The Cape Cod Canal

How important is the Cape Cod Canal in Massachusetts? For starters it is the world's "widest artificial waterway." Secondly, although not completed before 1914, it was proposed in the 1620s by Pilgrim hero Miles Standish: the first "conceived" public works project in the new world. *** Robert H. Farson's (1977, 1993) book has five chapters. Covering the greatest time span is Chapter I: "From the Pilgrims to 1899: False Starts and Pipe Dreams." Throughout the book one question is repeated over and over: why did it take so long to build a relatively short (at its current length, 17.4 miles long) canal? The great era of American canal building (e.g. Erie Canal) came and went and no Cape Cod Canal emerged. The usual answer is that the motivation behind earlier canals was usually trade and commerce. But the motives behind the less than 18 mile Cape Cod Canal were non-commercial: (1) maritime safety (hundreds of avoidable wrecks strewn all around Cape Cod) and (2) national defense (a need demonstrated in both the Wars of the Revolution and of 1812). A question never raised, therefore never answered, is: why with so much earlier experience in canal building (Erie, Suez with Kiel and Panama about to be built), were so many avoidable mistakes made in Massachusetts, particularly in choice of dredgers? Had those mistakes not been made, the canal would have opened in 1912, not 1914 and for far less cost. ***The book's driving heroes are Miles Standish (the Pilgrim realist who paced off the route of a canal and August Perry Belmont, the entrepreneur who built it between 1899 and 1914. A new, third, motivation to build the Cape Cod Canal was as a filial tribute to Belmont's seafaring maternal ancestors, the Perrys (of Lake Erie and Japan fame). ***The book has 80 pages of text followed by 89 pages of black and white photos with comments, a bibliography up to the early 1970s and a brief index. There are 161 photos. Five of them are either aerial photos or maps of Cape Cod Bay and environs and proposed and actual routes of the "17.4 miles of the canal and the approach channels" (Ch. 5). The photos begin with a collection of early shipwrecks, then show personalities and varieties of equipment used to dredge and build the canal. A weakness of the book is that there are no footnotes or endnotes within the basic narrative explicitly linking text to photos. *** That said, the photos are arresting, well explained and definitely illuminate the text. This book (2nd edition of 1993) clearly contains at least one photo later than the 1977 first edition. Its front and back covers are memorable scenes of activity on a canal in continuous use since July 1914. Anyone keen for Cape Cod, for U.S. Congressional appropriating details or how to build (or in some respects not build) a canal will thoroughly enjoy Robert H. Farson's THE CAPE COD CANAL. Display it on your coffee table. Review it from time to time. -OOO-