A commission for two Cotuit Skiffs
I started this blog in 2001. It began on Google’s platform, a self-conscious diary that began with a post remembering an former colleague, the late Susie Forrest, who shared a desk with me at the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune in the early 1980s, and went on to win a Pulitzer Prize in 1988 before dying far too young a few months after 9/11. I was working in a suburb of Zurich then, sitting in an office in Oberengstringen on a Saturday afternoon feeling the the urge to write some words, any words.
A couple thousand posts later — some best forgotten, some fondly recalled — I have never looked back at my archives to retrace the past. Sure, a blog post here and there when I’m trying to remember some incident or person forgotten along the way, but for the most part I’ve avoided re-reading and wincing over purple prose, typographical errors, or simple stupidity.
There have been prolific years when I posted nearly every day, and barren ones when I never posted, or rarely at all. The early years on WordPress were self-hosted, a nerve-wracking slog of manually updating, backing up, and weeding through waves of spam comments. I’ve been hacked. I’ve crashed. And eventually I migrated the whole affair over to Automattic, the corporate parent of WordPress and never looked back, grateful to them for managing the back end while I focus on the words and pictures.
Dries Buytaert, the inventor of the Drupal content management system, wrote a poignant explanation for why he continues to blog after twenty years. In his post, “A blog is a biography” he captures the reason I keep writing and hitting the publish button:
I never knew my great grandparents. They left no diary, no letters, only a handful of photographs. Sometimes I look at those photos and wonder what they cared about. What were their days like? What made them laugh? What problems were they working through?
Then I realize it could be different for my descendants. A long-running blog like mine is effectively an autobiography.
I’ve been working on a book about events that took place in 1858, one hundred years before I was born. The source material is a scant collection of memoirs, letters, ship’s logbooks, and newspaper clippings. The two men at the heart of the story left behind no more than a dozen photographs. From a few shreds of the past I’ve tried pieced together the story of their lives, but constantly have marvelled at how meager a record they left behind, and wrestled with how to honestly fill in the gaps without turning their stories into fiction.
I’m working on a story now about a Cape Cod whaling captain named Ebenezer Franklin Nye. Last summer I visited a graveyard in the village of Cataumet to look at the graves of two other sailors who died in a shipwreck. Near their stones stood Nye’s marker, a cenotaph to the man “who lost his life in the Arctic, winter of 1879-80. Aged 57 Years.“
Nye never wr0te his autobiography, memoirs, or reminiscences. As I dug into the story of his life I failed to find a single sentence written by him. He was quoted by others, his name appears in some newspapers, and his remarkable career is noted in a Nye family history, but so far I’ve been unable to find any photograph of the man nor any words written by his own hand. His life is forgotten, yet based on what little has been recorded, it was remarkable, a colorful career of shipwreck, survival, capture, escape and heroism.
In the 1990s digital cameras started to appear. I recall a quote by some Silicon Valley CEO who said the biggest impact of the technology (other than putting Kodak out of business) would be a profound change in the perceived preciousness of a snapshot. The cost and expensive process of pre-digital photography meant every picture was carefully composed before the shutter was pressed. A roll of film was finite. At best there were three dozen opportunities per roll. With digital cameras the CEO predicted, “My kids will probably take hundreds of pictures of each other’s butts.” Within a few years photographs went from prized memories to disposable jpegs.
In 1860 the taking of a single photograph was a major occasion that involved visiting a studio, wearing a Civil War uniform, posed stiffly gainst some evocative backdrop, head clamped into a brace to hold the subject still until the image could be magically applied to the chemically treated glass plate. The result was framed under glass, hung on the wall, and cherished as that person’s one and only likeness.
Contrast that venerated scarcity with the abundance of a Flickr galley, or the verbal breadcrumbs of a blog, and one has to wonder if our descendants will know us that much better than we know our ancestors? Or even care to see a picture of pastrami and rye we ate at Katz’s deli?
This blog isn’t my diary, it isn’t my memoir nor my autobiography, it isn’t handmade with quill and ink on vellum by candlelight. It’s ephemeral, it’s transitory, it’s a bunch of bits tenuously living in some data center somewhere. At least Ebenezer Nye’s final fate is carved into stone — “lost his life in the Arctic” — while ours flits by in a cacophony of ephemeral tweets and tik-toks.
In my previous post I shared a YouTube video about another blog from my past: David Hill’s Design Matters. That was a very good blog, something I am very proud to be part of, but it’s gone now, a memory captured in snapshots only preserved by the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. Did it deserve to be preserved and remembered like Ebenezer Nye?
On this snowy morning of the first day of the new year, I leave you with this lyric by the late, great Lowell George:
It’s so easy to slip
It’s so easy to fall
And let your memory drift
And do nothin’ at all
All the love that you missed
All the people that you can’t recall
Do they really exist at all?
I had a chance to talk with David Hill, the VP of Corporate Identity and Design at Lenovo and the blogger behind Design Matters, Lenovo’s first blog that launched in 2006. Thomas Rogers at Laptop Retrospective invited us to reminiscence about the blog, how it came to be, and the impact it had. The blog was retired when Lenovo took another approach to social media, but lives on for the most part thanks to the Wayback Machine and the Internet Archive.
Dress me up in me oilskin and jumper
No more on the docks I’ll be seen
Just tell me old shipmates
I’m taking a trip, mates
And I’ll see them someday in Fiddler’s Green
John Connolly, Fiddler’s Green, 1965
Edward “Ned” Ackerman passed away earlier this year. He was eighty-three years old, a scholar, a shipwright, and a sailor who once spent his youthful summers in Cotuit at “Rookwood”, the old Augustus Thorndike Perkins estate also known as “Sandalwood” that sits on the bluff overlooking Inner Harbor by Little River.
In the 1970s, when Ned was in his mid-thirties, he captured headlines as a self-described “merchant-adventurer” who believed the time had come to revive the sail-powered coastal schooners of the past as a cost-effective way to ship goods along the coast and south to the Caribbean. His dream was both audacious and well timed, taking form in a Thomaston, Maine shipyard after the price shocks of the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo when Americans were stunned by gasoline shortages, a tripling of oil prices, and long lines at the gas pumps.
For three years Ackerman worked with the shipwrights at the Newbert & Wallace shipyard to build a 97-foot, two-masted schooner designed by the Hyannis boat builder and designer, Robert “Pete” Culler. Christened the John F. Leavitt after the author of Wake of the Coasters, and Mystic Seaport assistant curator, John Leavitt, the schooner was launched in July 1979.
Six months later and the Leavitt was abandoned on her maiden voyage, 187 miles southeast of Long Island on December 28, 1979. Her construction and first voyage carrying a cargo of lumber and tanning chemicals from Quincy, Massachusetts to Haiti were chronicled in the documentary film, Coaster, released in 1983.
Ned was born in 1942 in Tucson, Arizona, the son of Ruth Wellman Ackerman and Edward Angot Ackerman. His mother’s family, the Wellmans, were from Montclair, New Jersey. The Wellmans spent summers in Cotuit, buying land around Cordwood Landing as well as considerable acreage in Mashpee on both sides of the Santuit River that included the Maushop stables.
Ned attended private school in Tucson, was a National Merit Scholar, and earned a Rifleman’s badge from the NRA. He was named an alternate to the U.S. Air Force Academy by Senator Barry Goldwater, but earned his BA and MA in English at the University of Arizona where he joined a fraternity and drove a sportscar in rallies sponsored by the Sportscar Club of America. His younger siblings were Todd and Jill.
He married his first wife, Margaret, in 1965 while working as a teaching assistant in the U. of Arizona English department. Ned pursued a doctorate in Middle English and Norman French at the University of Pennsylvania, but didn’t complete his studies, moving instead to New England to teach English at Merrimack College in North Andover, Massachusetts.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s he purchased large tracts of land in Cotuit, west of Old Post Road, from Theron Apollonio, subdividing the property into the neighborhood known today at Cotuit Bay Shores. The proceeds from that development and stock market investments allowed him to purchase a 300-acre farm in Dover, N.H.. In 1973 Ackerman commissioned Newbert & Wallace of Thomaston, Maine to build his first schooner: the 45-foot Fiddler’s Green. Ned isn’t listed in Larry Odence’s history of the Cotuit Skiff as having ever owned or skippered a skiff during his summers in Cotuit, however he evidently learned how to navigate and sail aboard the Fiddler’s Green, sailing her along the New England coast and eventually bringing her to Cotuit and the Crosby yard in Osterville.
Ned was inspired to undertake a revival of shipping freight by sail by John Leavitt’s history of coastal schooners: Wake of the Coasters. Ackerman approached Pete Culler, who, while not a trained naval architect, had established a reputation as a designer and builder of small traditional boats and had published three books about boatbuilding. Ned commission Pete to design a schooner for coastal shipping. Culler delivered plans for what would become the John F. Leavitt. He was present for the laying of her oak keel, but passed away at the age of 68 in 1978 before the ship was finished.
Ackerman sought, and received, lots of publicity throughout the construction of the Leavitt. He hired a public relations firm and commissioned a documentary about the project that was produced and directed by Jon Craig Cloutier of Kittery Point, Maine. The public’s interest in the Leavitt was well timed: oil prices were rising and the counterculture was proclaiming “Split Wood, Not Atoms.” Opponents picketed the Seabrook nuclear power plant under construction only miles from Ackerman’s Dover dairy farm. A revival in wooden boats was sparked by the restoration and preservation experts at Mystic Seaport, and the founding of WoodenBoat magazine by Jon Wilson out of an off-the-grid cabin in Brooklin, Maine in 1974. The coast of Maine was the epicenter of the wooden boat renaissance. After more than decade of Fiberglass, many sailors longed to return to the halcyon days of the past when wooden boats had a sense of soul that the new plastic, epoxied “Tupperware” boats lacked.
Ackerman worked alongside with the crew at Newbert & Wallace on the building of the Leavitt, gaining press coverage in the September 3, 1979 issue of Time Magazine shortly after the launching earlier that summer. In a story by national correspondent Hays Gorey, titled, “In Maine: A Bold Launching into the Past,” Ackerman, then 36 years old, said the Leavitt was intended to turn a profit, carrying cargo by sail for the first time in 40 years. “Someday there may not be any more fuel-driven trucks or motor ships at any price. But wind is plentiful,” he told Time. The story of Ackerman and the Leavitt went national as the wire services covered the story and newspapers from coast to coast reprinted it.. WoodenBoat put the launching on the cover of its November/December 1979 issue. The age of sail-powered shipping had returned and Ned Ackerman’s quixotic quest to prove it could be done was front page news.
The Leavitt ignominiously ran aground in the mud of the St. George River when she was launched at Thomaston and had to wait for the tide to come in before she floated free. Sailors are superstitious and the grounding was, in hindsight, taken as a symbol of bad tidings to come by the peanut gallery that criticized Ackerman’s dream. The schooner had a dramatic sheer — the curve of her hull as seen from the side, a common design feature Culler put into most of his boats — a playful, almost whimsical arc that was accentuated by a bold red stripe painted along the white hull and Ackerman’s own modification to raise the stern of the boat even higher than Culler’s original plan called for so the helmsman could see what was happening on the foredeck over the cabin top. The critics (and there were many) claimed the Leavitt was more a yacht than a working schooner, overbuilt at the expense of a capacious cargo hold. But corners were cut, perhaps due to Ackerman’s inexperience or short funds.
The decision was made not to install an auxiliary diesel engine on the schooner. Ackerman was determined to avoid a Coast Guard inspection of the ship; hence the length was kept under 100 feet and the engine was omitted in favor of a small powered “yawl boat” that would tow the Leavitt into harbor and nudge her alongside a dock whenever she took on or offloaded cargo. Ned was upfront about his desire to avoid a Coast Guard certification, thus the schooner departed without the blessing of the authorities.
Some omissions would later prove fatal. A bilge pump wasn’t installed in the main cargo hold. A sight glass to measure the depth of water in the bilge under the cargo hold wasn’t installed, essential to determine if the ship was leaking when the hold was filled and the hatches secured. A diesel donkey engine installed by the foremast wasn’t a marine engine and lacked a crucial valve that would prove fatal to the ship later on.
Sail plan of the John F. Leavitt
After a number of delays getting underway from Maine, the Leavitt sailed to Quincy, Massachusetts in the late fall of 1979 to take on a cargo of lumber and tanning chemicals for delivery to Haiti. The crew included William Cowan, 21, first mate; Steven Bailey, 30, second mate; Paul O’Donnell, 27 deckhand; Alex Hadden, 21, deckhand; Cynthia Slater, 23, cook; William T. Duane, 42, supercargo ; filmmaker Jon Craig Cloutier, and cameraman Robert Eckhardt.
“Of the working crew — that is, the mates, deckhands, and cook — offshore experience in schooners was minimal, though all had served time in coastal passenger schooners and I suspect each had more sea time under their belts than the skipper, Ned Ackerman.”
Peter Spectre, “North Atlantic Shakedown: The Abandonment of the John F. Leavitt” WoodenBoat, #33.
She ran aground again in Boston Harbor, breaking off the end of her jibboom when her yawl boat tugged her off a shoal on her way into Quincy. There she pulled alongside the dock and lay idle for six weeks, dogged by delays in loading the cargo aboard, waiting for navigational equipment to be installed, and losing an experienced crew member who injured himself while scaling a fence. The Leavitt languished at the pier in Quincy into December, skim ice freezing around her during the cold nights. Finally, on December 20th, she set sail for Port Au Prince, Haiti. She was towed out of Boston Harbor by her yawl boat.
A photo taken of the Leavitt as she departed Boston Harbor through the Hull Gut, powered by her yawl boat, showed her heavily laden with cargo, trimmed down by the bow, with only a scant foot of freeboard between her deck that was stacked with lumber and the surface of the sea. Again, the critics said in hindsight she was improperly loaded for the conditions expected on the North Atlantic ocean in wintertime. Her sails were hoisted and she sailed slowly out into the Atlantic, bound around Cape Cod and Nantucket on her first voyage.
The first couple days were uneventful and calm. The ship slatted slowly around Provincetown and began to pick up speed as she skirted the Cape running on a beam reach before a northeast wind. The first calamity of the voyage came when the wind shifted to the northwest and the sails accidently jibed, slamming over out of control, damaging a radio antenna, and shaking up the sailors who hadn’t rigged preventers.
The wind blew harder after shifting to the northwest. The seas mounted higher, building into confused swells that came at the ship from different directions. When the wind topped 30 knots the decision was made to heave-to, drop the sails and rig a storm trysail, and to try to ride with the bow into the wind. But the schooner wouldn’t turn to windward. She rolling sluggishly in the troughs of the waves which broke over her side and flooded the decks. One of the mainsails jammed as it was lowered, dragging and filling in the water. The cargo boom — a heavy spar used as a crane when loading and unloading cargo — was insecurely lashed down with a light line, which snapped, turning the spar into a dangerous out of control battering ram that smashed over and over into the bulwark of the schooner’s deck. Hydraulic fluid from the donkey engine on the foredeck spilled out of an overflow pipe that hadn’t been fitted with a check valve. The fluid made the deck treacherously slick and impassable for the crew. As the schooner rolled in the seas the cargo boom continued to scythe across the deck and crash into the bulwarks, a menace to any sailor who dared to venture forward on the slipper deck to try to bring it under control. The yawl boat, hanging from the transom on its davits when it should have been on deck lashed down, was swamped by the waves and had to be cut free.
In hindsight, experienced mariners said the Leavitt could have run before the wind under bare poles, streaming lines or a drogue astern, and scudded southeast towards Bermuda. But with the radio’s range cut down by the damaged antenna, Captain Ackerman had to make a decision before the Leavitt drifted out of radio range: should he call a “mayday “and abandon ship, or try to tough out the winter storm hundreds of miles off shore. As the ship rolled sluggishly in the troughs, a Russian freighter approached and hailedon the radio to inquire if assistance was required. The Americans requested the Russians stand by them through the night until daylight could reveal any damage to the new schooner. The heavy cargo boom and foretopmast, which had been lashed down on deck, were out of control and battering the rail of the ship. The crew attempted to bring the swinging spars under control, but hydraulic fluid leaking from the donkey engine made the decks to slippery for them to safely move about. The ship was taking on water and the crew pumped continuously. Ackerman later said the swinging cargo boom had smashed over the covering board that sealed the main cargo hold.
Others in the crew said the ship was never in danger of sinking.
On the morning of December 27, one week into the voyage, Ackerman picked up the microphone and called a mayday.
The weak radio call was picked up by an amateur radio operator in New Jersey who relayed the message to the Coast Guard. The Leavitt was 260 miles southeast of Long Island, too far away for the Coast Guard’s helicopters to reach her. So the rescue was handed off to the New York Air National Guard unit in Westhampton, Long Island. Two Army helicopters, capable of being refueled in flight by a tanker plane, were scrambled and dispatched in the afternoon to rescue the crew of the Leavitt. Just before sunset on the 27th they found the stricken schooner and dropped two rescue swimmers into the water to swim their way to the Leavitt. The swimmers got aboard and helped the crew launch the two life rafts. The crew were winched from the life rafts onto the helicopters and were safe ashore on Long Island within a few hours.
The film crew saved most of their film. However the film of the rescue was not recovered. The Leavitt was never seen again.
In 2001 WoodenBoat magazine published “The Loss of the John F. Leavitt – A naval architect’s opinion” by Andy Davis. (March/April 2001, #159). Davis notes that Pete Culer, the designer, “had no formal training in naval architecture, but many people without technical backgrounds have designed successful small vessels in the past…Culler was proud to be an intuitive designer. He was an experienced sailor, and usually his intuition served him well.”
Davis placed the blame for the sinking on the “failures of vital mechanical and emergency systems.” But overall, his indictment was that the Leavitt was a “design failure for many reasons. The most egregious failure, especially since the vessel had been designed to carry cargo, was its low cargo-carrying capacity.” Based on the vessel’s lack of “deadweight” capacity, Davis concluded “the business plan for the Leavitt was a fantasy; however, it was a highly developed fantasy….The Leavitt’s shape, driven as it was by the designer’s aesthetic, was incompatible with a real, commercially successful, cargo vessel.”
Davis, in his post-mortem, modeled the transverse stability of the Leavitt using CAD software. Transverse stability is the attribute in naval architecture which Davis called the “source of the vessel’s greatest design failure.” Simply put, Davis deemed the Leavitt “extremely vulnerable to capsize.” Yet, as Davis admits, “No one ever indicated that it was the fear of capsize that led the crew to abandon the vessel….it’s quite possible that a more experienced captain and crew could have managed the vessel through the storm and brought it safely into port. It’s possible that the Leavitt would then have been sailed without incident for years. It’s also quite likely that it could have rapidly and catastrophically capsized at any time.”
The abandoning of the John F. Leavitt was national news, coming as it did in the slow news cycle between Christmas and New Years. The headlines were brutal. The Evening Express in Portland, Maine asked the question ‘Did inexperience play a vital role?” The Lewiston Daily Sun: “Schooner Sinking Shocks Boatyard Owner.”
Ackerman and the crew were tight-lipped about the demise of the schooner, saying confidentiality agreements signed with the filmmaker forbade them from speaking about the voyage. Ackerman spoke to the press once the helicopters deposited him and his crew on Long Island: “This boat was a manifestation of a dream. It hurts.” In 1992 he told a reporter from the Portland Press Herald: “There is always the worry you yelled too soon. Everyone said I jumped too quick, that the weather wasn’t that bad. Everybody who wasn’t there had an opinion. But everyone who was on the boat is glad to be alive.”
Some doubted the Leavitt ever sank, and was still drifting abandoned somewhere in the North Atlantic, kept afloat by her cargo of lumber. A Coast Guard cutter, the Chase, was dispatched to the spot where she was last seen, but she was gone. A life raft was recovered. A salvage crew mustered out of Warwick, Rhode Island searched for the hulk in an airplane. Rumors spread that a Russian fishing trawler had found the schooner, pumped her out, and towed her back to Russia where she sailed for decades afterwards.
In 1981 the documentary film by Jon Craig Cloutier, , titled “Coaster” was released in theaters. Emmett Meara wrote a review The Bangor Daily News on August 15 with the headline “Film booed and hissed at Camden.”
Meara wrote:
“Many who became part of the dream and romance of the idea of the Leavitt will never, ever forgive Ned Ackerman…..the theme of the film, with a basso profundo announcer reading what appears to be Ackerman’s journal, is done in the style of an Old Spice aftershave commercial. Many of the Ackerman comments brought laughter from second-show audience on Wednesday night.”
“”It was bogus,” said one of the workers at Newbert and Wallace, where the Leavitt was built.
“”It was great,” said an avid Camden sailor.
“”They never showed the movie. They showed a two-hour cartoon instead,” said a merchant seaman.”
The Washington Post’s review of Coaster concluded: “Ackerman probably did the right thing. But he proved the wrong point. And since he is a first-class publicity hound, he proved it big.”
Coaster was available for viewing on YouTube for a while, but it was removed recently due to a copyright infringement claim by Jon Craig Cloutier and is no longer accessible. Cloutier passed away on April 8, 2025. There is talk of restoring the film.
Jon Wilson, the founding editor of WoodenBoat magazine wrote in an editorial:
“The foundering of the John F. Leavitt on her maiden voyage left a lot of people disappointed, and a few people very angry …To begin with, we discovered that the members of the crew had, at some time previous, signed agreements with the film company that has been shooting since the keel was laid. The agreements prevented the crew from revealing the story surrounding the Leavitt’s foundering and abandonment. The film’s producer was unable, he said, to furnish us with any details, or to provide any answers to any questions. Even the owner of the Leavitt, Ned Ackerman, was unable or unwilling to discuss the events….At the same time, Ned Ackerman announced that he was going to answer no more questions from the press, but was going to work at the production of a book on the subject, in which all would be clarified.”
The Leavitt was sarcastically nicknamed the “John F. Leave-it.”
The disappointed and angry fans and critics of Ned Ackerman and his dream vented their ire in the letters-to-the-editor column of WoodenBoat.
Ned Ackerman never wrote a book about the Leavitt. After the end of his dream to revive shipping-by-sail, he seemed to quietly fade into the background, continuing to live in Camden, Maine where he raised a family, dabbled in real estate development, and eventually build another schooner, by himself, in a barn at the base of the Camden Snow Bowl. That schooner, the Charm, sails today out of Belfast, Maine, a “dude schooner” that carries tourists on excursions. She’s a pretty schooner, with a more traditional look to her than the Leavitt.
In Cotuit, the Ackerman home – Rookwood – at 621 Old Post Road was sold in 1982 by Ned’s sister Jill. Ned’s brother Todd applied for a permit to build a 165-foot long pier near the Cotuit Narrows, but withdrew the plan after neighbors objected. Jill sold Maushop Farm and the family property along the Santuit River, and now lives in Marstons Mills.
Ned Ackerman’s passing in 2025 seems to have gone unnoticed. No obituary can be found, but memories of his quest and the schooner he built and lost will long linger along the waterfronts of New England.
If you want a glimpse of Ned, the Leavitt, and some scenes from Coaster, this video is worth watching:
Carl Zimmer reports in today’s New York Times (October 29, 2025) that a study published in the journal Nature offers clues to the extraordinarily long lifespan of the bowhead whale. How old and why? Despite centuries of hunting the “Arctic whale” by Dutch, English, Americans, French, Russians, Japanese, and indigenous people for their thick, oil-rich blubber and “bone” or baleen, specimens have been caught as recently as 2007 bearing harpoon fragments buried in their fat that were used in the late 19th century.
The Chase of the Bowhead Whale, Clifford Ashley – 1909
Scientists have estimated some bowheads live well over two hundred years, with some claiming the maximum natural lifespan of the leviathans to be 268 years, making bowheads the oldest living species of mammals by far. To put that into perspective, a whale born 268 years ago was born in 1787 when the U.S. Constitution was drafted.
So why do bowheads live as long as they do? Given how massive they are, one would assume their cells, multiplying in size from an egg to a massive animal the size of three garbage trucks, would sooner or later mutate and lead to cancer. One theory is their preferred habitat in the frozen waters of the Sea of Okhotsk, the Bering Sea, and the Arctic Ocean has something to do with their resiliency. This week, the scientists reporting in Nature say their research on live bowhead cells harvested from a whale taken by Alaskan Inuits revealed bowhead cells can repair DNA strands better than most animals, in large part due to the ‘”cold-inducible RNA-binding protein CIRBP” which is “highly expressed in bowhead fibroblasts and tissues.”
So yes, the cold has something to do with their long life-spans, but essentially bowheads are better are growing, and repairing their DNA than most species.
Why do I care? Writing my book, The Marginal Sea about the hunting of bowheads in Russia’s Sea of Okhotsk in the late 1850s left me with many questions about the state of the bowhead population given the intense pressure the American fleet placed on the Okhotsk stock between 1848 and 1865. According an estimate made in 1984 by R.C. Kugler that was published in a “Historical survey of foreign whaling: North America” in Arctic Whaling, as many as 15,000 bowheads were taken (with other killed but lost) in the Okhotsk alone. Today an estimated 10,000 to 25,000 bowheads are left, being classified as a species of “least concern” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. But those estimate are worldwide. The population remaining in the Okhotsk is estimated to be less than 400 and that stock is considered endangered, despite the Russian’s declaration of their feeding grounds around the Shantar archipelago as a national park.
For all the carnage the commercial whaling fleet inflicted on the world’s whale population, I can wistfully imagine bowhead whales swimming today who escaped the harpoons of the men in my book, who along with 120 other ships and 4,000 other whalers massacred so many of these extraordinary giants in 1858. That puts history and time into perspective and reminds me of an anecdote I once read in American Heritage Magazine about a man who told of watching a parade as a child and meeting an old veteran of the Civil War, who stepped out of the ranks of marching veterans to shake his young hand and tell him, “Now you can tell your grandchildren you once shook the hand of a man who as a boy shook the hand of man who fought in the American Revolution.”
Thanks to Doc Searls' suggestion at his blog, I'm giving Wordland a spin. Not sure why I need a browser interface to write blog posts when WordPress.com's editor is a) also browser-based and b) seems to work fine, but being a sucker for shiny new things, here goes.
I can upload an image……
I can edit "Feed Cnames" (whatever those are)
And i can ….. that's about it.
The application seeking to move the Ebenezer Crocker house from its current location at 49 Putnam Avenue has been withdrawn from consideration by the Cape Cod Commission as a development of regional impact by its owner. In August the Town of Barnstable Historical Commission voted unanimously to impose an 18-month demolition delay and automatically referred the owner’s notice of intent to the Cape Cod Commission as is the case for any building listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Cotusions may have seen one of the many “Stop the Move” signs around the village, and the Historical Commission received a record number of letters from concerned residents who opposed the planned move to a new location either on the site of the former, now-demolished barn at the old Crocker farm, or to 555 Main Street next to the entrance to the former Cotuit Elementary School.
What the owner of the nearly 250 year old home intends to do with the property is unknown.
Loyal readers of this blog may recall an effort two years ago by a group of Oyster Harbor residents to block the Cotuit Oyster Company from using rafts of floating bags in the Cotuit Narrows.
The “Neighbors of Cotuit Narrows” — a group of plaintiffs who live along the Osterville side of the Narrows — filed suit in Barnstable Superior Court to overturn the renewal of the Cotuit Oyster Company’s aquaculture license, renewed by Barnstable’s town manager in the winter of 2024.
Earlier this month (October 2025), Barnstable Superior Court Justice Elaime M. Buckley denied the plaintiff’s motions and upheld the counter motion filed by the Barnstable Town Council, Town Manager, and town Marine and Environmental Department.
The town’s approval of the Cotuit Oyster Company’s aquaculture license was affirmed.
Please note the judge took into account the many letters submitted by the oyster company’s supporters in making her ruling:
“….in approving COC’s license renewal application, the Town plainly disagreed that the COC’s usage of above-water equipment violated the Barnstable Aquaculture License Regulations…..In connection with the hearing, the town received a number of submissions from residents taking a position contrary to Plaintiffs’ — that COC’s activities in Cotuit Bay do not impede recreational uses or scenic views.”
The full text of the decision is below:
Once and a while some disgruntled Cotusion, frustrated with the perceived misbehavior or indifference of the Town of Barnstable, mutters that it’s time to break away and secede and turn Cotuit into a town of its own. Such seditious grumblings generally fade after a little while and life goes on in the little village on … Continue reading “Secession Movements of Cotuit”
Once and a while some disgruntled Cotusion, frustrated with the perceived misbehavior or indifference of the Town of Barnstable, mutters that it’s time to break away and secede and turn Cotuit into a town of its own. Such seditious grumblings generally fade after a little while and life goes on in the little village on the far western edge of a big town that has become a little city.
But invariably, after a while some mutinous villager fed up to here with the mooring wait list or dodging double-parked landscaping trucks can be heard grumbling: “Why don’t we go it alone?
Recent posts on social media have revived some of those mutterings – not necessarily emanating from Cotuit per se, but from fed-up residents of some of the town’s other six villages who are wary of the town’s future plans and a town council-real estate lobby that seems determined to pave paradise with four-story Soviet apartment blocks after ripping up that same pavement to lay sewer pipe in a belated attempt to clean up our disgusting bays.
Here is a brief history of Cotuit’s attempts to break away from the old colonial town of Barnstable and go it alone.
The first mention of secession is a vague reference to an attempt by Cotuit and two other villages (I assume Marstons Mills and Osterville) to break away from the town in the late 19th century. The only record of this failed attempt can be found on page 7 of the March 4, 1993 edition of The Register newspaper:
“In the late 19th century this village and two others joined in an attempt to promulgate such action. The proposal failed to carry by a relatively small number of votes.”
Other than that single, tantalizing mention, I have not been able to find any evidence in the newspaper archives nor the Commonwealth’s archives of a 19th century rebellion. The fact that the proposal lost on a vote seems to me to indicate the movement was well organized enough to get to the point where it appeared on some docket such as an annual town meeting or perhaps even the state legislature. However there’s nothing in the historical record to suggest a single egregious event that would have catalyzed a rebellion by the three villages. The most bumptious disputes in Cotuit in the late 19th century were the Great Post Office Fight of 1885 and the village’s vociferous objections to Osterville digging the Wianno Cut to connect West Bay to Nantucket Sound. None of which would suggest a partnership between the three westernmost villages to break off from the town and incorporate as a new one.
By the 1920s and 30s, Cotuit’s need for fire protection and hydrants to fight those fires led to the formation of the Cotuit Fire District. Barnstable has the fourth largest land area of any of the town’s 351 cities and towns, exceeded only by Plymouth, Nantucket, and Middleborough, and providing essential services such as fire, police, and water was a logistical challenge. The growth of Barnstable’s seven villages led to the formation of fire districts, a uniquely independent form of “municipal government-lite” that gave each district taxation authority, their own elected boards of commissioners, and certain restricted rights independent of the town of Barnstable: such as building fire stations, laying water mains, and even hiring “constables” to keep the peace.
In the early 1990s a former Harvard Business School professor named George Gibson retired and moved to Cotuit. He involved himself in village affairs, attending the Fire District’s meetings, and asking questions about the village’s relationship with the Town of Barnstable, or more accurately: the lack of one. In a letter April 4, 1993 letter to The Register newspaper he expressed his thoughts about Cotuit’s potential secession:
“For some time, an increasing number of Cotuit’s residents have been speculating about the feasibility of Village incorporation. As a member of that group I have been informally investigating the various “pros and cons” of such a possibility. Incidentally, this is the not the first time Cotuit’s residents have harbored such thoughts. In the late 19th century this Village and two others joined in an attempt to promulgate such action. The proposal failed to carry by a relatively small number of votes.
“So far as any displeasure with Barnstable Town government is concerned, such feeling relates primarily to the former’s apparent lack of concern, unwillingness or inability to deal with the increasing needs of Cotuit. For example, “…Let me count the ways!” We would like: to have our Village pier repaired before it falls into the water; to have some control exerted over the 260 dories (the majority of which belonged to outsiders) stacked up around or moored to it during last year’s boating season; to recover our beaches from the Tourists and outsiders who take over during Summer and Fall; to be able to find a parking space in front of said beaches and pier during the same time period.
“Furthermore, we would appreciate: receiving the same quality and amount of police protection and DPW services as are accorded Hyannis; having our harbor entrance and the Cotuit side of Shoe String Bay dredged before they become completely unusable; the installation of appropriate stop lights on Route 28 so that we can have at least a fighting chance of penetrating the ever increasing volume of traffic which results each season from tourists flocking in to patronize Hyannis merchants and business establishments; and the absence of any attempt to pressure us to join the Cotuit Fire and Water Districts, which are already among the very best on the Cape, with those of Hyannis (as noted in the Hyannis Vision Plan), There are other issues but the aforesaid will serve as a starting point.”
Forming a new town in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is not a trivial affair. The last time it was done on Cape Cod was in the 1870s when Sandwich carved off “South Sandwich” and the town of Bourne was created. The last time any new town was created in the state was in the 1920s when Brookfield was incorporated. Still, the possibility to create a “Town of Cotuit” is possible, but hard. There are several towns in the state that have smaller populations. But the process would require a lot of study and lot of machinations between Cotuit, the Town of Barnstable, and the State Legislature.
Evidently there was so much rebellion in the Cotuit Water Department’s water supply in the mid-1990s that the Cotuit Santuit Civic Association’s board of directors decided to appoint a committee to look into the issue of secession. Then-town councilor Jaci Barton told The Register, “It deserves a hard look.” George Gibson was appointed chairman of the nine-person committee and the first meeting was convened at the Cotuit Library on November 7, 1994.
The Register, October 27, 1994, p. 47
Gibson, in an interview with the Barnstable Patriot explained how the “Town” of Cotuit might work. He:
“….suggested that Cotuit has the tax base to support itself in whatever endeavors it wishes to pursue. Roadwork could be contracted. Children could attend the elementary school and then tuition could be paid for them to attend Barnstable or other schools for secondary education. Police duty could be handled with a volunteer or part-time force. There is already a fire department. These were just some of the functions Cotuit could do for itself, according to Gibson.” Barnstable Patriot, July 15, 1993
A week later, the Patriot’s editor Ed Semprini, savaged the notion that little Cotuit could ever stand on its own. After dismissing the idea as mere “idle drug store, post office and street talk,” Semprini suggested the “Town of Cotuit” could invite Wal-Mart to build a store on Putnam Avenue, bulldoze Lowell Park for a village landfill, and erect the “Golden Arches” at Oregon or Ropes Beach.
“Heat and humidity can exact weird ideas from sufferers, such as endorsing the idea of Cotuit going it alone and exposing the village to nothing more than media attention and ridicule. Certainly, there are good people of the Kettle and Ho! Village who can remember the field days enjoyed by the media when would-be secessionists from Martha’s Vineyard marched on the State House seeking to pull away from the commonwealth. Cotuit, the sparkling gem of all the town’s villages secede? C’mon CSCA, get out of the hot sun.”
The first meeting of the “secession committee” attracted about 40 residents. Most of the discussion was about the committee’s purpose and goals, and a request was drafted for the town to supply a list of all town-owned assets such as the school, roads, dock, park, and other facilities so a price could be set to determine how much capital would be needed to purchase them. Gibson told the first meeting of the committee that incorporating Cotuit as a town was conceivable given that Wellfleet had, at the time, 200 fewer residents. According to coverage by David Still in the Barnstable Patriot, the “main issue is equity of services for the tax premiums paid and attention from town hall, which many in Cotuit believe in lacking.” At the first meeting, officials from the Fire District and various committees of the Civic Association presented a “report on Cotuit.”
The members of the first “Incorporation Committee” were: Ruthann Grover, Herb Anderton, George Balch, Jack Billing, Ron Mycock, H.M. “Bud” Turner, Roy Simpson, and Tom Carver.
Carving a new town out of an existing one is possible in the commonwealth, but not easy. The village would first need to file a Home Rule petition with the Legislature with the endorsement of the Barnstable Town Council. The Town of Barnstable’s attorney in the mid-1990s, Robert Smith, told The Register, “If they want to petition the Legislature and submit it to the town council, the town council will probably approve it if it is so inclined.”
He warned that before doing so, the village would need to be fully prepared to sustain all the facets of a town government including: planning, police, fire, public works, schools, and other services a town typically provides its residents. Smith said Cotuit would have to demonstrate to the Legislature that it was “capable of captaining its own helm” but because it already had experience in governing the Fire District, it could conceivably do so.
Following the first meeting of the Civic Association’s “Secession Committee,” the group decided to rename itself the “Cotuit Study Group on Incorporation” after some residents attending that inaugural meeting expressed their concerns that “secession” was a little bit too controversial a term, conjuring up images of Fort Sumter and the Confederacy. Cotuit resident and former Barnstable Selectman, Town Manager, and State Representative John Klimm told the Barnstable Patriot: “Let me emphasize. My position is that the onus is on the group to prove it is advantageous to secede. They haven’t done that yet. They will have to build a strong case.”
Klimm added, “Right now this is only a concept. I would have to say just about the same thing I am hearing from village residents. My sense is that the majority is awaiting some type of documentation … to be shown that those who are calling for secession can present an analysis outlining all the benefits to be delivered.”
Apparently the work of the Civic Association Incorporation Committee failed to capture enough support within the village to advance beyond some discussion and cursory study of the process. The initiative more likely faded away when George Gibson passed away in June 1996. David Still wrote of Gibson’s impact in the Barnstable Patriot:
“Perhaps his legacy to Cotuit’s already rich history is the idea of secession. On more than one occasion George raised the idea with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Three years ago, when Cotuit’s residents were suffering what they saw as continued neglect in terms of town resources dedicated to the village, the secessionist movement actually gained moderate credibility. Although not widely supported, it allowed villagers to vent and “put the town on notice” that they were unhappy.”
It wasn’t after the Second Secession Movement faded away before the village became alarmed by talk of “consolidation” – that omnipresent suggestion that the town should absorb the old Fire Districts and consolidate them under the management of a single town-managed fire and water department in the interest of economy of scale and consistency. In 1998, alarmed by Town Attorney Robert Smith’s assertion that under home rule, the town could — by an act of the town council — abolish and absorb the five village districts; a citizen group calling themselves the “Cotuit 2000 Committee” lobbied the voters of the Cotuit Fire District to appropriate $50,000 for the commission of a professional governance study of the village.
Born in the aftermath of the secession movement, the calls for consolidation alarmed some in Cotuit. A village vote or survey on whether or not to consider consolidation ended up with a resounding 677 opposed versus a mere 18 in favor. As one wise attorney and former judge told me at the time, preserving the Fire District preserves the best option the village has to secede and that without that legal designation as a quasi-municipality, the village would become little more than another voting precinct within a town becoming more focused on the more represented population centers of Centerville and Hyannis.
At the 1998 annual Fire District meeting, the “Cotuit 21st Century Committee” placed an article on the warrant to spend up to $50,000 of the fire district taxpayer’s dollars on a professional study of village governance. Former Fire Commissioner and 21st Century Committee member Ron Mycock said the concept was well received at a March 1998 meeting of the Civic Association, and told the Barnstable Patriot, “I think we’re doing this professionally, not in a rabble rousing way. We’re going into this with no preconceived notions.”
The Patriot wrote that “What the 21st Century Committee is proposing is not in reaction to inattention, though that remains an issue, but out of the reality that something regarding fire district consolidation is likely to happen in the future.”
The group that comprised the 21st Century Committee raised some funds from private sources and proceeded to hire a consultant to conduct the study, which according to Mycock, “would look at much more than just fire district issues. The district voters approved the $50,000 anyway.
In the fall of 1999 the consultant’s report was delivered to the Cotuit Fire District. Stewart Goodwin, a member of the 21st Century Committee and an elected Fire Commissioner, said: “The ground between consolidation and secession is the grey middle ground in which we will be playing for some time to come.”
According to the Barnstable Patriot, the study committee met 30 times over 12 months to draft and rework the information and conclusions of the report which was presented to the district’s Prudential Committee in September 1999. The 199-page report was researched and compiled by Financial Advisory Associates of Bourne and its principal Michael Daley of Marstons Mills.
The recommendations of the report emphasized the need to modernize the way the district was run, from converting the district’s bylaws into a digital file to more long-term planning of water and fire services. The report said, “A management modernization initiative would greatly benefit the Cotuit Fire District and should commence. The officers of the district should jointly develop and implement a multi-year management improvement master plan.”
Daley, the author of the report, told the Patriot: “This is close to being a $2 million business, and there’s a need to do things better.”
From the 1999 Fire District Study
The creation of the report underscored a long-standing conundrum: What, exactly, is Cotuit? Although the Fire District’s boundaries are fairly specific, the town’s census data is based on voting precincts which overlap with adjacent villages. The village zip code of 02635 is based on different data from the federal census. Daley, the consultant, was able to merge a number of different data sources to develop an accurate estimate of Cotuit’s population, school aged children, number of bedrooms, etc.. The report also produced an easy way to tell if you’re in Cotuit or not: “The color of hydrants will change from orange to red or blue as you leave the Cotuit Fire District and enter the town of Mashpee. The red hydrants are owned by Willow Bend Development. The blue hydrants belong to the Mashpee Water District.”
The most stunning conclusion of the report confirmed what many secessionists and critics of the Town of Barnstable had maintained for years: Cotuit pays more in taxes than in receives in services. The study stated: “The gross allocation of spending by the town within the Cotuit Fire District correlates unfavorably with the gross level of town revenues allocable within the district…” this “….further supports the theory that residents within the district experience an economic imbalance between the level of allocated town revenues generated and the allocated costs of town services provided.”
“We found validity to the Cotuit Fire District’s initial theory that there is a disproportionate level of taxation allocated by the Town across the various fire districts. While not intentional, taxpayers in the Cotuit Fire District are required to provide more tax dollars to Barnstable than any other district on a per capita and per parcel basis.”
The study also examined the legal issues raised by the former town attorney’s assertion that the town council, via the state’s Home Rule laws, could merge and consolidate the fire districts within the town’s borders. This point was disputed by the Fire Districts, who argued because they were formed by a vote of the legislature, only an act passed by the legislature could disband them. The study concluded both points of view were correct … to a point. The consolidation process could be initiated by a citizens’ petition, the town council, the Fire District Prudential Committee, or by a two-thirds votes of the House or Senate.
“Though such a merger is legally possible upon the petition of only one of the two entities [the Fire District or the town], a final approval of merger by the General Court would not likely be possible without the consent of the voters of both governmental entities.”
At the turn of the century things seemed to calm down in Cotuit. The town began to pay more attention to the village (and filled its harbor with a lot more moorings), flowers were planted in Memorial Park, and the town manager and various town department heads went on an annual tour of the village with the civic association to fill pot holes, put up more street signs, build four-way intersections, speed humps, enforce dinghy regulations, and a host of other so-called “improvements” that took a bit of Cotuit heat off of the town’s neck.
Paul Gavin, writing in a 2003 review of Images of America: Cotuit and Santuit by former town councilor Jessica Rapp Grassetti and the late James Gould, said:
“Cotuit’s sanctum sanctorum has morphed into a relatively tranquil bedroom community unto itself — so much so that it appears stand-offish, a perceived characteristic fortified by sporadic but spirited attempts to secede from the town.”
Sporadic until 2009 when the town, reeling from the financial impacts of the 2008 recession, decided to close the Cotuit Elementary School.
The Cape Cod Times, in a story by Jake Berry published on February 11, 2009, wrote:
“On the sleepy streets of Cotuit, it’s hard to tell a revolution is brewing. There are no signs, no unruly mobs, and no secret meetings in the back rooms of the Kettle-Ho, the village’s famed watering hole. But somewhere around the village, which borders Mashpee at the southwest end of Barnstable, some residents are calling for a fight for independence. In the wake of the Barnstable School Committee’s decision to close Marstons Mills-Cotuit Elementary School, some Cotuit residents have started calling for the village to secede from Barnstable and create its own municipality.”
The Times quoted Stewart Goodwin, then the president of the Cotuit Santuit Civic Association: “I think that got some people’s blood boiling again. I’ve received a few phone calls about (seceding). But it’s a very small group… I don’t think anything substantial will come of it.”
Meanwhile, over in Osterville, Frederick Wrightson penned a letter in 2021 to the Barnstable Patriot, entitled “Barnstable has left us”:
“….a surprising number of people have asked me what I think about going our separate ways. If my village of Osterville ever seceded from Barnstable, it would be a small town, but not ridiculously so. There would be 81 smaller towns in Massachusetts….As I understand it, Osterville village contributes approximately half of Barnstable’s tax base. Yet our voice on the Town Council is one of 13, or about 8%. It does make one think. Of course, secession is arduous and requires process, including at the Massachusetts Legislation. But people are now talking about options and my village isn’t alone …. The fact is, every village here – Barnstable, Centerville, Cotuit, Hyannis, Marstons Mills, Osterville and West Barnstable — could secede, and none would make the list of the smallest towns in America. Who knows, perhaps we’d join forces and support one another in new ways. In short, we’d all be fine. And undoubtedly, much better served.”
The former president of the Cotuit Santuit Civic Association and Fire District Fire Commissioner, Stewart Goodwin, wrote in his 1995 book, A Resurrection of the Republican Ideal,” that the Cotuit Fire District was “an almost perfect example of a small republic.”
“The Cotuit Fire District isn’t perfect. It can only be as good as its involved residents and elected officials. Most importantly, though, it provides the opportunity for full citizen control of government. In sum, its virtues and drawbacks are those of the conceptual republican democracy. The output depends upon the efforts of citizen residents. That’s all a belief in our system can ask.”
The county dredge is off of the entrance to Popponesset Bay. This update from the town of Mashpee:
