riverboat gambling, restaurants, bars and shops attracts tens of thousands of visitors each year, drawn to the river city’s charms. But head a few blocks over and in and you find yourself on tree-lined brick streets, full of turn of the twentieth century homes, lovingly restored. The Reitz Home Museum is the only Victorian residence museum in the state of Indiana, and gives a good idea what many of these homes must have been like in their prime. But it’s easy to get in a good hour stroll down Southeast Second, First and Riverside Drive, past carriage houses, painted ladies, Italianate and Greek revival, elegant brick structures, many with hitching posts still out front, and widow’s walks on the top floors which once gave panoramic views of the river.
Weekday mornings and afternoons are the best times for touring the district, before the cars of those renting apartments in these grand old houses get home and line the streets. Nightime is magic as well, when silence descends on the streets and the smells of these older structures waft out to greet you on the sidewalks.
Time traveling in the midwest is a subtle art, and here you can find it at its finest. Non-commercial, very little in the way of formal historic attractions, instead you find yourself walking through a residential neighborhood, still alive and much as it must have been a hundred years ago. When the light’s just right, when the scent of the flowers is rich in the thick, midwestern air, it’s easy to be transported back. And hard to convince yourself to leave.
Note: I found a great site with info on Evansville history, which helped me put names and dates to these homes. Check it out!
A Contrarian’s View of History: The Myth of Independence
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Who do we thank for our independence? Surely not the British for granting us self-rule under duress. Taxation without representation? We paid among the lowest taxes in the British empire, despite the disproportionately high costs of defending our safety. Jefferson, Addams, Franklin and the rest who signed the declaration? Curious that in this day of tea parties and general unrest that we would honor a group of men who in essence declared a war without giving representation to the people they were dragging into it (Had the actions of the Continental Congress – a cherry-picked group of mostly well-heeled, politically connected members of the wealthier classes – been under the scrutiny of the 24 hour news cycle, we surely never would have declared our independence). The soldiers? A ragtag group of citizen soldiers, described by the greatest military power of its day as terrorists (and in many cases, rightly so). An army which generally had its butt kicked up and down the east coast of this continent, which only managed to stay afloat by retreat and avoiding the fight. How about the French, a country which we in this country quite often regard as cowards, but let’s face it, handed us the victory at Yorktown on a silver platter (For the record, the French lost over 2,000,000 people in both world wars, out of a population of about 40,000,000. The U.S. lost a little over half a million out of over 130,000,000. The percentage of the French population who supported the Germans in WWII was far lower than the percentage of colonists who supported the British in the revolution). We couldn’t have done it without the Frogs. The media? How about Paul Revere’s famous print of the Boston Massacre – a deliberate distortion of the facts that would have made Fox News proud. The God of our founding fathers? Take Thomas Paine – “These are the times that try men’s souls.” Believed that observation of nature, free-thinking and reason alone could prove the existence of a supreme being, without faith nor organized religion (or try these on for size … “The United States is in no sense founded upon the Christian doctrine,” – George Washington, “It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature,” Thomas Jefferson and finally honest Abe Lincoln “The Bible is not my book, and Christianity is not my religion. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma”). George Washington, the father of our country, a second-rate soldier prior to the revolution who made his fortune marrying a rich widow whom he never showed an excess of warmth and love, a slave-owner and member of the ruling elite, who derived his power from being a successful businessman. His great dream was to assume the trappings of an English gentleman
We’ve created a mythology about the founding of our nation (as all nations do), which when leaned upon heavily, collapses like a deck of cards and threatens to take us all along with it. There was no single ideal, no single truth, no single motive that we can point to and say “that’s what this country declared our independence to preserve). No single ideal is more American than any other, at least in reference to our birth.
In truth we owe a debt of gratitude to all of the above and countless others, not for what we wish they could have been, but for what they were. To understand the founding of our country, and the miracle that it truly was, requires seeing the people behind the myths. Human beings with all their faults, foibles, idealism and intelligence. They rose to the occasion and in many cases, far surpassed what would in most circumstances have been expected of them. The Declaration of Independence wasn’t signed as part of a grand, inspired by God plan for manifest destiny, nor did it grant us independence. They didn’t sign on to forge a new nation, but to protect their own states’ and private citizens’ rights first. Doubtless they knew that a new nation of sorts would be forged, but the details were to be hammered out years later, and fought about still to this day. It was a step along the way, a milestone in what we were to become. What we do with our independence – now as much as then – is still up to us.
