Out in front of the region we have been describing projects the famous
"ridge of rocks and roses," the gaunt headland of Cape Ann. This is a
ponderous mass of hornblende granite, advanced forward twelve to
fifteen miles into the ocean, with Thatcher's Island beyond, on which
are the twin lighthouses that guard the mariner, forty-two miles north
of the Highland Light on Cape Cod. The granite hills of the iron-bound
headland are fringed with forests, while jagged reefs and rocky islets
surround it, against which the sea beats in perpetual warfare. The
surface is strewn with boulders, many of large size, and beds of the
finest white sand are interspersed. The Indians called this promontory
Wingaersheek, and when Captain John Smith came along he named it Cape
Tragabizonda, in memory of a Moslem princess who had befriended him
when a prisoner in Constantinople, also calling three small islands
off the cape the "Three Turks' Heads." But King Charles I. would have
none of this, however, and called the headland Cape Ann, after his
royal mother, and thus it has remained. The haven on the southern
side, Gloucester harbor, was early sought as a fishing station, being
known in 1624, and it received its name in 1642, most of the early
settlers coming from Gloucester in England. Champlain found it a safe
harbor when in peril, and writes of it as "Le Beau Port." In
August, 1892, this famous fishery port celebrated its two hundred and
fiftieth anniversary with great fervor.
[Illustration: _Along the Shore, Cape Anne, Gloucester, Mass._]
The prosperity of Gloucester has come from the fisheries, it being the
greatest cod and mackerel port in America, and having the most
extensive fleet of fishing-boats in the world, exceeding six hundred,
employing over six thousand men. The population approximates thirty
thousand, and it is said their earnings on the fishery product are
over $4,000,000 annually. The earliest form of the Cape Ann
fishing-smack was known as the "Chebacco," two-masted, cat-rigged, and
of ten or twelve tons, made sharp at both ends, and getting the name
from the first place of building, Chebacco Parish, in Ipswich,
adjoining the Cape. From this was developed the popular American build
of vessel known as the schooner, the first one being launched at
Gloucester in 1713. After sliding down the launching-ways, she so
gracefully glided out upon the water that a bystander exclaimed in
admiration, "See how she schoons!" and thus was she unexpectedly
named, for a "schooner" has that style of vessel been ever since
called. Gloucester surrounds its spacious harbor as a broad crescent,
having Ten Pound Island in front sentinelling the entrance to the
inner haven, so named because that was the price said to have been
paid the Indians for it. The deeply indented harbor opens towards the
southwest, being protected from the ocean by the long peninsula of
Eastern Point, having a fort and lighthouse on its extremity. Some
seventy wharves jut out from the circular head of the bay, with
granite hills rising behind, up which the town is terraced. Shipping
of all kinds are scattered about, including large salt-laden ships,
while fishermen and sailors wander through the streets and assemble
around the docks, spinning yarns and preparing for fishing ventures
out to the "Banks." The odd old town around the harbor has seen little
change for years, but the newer portions are greatly improved, having
many imposing buildings, including a fine City Hall. The numerous
churches have gained for it the title of "Many-spired Gloucester," and
no place could disclose more picturesque sea views.
But the fishery interest pervades the whole town, dwarfing everything
else. The main street winds about the head of the harbor, bending with
the sinuosities of the shore, and from it other streets, without much
regularity, go down to the wharves. Fishing-boats are everywhere, with
new ones building, and on most of the open spaces are "cod-flakes," or
drying-places, where the fish are piled when first landed, preparatory
to being cut up and packed in the extensive packing-houses adjoining
the wharves. Here many hundreds are employed in preparing the fish for
market, both men and women working. The best fish are either packed
whole or cut into squares, so they may be pressed by machinery into
what are known as "cod-bricks," one and two-pound bricks being put
into forty-pound boxes for shipment. When packed whole, the best fish
are known as "white clover," in this stage of what is called the
fishery "haymaking." This fish-packing is an enormous industry, and
the Gloucester product goes to all parts of the world. But the fishery
has its sombre side; the vessels are small, rarely over one hundred
tons, and the crews are numerous, so that wrecks and loss of life are
frequent. Often a tremendous storm will destroy a whole fleet on the
"Banks," with no tidings ever received; and scarcely a family exists
in Gloucester or its neighborhood that has not lost a member at sea.
Sometimes the badges of mourning are universal.
An enormous development of rocks and boulders is seen everywhere in
and around Gloucester. The houses are built upon rocks, the sea beats
against rocks; but though excellent building-material is here, the
houses are mostly of wood throughout the whole Cape Ann district.
There is almost universally an ocean outlook over a sea of deepest
blue. The outer extremity of the harbor to the westward is a long
granite ridge ending in the popular watering-place of Magnolia Point.
Down on the Eastern Point, alongside its terminating lighthouse, is a
curious granitic formation, the rocks reproducing an elderly dame with
muffled form and apron, known as "Mother Ann," this rude image being
locally regarded as representing, in the eternal granite, the lady
who named the Cape, the royal mother of King Charles I. The white
flashing light upon Ten Pound Island between them is said to have for
one of its chief duties the guiding of the mariner past the
treacherous reefs of Norman's Woe, just west of the harbor entrance,
which Longfellow has immortalized in his poem _The Wreck of the
Hesperus_. One "Goodman Norman" and his son were among the first
settlers near there, and hence the name, but no record is found as to
the "Woe" he may have had. Neither is it known that any wreck ever
occurred on this famous reef. In the winter of 1839 a terrific storm
caused many disasters around Cape Ann, and forty dead bodies, one
being a woman lashed to a spar, were washed on the Gloucester shore.
Longfellow read in a newspaper the story of these wrecks and the
horrible details, one of the vessels being named the "Hesperus," and
he somewhere saw a reference to "Norman's Woe." This name so impressed
him that he determined to write a ballad on the wrecks. Late one
night, as he sat by the fireside smoking his pipe, he conjured up the
vivid scene and wrote the ballad. He retired to bed, but, as he
relates, it was not to sleep; new thoughts crowded his mind, and he
rose and added them to the ballad, and at three o'clock in the morning
had finished his immortal poem. There was no such wreck at the place,
but his genius has associated it with the iron-bound coast of Cape
Ann, and Norman's Woe is a monument consecrated to one of America's
greatest poets.
"It was the schooner Hesperus
That sailed the wintry sea;
And the skipper had taken his little daughter
To bear him company.
"And fast through the midnight dark and drear,
Through the whistling sleet and snow,
Like a sheeted ghost the vessel swept
Towards the reef of Norman's Woe.
"She struck where the white and fleecy waves
Looked soft as carded wool,
But the cruel rocks they gored her sides
Like the horns of an angry bull.
"Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice,
With the masts went by the board;
Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank,
Ho! ho! the breakers roared!
"At daybreak on the bleak sea-beach,
A fisherman stood aghast,
To see the form of a maiden fair,
Lashed close to a drifting mast.
"The salt sea was frozen on her breast,
The salt tears in her eyes;
And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed,
On the billows fall and rise.
"Such was the wreck of the Hesperus,
In the midnight and the snow!
Christ save us all from a death like this
On the reef of Norman's Woe!"