Part 3

_The First American to Fly The Atlantic “Hopped Off” Here_

“You don’t say hum and eggs, do you?” chided the old native.

So, the proper pronunciation for the town of Chatham is--Chat-ham. With the accent on the hind end. To the native this is important. And so it is on the opposite side of the nation where the true citizen of San Francisco winces when you say “Frisco” and would prefer to have you articulate the whole name of his fair city.

Chatham, with some 50 miles of shoreline, is one of the most beautiful, unspoiled seashore places on Cape Cod. Architecture of great seafaring days, the primitive, lonely cry of the seagull, the home-spun shell fisherman, a history crowded with drama, bright little Yankee streets, art and literature and here and there a touch of international fame--this is Chatham. The writer is prejudiced, because this is the place where, 18 years ago, he spent his first night on Cape Cod. And met his first artist acquaintance, a dear friend for two decades, Harold Dunbar.

PEOPLE OF DISTINCTION

The late Joseph C. Lincoln was a widely known Chatham resident. The writer of many fiction-novels about Cape Cod folk contributed more than any other person to make this peninsula known to the nation at large. Arthur Wilson Tarbell of Chatham, a modern historian, wrote an outstanding book, “Cape Cod Ahoy!” Sinclair Lewis did some of his early writing here. Alice Stallknecht Wight got on the Associated Press wires as a result of the excitement caused by her mural painting in the Chatham Congregational Church. “Christ Preaching to the Multitude” is its title. The multitude consists of well known Chatham faces and Christ, depicted as a fisherman, is shown addressing them from a boat. For a companion piece Mrs. Wight later painted “The Last Supper”, showing Coast Guards, sea captains and other Chathamites as the disciples.

And in a pleasing, secluded spot the late Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis had his summer home for many years.

The tiptop spire of the Congregational Church is fashioned from a spar on the bark R. A. Allen, wrecked on the Chatham shore in 1887. Lightning damaged the church in the same storm. And the Cape’s toy windmill industry, that has waxed fat from the summer trade, started in Chatham. The humble carver of the first shop is romanticized in Lincoln’s novel “Shavings”. But a Coast Guard station skipper is given credit for making the first toy windmill. The art spread to other stations and business got so brisk the Government issued an order, forbidding the guardians of the deep from engaging further in the profitable sideline.

LINKED WITH OLD ENGLAND

Chatham is named for the County of Kent town in old England. Before the Pilgrims came to the Cape, Champlain, the French explorer, arrived here in 1606. He planned to establish a French colony in Chatham, but a fight with the Indians drove him off. In 1658, William Nickerson of Norfolk, England, appeared on the scene and gave the sachem Mattaquason a shallop for the sea-girted acres. Complications developed; Nickerson was called to Plymouth Court and ultimately he had to pay 90 pounds as a fair purchase price. In 1712 Chatham was incorporated as a town.

The Mayflower, her passengers looking to a settlement below the Hudson, barely escaped being wrecked on the Chatham shoals. Here she turned back to enter Provincetown Harbor.

Three hundred years later a Navy flier repaid this visit, wafting down from the heavens onto Plymouth, England.

Lieut. Albert Cushing Read of Hanson, Mass., was the first man to fly the Atlantic, and he took off from Chatham. He competed in a trans-ocean contest of the Navy “Nancies” in 1919, the N-C’s 1, 2, 3 and 4. The original takeoff point was Rockaway Beach, Long Island. Read rode the N-C 4, which was disabled far off this shore, but managed to get into this port, where, as luck had it, a Navy air station was located for the training of large numbers of fliers for the last war. A new motor was installed, the N-C 4 winged off to the Azores via Trepassey Bay, New Foundland and the pioneering flight was completed with fifty-two and a half hours having been spent in the skies. Read flew on to Plymouth, perhaps for sentiment’s sake, having the Mayflower in mind.

ORLEANS----

_The World’s Insomnia Champion Lived Here_

The late Joseph C. Lincoln of Chatham gained national fame with his stories of Cape Cod. The quaint characters he wrote about were, for the most part, taken from life. Some other old-timers, however, have been a bit too unconventional, even for Mr. Lincoln’s yarn-spinning purposes. “Bill-Ike” Small, for example.

Bill-Ike--or, Isaac Wilbur Small, a name that no one would have recognized--claimed he never slept. He was the insomnia champion of the world until he passed on in Orleans a few years ago. And, he made it so real a Boston paper printed pages about him. The paper sent down its crack feature writer and he and Bill-Ike went off to New York to tour the night clubs--the idea being to determine whether Bill-Ike’s story would stand the test during two or three night of skylarking and sitting up in a hotel room.

Bill-Ike made good, we were told, for the newspaperman observed him every blessed minute of the sleeplessness, nor did he, himself, fall off a chair.

HE GAINED WEIGHT, TOO

“I close my eyes for a little while, just to rest ’em, but I don’t sleep. I haven’t used a bed for over five years,” Bill-Ike would tell me. Then the gentle old man with a flowing white beard would add that he had gained 38 pounds in the past year.

He would just “set” in a decrepit old chair by the stove or putter about the house long winter nights. He’d while away the tedious hours reading sea stories and cowboy yarns and go through three or four magazines in a night. But, his mother’s glasses didn’t serve him as well toward the end and time became more of a burden. Around 3 a.m. he would brew a pot of tea and make himself a sandwich. Moonlight nights in the spring and summer were welcomed, for then he was able to get outdoors and do a few chores.

Bill-Ike said he first discovered the capacity to go without sleep when he was a youth working in the cranberry bogs during a rush season. He worked night and day for three months that time and discovered that he could get along with only an hour’s snooze in the morning before breakfast. But, he didn’t really begin to make a habit of staying awake until 1928.

HOW HE “EXPERIMENTED”

That year Bill-Ike happened to read in a magazine, “Nobody can go 80 days without sleep.” Just to prove this wasn’t so, the old gentleman began by denying himself sleep for a continuous stretch of 83 days. In 1929 he “experimented” again, keeping awake 147 days. Then the sleeplessness became more of a habit. But, each year he bettered his own record and in 1933 he rounded out his first full year of going without sleep. Finally, Bill-Ike achieved the amazing five-year record, and he was going into his sixth year when he passed on.

He was in fine fettle almost to the end, a firm believer in the gospel of hard toil. During vacation seasons he kept busy tending the gardens and being the handyman for summer cottagers. A bachelor--“always been willin’ but the right gal ain’t ever showed up”--Bill-Ike lived with his brother, Fred, in a century-old house in a spot remote from the town. Fred would have his regular eight or nine hours in bed, undisturbed by Bill-Ike’s poking about the house at all hours of the night.

“Sure, I could enjoy a full night’s sleep,” was the old insomnia champion’s mournful comment. “But, I just can’t, that’s all. Doctors say it has something to do with my nerves.”

There were people in Orleans who took Bill-Ike’s sleepless story with a pinch of salt. But Bill-Ike got the publicity just the same, and the New York excursion and ballyhoo didn’t change him a bit. And, at the peak of the newspaper excitement, another oldster of the community bobbed up with a new and original claim. He slept, all right, but his eyelids never seemed to come down. All of his sleeping was done with eyes wide open. He just lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling, all night long.

ORLEANS----

_The First German U-Boat Attack On American Soil_

In the last war, the one and only attack on American soil by the Germans was at Orleans, Cape Cod.

On a quiet Sunday morning, July 21, 1918, the submarine, U-156, rose from the ocean waters a few hundred yards off the Orleans shore. In full view of numerous cottagers, the enemy sub leisurely began shelling the defenseless tug Perth Amboy and her three barges.

Exactly why these craft, of no particular military value, were chosen for attack has never been made known. It may have been an impulsive act of bravado by the Kaiser’s marauders or, possibly, a scare stunt to give Americans at home the jitters.

The Americans attacked, managed to get ashore in dories, while the firing continued. “One observer counted 147 shots.” There are conflicting versions, naturally, but it is agreed there was considerable shooting, and the U-boat operated throughout without meeting resistance.

FIRED ON COAST GUARD

At least one shot was aimed directly at the tower of a Coast Guard station. It missed by a small margin and landed in a marsh, according to the description given me by a former Coast Guardsman who was standing the tower watch at the time. The three barges were sunk. The Perth Amboy, while badly burned, was subsequently towed in for repairs, and she may even be in service today.

A Cape Cod man, strange as it may seem, was skipper of the Perth Amboy--Capt. Joe Perry hailed from Provincetown. Another Provincetown man, Henry J. James, son of a fishing captain in that old port at the tip-end of the Cape, was moved to write a significant book after the Orleans attack.

Of interest even today, this book--“German Subs in Yankee Waters”--came out not long before Pearl Harbor, though James (when I last heard from him he was superintendent of schools in Simsbury, Connecticut) had negotiated with publishers for a long time to get it into print.

Many American developments for defense in the present war coincide with suggestions made by James--small, fast boats for coastal defense, beam-trawlers for minesweeping, the registering of all small craft for coastal protection and other aids lacking in the last war.

The Cape Cod attack and its implications made a strong impression upon James in his youth; this spurred him on to devote many years of patient research to complete his book.

He relates that in 1918, during the final action of the last war, Germany had six U-boats operating in our waters and these alone sank 91 ships and took a toll of 368 lives. All this happened within a brief six months.

These half-dozen underseas boats operating along the Atlantic shore--3400 miles from their base at Kiel, Germany--all got away safely after their destructive work. All but one--this struck a mine in the North Sea, not far from Kiel--got back to the home base.

STRANGE MEETING AT SEA

A complete, authentic record of the Cape Cod U-boat attack is still lacking. Occasionally, however, a new bit of information is added to the story by one who was at the scene. One of the best anecdotes was told me by a physician who had a cottage on the shore and sat with a telephone in his hand, observing the shelling and giving a running account of the attack to the _Boston Globe_.

After the war this gentleman made a crossing on the Leviathan. He fell into conversation with a German steward, mentioning that he was from Cape Cod. The German asked if he had, by chance, ever heard of a U-boat attack there during the war, and then proceeded to give an accurate description of the Orleans attack. Thus, the doctor-reporter, who had scored the biggest newspaper scoop in Cape Cod journalism and an erstwhile member of the U-156 crew met in mid-Atlantic.

The German chuckled: “Yah! we had some fun on that cruise. You didn’t know, did you, that some of us went ashore one night in a rubber boat and attended a movie in your Beverly, Massachusetts!”

The only effort to repulse the attacking U-boat was made by a lone flier from a Naval station at nearby Chatham. He lacked ammunition and had to resort to bold bluffing. After diving a couple of times over the submarine, he made a final low swoop and let fly a monkey wrench at the heads of the crew standing on deck.

Some time ago an article I wrote about the Cape Cod attack was reprinted in a digest magazine. A retired navy officer, in a little town in Pennsylvania, read it. He wrote me: “Well do I remember that dull overcast Sabbath morning, as I was the fellow who threw the monkey wrench.” And, he invited me to drop in, if I ever got around his way, and he’d tell me “the whole story.”

EASTHAM----

_Local Boy Makes Good On First Bombing of Tokio_

Eastham, Cape Cod, has a real claim to present-day fame. This unexciting, though historic little settlement, near the outer end of the sickle, is the home of Master Sgt. Edwin W. Horton, Jr., member of the Doolittle party on the first bombing of Tokio in World War II.

On his return to this country, Horton, at the first opportunity, hastened back to little Eastham for a quiet visit. And brought his bride to introduce to the home folks.

Eastham is small but historically she is important. The original name was Nauset. Here the Pilgrims, exploring after their arrival on the Mayflower, had their first encounter with the Indians. The forefathers focused particular attention on the fertile soil, Thomas Prence, Governor of Plymouth Colony, describing it as the “richest soyle, for ye most part a blackish & deep mould, much like that wher groweth ye best Tobacco in Virginia.” Today Eastham is still outstanding as a farming place, noted especially for her asparagus production.

_Provincetown for beauty, Wellfleet for pride, If it wasn’t for milk cans Eastham ’d’ a died._

Thus the sing-song went when, later, the lush Nauset dairy herds provided milk for a good part of the Cape. And Eastham, truly farming-minded, would fling back these better known lines:

_The Cape Cod girls they have no combs, They comb their hair with codfish bones; The Cape Cod Boys they have no sleds, They slide downhill on codfish heads._

PILGRIM’S TREE STILL BLOSSOMS

Life still springs from at least one of the plantings of those far distant days of the forefathers. Thomas Prence, who first set foot on the Cape in 1621, subsequently built a house for himself and his bride near Fort Hill. He planted a little pear tree there; it had been brought over from England.

Each Spring a pear tree blossoms on this site. Thoreau, in the book on his Cape Cod travels, refers to the planting by Thomas Prence and states the tree had been blown down a few months previous to his visit to the scene. A modern historian, however, records that Thomas Prence’s pear tree is still bearing, a sapling having been planted after the old tree had been swept down in a gale. Thoreau quotes the following tribute by a Cape Codder, a Mr. Herman Doane:

“_That exiled band long since have passed away, And still, old Tree! Thou standest in the place Where Prence’s hand did plant thee in his day,-- An undersigned memorial of his race._”

THE LAST WORKING WINDMILL

The lone workable windmill on Cape Cod is located in Eastham. Before Pearl Harbor there would be a ceaseless trek of Summer visitors to the Seth Knowles’ windmill and Miller John Fulcher would demonstrate its ancient workings with true professional eclat. He’d set her sails, swing her into the wind, give the lift wheel a deft spin, and, in jig time, Miller John would turn out a bushel of ground corn before the eyes of the intrigued city folk. Those who seemed to know asserted that Miller John had the “miller’s thumb”. Dipping his thumb into the trough, he would decide just when the corn was properly ground.

The story of the old windmill is vague. Some say it gave service originally in Plymouth and then was “flaked” across the Bay to be re-erected in Eastham. The date 1793 is nailed inside, but this still leaves unanswered the point as to when and where its story begins.

There’s a tablet near a stretch of Eastham beach that memorializes the “First Encounter.” The event is described in William Bradford’s narrative:

“But, presently, all on ye sudain, they heard a great & strange crie, which they knew to be the same voyces they heard in ye night, though they varied their notes, & one of their company being abroad came runing in & cried, ‘Men, Indeans, Indeans’; and withall, their arrowes came flying amongst them. Their men rane with all speed to recover their armes, as by ye good providence of God they did.... The crie of ye Indeans was dreadfull, espetially when they saw ther men rune out of ye randevoue towourds ye shallop, to recover their armes, the Indeans wheeling aboute upon them. But some runing out with coats of malle on, & cutlesses in their hands, they soon got their armes & let flye amongst them, and quickly stopped their violence.”

Bradford’s narrative reveals, also, why the redskins were in a war-making mood.

Six years previous “one Hunt, a mr. of a ship” had visited this scene. Hunt had seized 24 of the Nauset Indians and taken them to Spain in slave chains and, it is elsewhere related, he “sold these silly savages for rials of eight.”

What changes are wrought by the years! Where slavery was introduced in the early 17th century, a native son now is ranked with America’s great heroes in a global war for freedom.

SOUTH WELLFLEET----

_Our World Communications System Began with Marconi’s Triumph On a Lonely Ocean Bluff_

How many Americans know that our world radio system was given birth on Cape Cod?

Guglielmo Marconi achieved his great goal on the oceanside of South Wellfleet, out near the end of the Cape. Here, on the Sabbath night of January 19, 1903, he got through the first trans-Atlantic wireless telegraph message. Modern radio developed from that beginning.

The overseas wireless message was a greeting from President Theodore Roosevelt to King Edward. It read:

White House, Jan. 19, 1903

His Majesty Edward VII London, England

In taking advantage of the wonderful triumph of scientific research and ingenuity which has been achieved in perfecting a system of wireless telegraphy, I extend on behalf of the American people, most cordial greetings and good wishes to you and to all the people of the British Empire.

Theodore Roosevelt

King Edward’s response came several days later--proof that Marconi had completely succeeded in his long work of experimenting.

THE FIRST-HAND STORY

Then Charlie Paine, gaunt Cape Cod native, entered the scene. He had been engaged to get the King’s message to the Wellfleet telegraph office, whence it was to be dispatched to the White House. But, Marconi’s horse-and-buggy courier, holding to an old Cape Cod trait, showed not a twitch of emotion--“he wasn’t goin’ to kill his horse for nobody.” Old Charlie Paine passed on about two years ago in his native South Wellfleet. This is how he related his part in the big day of excitement:

“The first message Marconi ever got through from the other side of the ocean I took from his hand to carry to the telegraph office. I’d waited about six days to get it, with Black Diamond hitched up in the buggy most of the time. We jes stayed there, ready to go any minute.

“It was winter and colder’n Greenland. Dimey had two blankets over her and I was wearin’ Steve Paine’s wolf coat that he shot up in Alaska. All of a sudden I see Marconi come rearin’ out of the plant with both hands full of tape. He was jes like a crazy man.

“‘You wait there, Paine, and I’ll be with you in a minute,’ he shouted, and started for his office. I got my buggy turned around ready. The nearest telegraph office was Wellfleet, four miles away. When he came out again he had two big envelopes in his hand. They were messages to be telegraphed to Washington and New York. I found out later that it was a message from King Edward to President Theodore Roosevelt, for one envelope was addressed to the White House and the other to a New York newspaper.

“‘Drive like the wind!’ says Marconi. ‘If you kill your horse I’ll buy you another.’

“Well, I started off for Wellfleet as fast as I could make Dimey go. But when I got over the dunes, out of sight, I slowed down. I couldn’t see any need of goin’ crazy over a telegraph message. ’Twas four miles of hard goin’ and I wasn’t goin’ to kill my horse for nobody. Jim Swett was telegraph operator at Wellfleet railroad station then and I gave him the two envelopes. And that’s all there was to it.”

MARCONI WAS JUST 29

Marconi was not yet in his 30th year. First he had proved wireless practicable by communicating across the French channel from his native Bologna in 1899. Working at Cornwall, he made contact with Newfoundland. His Cape Cod transmission of President Roosevelt’s message was the crowning achievement of his career. Thereon the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America became absorbed in a brisk overseas business. The _London Times_ received part of its American news through this Cape Cod station.

The term Marconigram became familiar to American ears. Marconi’s system was adopted by the British and Italian navies. He took charge of wireless operations of the Italian government during the last war. He was awarded the Nobel prize for physics in 1909, and the J. Scott medal for the invention of wireless telegraphy on June 5, 1931.

The pioneering was done on a high bluff overlooking the endless sweep of the Atlantic. Work was started in 1901. Twenty immense spars, 200 feet high, were erected in a circle. The station proper was a one-story bungalow. Marconi and his crew slept and ate in a cottage a few paces away. The big poles hadn’t been up long when a nor’easter howled down on the exposed spot. They were knocked over like matchsticks. Ice contributed to the damage and the loss ran into $50,000. Then four towers of steel and wood, rooted with blocks of cement and cables were erected, and they stayed put.

FAMOUS SITE UNMARKED

Mrs. Eliza J. Doane of South Wellfleet cooked for Marconi and his men. She said: “Mr. Marconi could play the piano something grand, and he had a pleasing voice. He was especially fond of ‘Old Black Joe’. He and the others would sing that almost every time they got around the piano.”

A few years ago, when I last visited the scene, only the twisted ends of cable, the broken cement blocks, studded with bolts, and a few heavy timbers, revealed the historic scene. Unless the storm-lashed tides have crumbled the embankment, the important debris is still there. There was talk of establishing a “Marconi Park,” with a suitable tablet. Prof. Frederick C. Hicks of Yale Law School led a group of summer cottagers sponsoring the project. But, something stymied the plans.