Search Results for: History Snippets

Last year, the wreck of the pirate ship Whydah gave up part of her captain: a leg bone found in concretion is widely believed by archaeologists to belong to “Black Sam” Bellamy, New England’s most famous pirate, who became wealthy not because of greed but through anger at the exploitative English system. Bellamy knew this firsthand....

Sassafras was valued in England for the medicinal qualities of its roots (it was supposed to cure both syphilis and smallpox!), so much so that two ships were sent on the “Great Sassafras Hunt” to New England. One of the captains had previously sailed with Bartholomew Gosnold, and so he knew where to find the trees—and what...

Provincetown’s Donald Baxter MacMillan went on 30 expeditions to the Far North between 1908 and 1954. He was 34 years old on his first trip and a few days short of 80 when he completed his final journey. “While I would like to go into the Arctic for the adventure that it promises,” he wrote,...

In the early 1800s, winters saw an average of two wrecks off the Outer Cape every month. Many sailors made it to shore—and then froze to death right on the beach. In 1872 an efficient lifesaving service was put into operation, with stations every five miles on the beach. Six or seven surfmen and a...

Called the “hero of adolescent Americans,” Harry Kemp was a poet and prose writer who lived and worked in Provincetown during the mid-20th century. What you might not know about him is that he was terminally frustrated with the myth that the Pilgrims first arrived in Plymouth; he used to have the Provincetown-Boston Airline fly...

It’s not an obvious connection, that between Provincetown and an artist of iconic mid-century Americana, but Norman Rockwell did in fact study here under Charles Hawthorne, and the August 20, 1955 cover of the Saturday Evening Post—titled Mermaid (A Fair Catch)— was inspired by the time he spent here. During his student years, Rockwell sometimes...

Eugene O’Neill arrived in Ptown in 1916. He was a 27-year-old Princeton dropout who’d been spending his time at sea in a tramp steamer and, almost incidentally, writing some plays. That summer he found a stage for them. In 1915, the summer before O’Neill arrived, a group of friends had arrived in Ptown from Greenwich...

Cape Cod is one of only a few places in the world where multiple whales and dolphins frequently beach themselves together on the shore. These mass stranding events require rapid response in order to save as many of them as possible. The International Fund for Animal Welfare has been active in responding to stranding events...

One of Ptown’s iconic inns is for sale! For more than four decades, this Second-Empire style house has served the needs of Ptown visitors, starting out as the Casa Vistosa in the 1950s. Architect and historian David Dunlap has said it has “one of the best mansard roofs in town,” and its stone wall was...

Race Point’s name comes from the strong crosscurrent (known as a “race”) that made navigation around the northern tip of Cape Cod a nightmare for sailors. Before the construction of the canal, every vessel traveling along the coast between Boston and points south had to negotiate the treacherous bars, making Cape Cod the graveyard of...