Now come with me, if you will, to a country home somewhere, some
place, in some land. Standing in the open doorway of that home is a
mother and her son, the son a splendid specimen of physical manhood
standing beside his mother his hand resting on a sailor’s clothes bag.
That morning the mother had packed that clothes bag until it was full
with warm stockings, warm mittens, warm underclothes, warm shirts,
warm blankets, and everything a young sailor required. She was saying
to her boy, “Now, Jimmy, you are going away to sea. You are going to
stand on your own and I want you to be a good boy. As your mother, I’m
concerned over your welfare. Your success is my life, your joys are my
joys, and your sorrows are my sorrows. As your mother, I want to know
where you are and how you are getting along. So I want you to promise
me above all other things that you will write me from every port. Now
you’re going out to face the world and experience life itself, and
whatever happens I want you to be a man. Keep away from the saloons and
the bar-rooms, and leave the booze alone. Remember the fate of your
father--Booze, the damnable stuff called booze. From the time it issues
from the poisonous coils of the distillery until it empties into a sea
of crime, degradation, despair and death, it pollutes every substance
and, in a measure, weakens every man, woman, and child who comes in
contact with it. As your mother, I am asking you to leave it alone.” He
answered, “Yes mother I am going away to sea. I am going to stand on
my own and I promise you upon my word of honor that I will write you
from every port. Now I’m going out, as you say, to face the world, and
whatever happens I intend to play the part of a man. So far as possible
I’ll keep away from the saloons and bar-rooms and leave the booze
alone.” He picked up his clothes bag, threw it over his shoulder as
young men did of yore, went down the path to the road and down the road
until he came to a bend in the road. He stopped and looked back. His
mother was still standing in the doorway. She waved her boy good-bye.
He waved his mother good-bye, went around the bend in the road and
was gone, and gone forever, leaving his mother still standing in the
doorway.
That was sixty years ago. Sixty years ago ninety per cent of all the
freight that went north and south, east and west, along the Atlantic
seaboard went by water and ninety per cent of all the freight that went
by water went under sail. This was the old sailing days and there was
a tremendous fleet of those freighters or coasters as we called them,
all rigs, sloop rigs, two-masted schooners, three-masted schooners,
four-masted schooners, brigs and barks. Anyone who knows anything about
the old sailing days knows that it was almost an impossibility to beat
down over Nantucket Shoals when the wind was to the east or north as it
is so often here on Cape Cod. They would anchor as far back as Menemsha
Bight, Tarpaulin Cove, Vineyard Haven, and Woods Hole. They would
anchor down off Falmouth, down under the breakwater at Hyannisport,
down under the breakwater at West Dennis, and wherever there was an
anchorage you would see those schooners tied up, anchored, waiting for
fair wind. At last it would come, the wind would breeze up from the
west. Then they would hoist their sails and anchors, get under way, and
start out down over the shoals. You would see them coming--sometimes
hundreds of them--with their white sails showing like clouds against
the blue sky. In those days the only outlet going down over the shoals
to the east and the north was the Pollock Rip Slew, a channel between
two shoals. Moored at the entrance of the Pollock Rip Slew was the old
Pollock Rip Lightship, number 47. It was the duty of the crew of a
lightship in those days to count and log the shipping that went one way
and the other over the shoals. The Old Pollock Rip Lightship, number
47, had the record of having counted and logged in her log book over
five hundred sails in twenty-four hours going and coming down over the
shoals. They would come down over the shoals, pass out through Pollock
Rip Slew, and head up the back side of the Cape for their destinations.