When the Cape Captains came home from the sea it was their realization
of a dream of security and of normal family life for which they had
fought the elements and endured countless hardships. Behind them
stretched limitless miles of open ocean, the sea which had claimed so
many friends and relatives. In the great days of the Clippers, between
1840 and 1870, the white stones in the cemeteries with the notation
“Lost at Sea”, had multiplied so greatly that to a stranger today it
would seem that Cape Codders hardly ever lived long enough to die of
natural causes. In the year 1840 it was estimated that there were over
one thousand “sea-widows” residing in the County. Those who had come
home to stay ashore at last did so with humility and thanksgiving in
their hearts.
It is sometimes difficult to remember that the life of a deep-water
Captain was a business, and a grim and lonesome business at that, in
which the Captains were engaged in order to make a living for their
families. They chose such a way because the sea was at their doorstep,
and in their blood, and in the direction in which their talents lay.
Of course there was something in it of the strong call of adventure,
and they were equal to it, for they were intelligent and brave, and
true pioneers. No port in the world was beyond their reach and in the
clipper ships with the wonderful names (Red Jacket, Flying Cloud, Wild
Hunter and the rest) they reached them and returned, not once, but a
score of times, girdling the globe and reducing its size to the glory
of their country. But for most it was the vision of a final haven in
some Cape village, with wife and family, and enough money for security,
that kept the Captains going through all the lonely years at sea.
It is in the ship’s papers and correspondence of the Captains that
the inherent homesickness shines through and in ways that, in their
subtlety, make it all the more poignant. Thus a river across the world
“looks a little like our own Bass River”, and a distant shoreline
“makes me think of the highlands at home”. Perhaps the Captain
practices penmanship on a spare page of his log. Then you will see
that the names he has written over and over again are those of wife
and children, or of his home village on the Cape. Many would use their
spare time to dream of the home they would one day build ashore and in
the notebooks are frequent drawings of dream mansions, many of which
became reality in a Cape village.
Sometimes the controls are off and in some moment of nostalgia he
writes from the heart, baldly. One Dennis Captain writes to his owners,
“Please to send someone to take over the ship when we reach San
Francisco as I have been over three years without seeing home or family
and cannot be away from them longer.” Sometimes when things were going
especially badly the Captain’s remarks even broke into the “Remarks”
column of the ship’s Log as in this entry by a famous Cape Captain on
his fortieth day at sea in the Pacific: “Oh, for a cot in some vast
wilderness where I shall never see a ship again. If ever one poor
fellow has tired of anything it is I that is sick and tired of going to
sea.”
As you look over the yellowed pages that the Captains have left behind,
you feel that they only were able to shake their haunting vision of
home and family when they had the greatest reason to have overwhelming
pride in their craft and the challenges they offered. Let them break a
standing record for crossing a sea, or triumphantly outsail a superior
vessel, or accurately guess a position in mid-ocean just “from the
look of things”, or sail through tortuous straits where more timid men
had said “can’t be done”, and the pride of honest achievement brought
compensation for tiresome, lonesome hours away from home.
Many of the Captains never realized their dream of retirement ashore,
but many did, and with the money from their voyages they built their
lovely homes along Main Street. Into them went some of the most exotic
woods of the tropics, molded into fine panelling by ship’s carpenters
who loved the feel of fine wood, and played their own kind of music
upon it. And into the panelled rooms went the relics of their hundreds
of thousands of miles at sea--teakwood stands and rosewood chairs,
tables inlaid with mosaic and ivory, the finest of china and crystal,
wallpapers from France and carpets from Belgium, and all the countless
odds and ends of curiosities that have appealed to souvenir collectors
of all times and generations. Often there were so many things that they
spilled out of the house and into the attic where they reposed in the
Captain’s sea chests that were kept standing “at the ready” just in
case. Every house had such a surfeit of Oriental silks and embroidery
that many a young girl, who wanted something really different to wear
to a dance, preferred to buy a bolt of calico from the village dry
goods store. But when all the curios and souvenirs had been distributed
about the Captain’s home, the place of honor would still be saved upon
the parlor wall for the oil painting of the Captain’s vessel as it was
depicted by some far away artist as it entered the Port of Naples, or
Calcutta, or Singapore. For the Captains could never divorce themselves
entirely from the beautiful winged ships that had brought them safely
home.
From their homes the Captains took their thankfulness and humility
to the white churches of the Cape, many of which they had helped to
build, and to which they gave their active support. All of the Captains
had held regular Sunday services aboard ship, fair weather or foul,
and many had held daily readings from the Bible which they kept in
their cabin and from which they found frequent solace. Hardly anyone
has been so thoroughly committed to the care of the Almighty as the
Cape Captain putting out to sea. Church-going brought the same kind of
inspirational orderliness to their life ashore as they had taken to the
helm of their winged vessels. At every Cape Meeting House one would see
faces that had been long gone, but dearly remembered, as the Captains
came home. These marine aristocrats were a subject of awe to the young,
and their return was an occasion for joy to the adults, for there was
hardly a family which did not have some connection of its own with the
blue waters that stretched away from the Cape. So to the churches they
came, imposing figures in Sunday black, often with magnificent beards
and mustaches, always with a kind of slightly rolling gait that set
them aside from their land-bound neighbors.
The Captains took their pleasure too. Fraternal orders were established
in every village and they took an active part in them. There were
trotting races over established courses such as the track which once
ran around Wychmere Harbor, or the Trotting Park at West Dennis. And
there were wild races over the snow with sleighs, such as took place
over South Main Street in South Yarmouth down to the river, with
horse manes flying and the beards of distinguished gentlemen thrust
into the wind, while sleigh bells tinkled and the unblemished snows
of yesteryear crunched beneath the racing hooves of the Captains best
horse flesh. Having a fast horse was almost as important to them as a
fast ship. And in every village there was a favorite gathering place
where, in winter, they would sit about a sizzling stove and have
a pipe, and rattle off tales of faraway places which were then so
familiar that no Cape boy could have been troubled with geography. In
summer there were other things to do for recreation. Then it was time
to paint up, caulk, and launch the small boats that they always kept
handy. From them they could fish in the bounteous home waters, and feel
the old, familiar swells of the sea, and dream a little.
But the Captains had not come ashore to live in idleness. Almost
at once they threw themselves into hard work ashore, putting the
hard-earned money from the sea to good use. The biographies of the
Cape Captains show them to have been as much masters of trade as they
had been of their vessels. The list is imposing--bank presidents, and
founders of banks, railroad presidents (for they sensed the wisdom
of joining forces with the puny ribbons of steel that were already
luring freight away from the sea), founders of manufacturies such as
the mammoth salt works of the Cape and the 100 worker shoe factory
at West Dennis, cranberry-growers and exporters, shipbuilders and
ship owners--they were active in everything, and often they were as
successful ashore as they had been at sea.
When the Captains came home from the sea they had a busy life and a
good life, and it was good to be at home. And for the communities whose
life they had so greatly enriched it was good that the Captains had
come.
_There was the narrow land and there was the sea that washed against
it and there were people that developed many of the characteristics of
the homeland. They turned to building with ingenuity and with loving
care, and in the clean lines of their fences, their houses, and their
places of worship there was something of the land and the sea, and of
the kind of people they were._