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Cape Shoals Made History

Think some time of the difference in American history there would have surely been were it not for Cape Cod and its great shoals. Captain Jones of the Mayflower, with a shipload of men and women coming here for a variety of reasons, may or may not have been trying to avoid landing them in Virginia where they themselves wished to go.

He may have been bribed to land them farther north than Virginia, or, as he pretended, he may have become entagled in the shoals of the Cape â€”- then uncharted to any reliable extent. That makes no difference in history. The point is that he did make Provincetown Harbor. Probably nothing under the wide heavens would then have induced the disspirited and weary Pilgrims, after three months in their tossing cubicle of a ship, to get back into her for more of the same sort of sea life.

With the perils of the sea vanquished and good, firm land under their feet at last, it would be only a most urgent reason that could possibly impel them to fare forth again. They explored the coast of Cape Cod and selected a place already shown on Captain John Smith’s chart as “Plymouth.” There on the 10th of November, O.S., 1620, (though they did not realize it at the time,) their greatest adventure began.

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