Ben Muse

Anchor Dragging

Many years ago Bass River was a small, but busy, commercial port.   In 1802 there were 21 vessels, some ranging between Boston and the West Indies, others fishing locally.  In the early 20th Century, a sailing packet still kept a regular schedule between South Yarmouth and New Jersey.  Coastal vessels used the roadstead off Bass River to wait for favorable winds before passing into the Atlantic around the southern tip of Monomoy Island.  At times over 100 sailing ships might ride at anchor offshore.

This traffic supported and depended on a variety of ancillary businesses: warehouses, lumber yards, and boat yards.  Many of these ships lost things overboard, among other things - anchors, supporting another business: anchor dragging. 

In 1941, former anchor dragger Wilfred W. Fuller recalled the business.  There were a lot of ways to lose an anchor:

The Corps of Engineers looks at Bass River

Sometime in the fall of 1894, or the winter or spring of 1895, Captain Bixby of the Army Corps of Engineers visited Bass River to see if  river entrance navigation improvements were a worthwhile way to spend federal money. 

The main concern was a bar, off the mouth of the river:

From the apparent mouth of the river to its outer bar in Nantucket Sound, i.e., to the deep water of Nantucket Sound, the distance is about 1.5 miles, measured along the boating channel, this channel, as marked by stakes (cut down by the ice each winter and replaced every spring) being from about 60 to 600 feet in width; the depth on the outer bar

He wasn't enthusiastic about the value of investment in navigation. The small population and limited industry adjacent to the river meant that the demand for river traffic was small; there were also readily available substitutes in Hyannis Harbor, the wharfs at Dennisport, and the local railroad; a prospective mid-Cape canal down Bass River would shift the river mouth to the east, potentially negating the value of any work done on the existing mouth; the work would be relatively expensive in comparison with the benefits.

His report is here (pdf files): Download Corps Engineers - Bass River - 1895; title page here: Download Corps Engineers - Title Page - 1895.  A nice picture of a quiet river in the late 1890s.