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Seagoin’est Town

That Provincetown “is the seagoin’est town of New England, past and present,” is the contention of Howard Mitcham, writing in The Provincetown Advocate half a century ago, Mr. Mitcham declares:

The old Grand Banks fishery, the saltworks and windmills, the whale fishery with vessels traversing the four corners of the earth, the mackerel fishery, the cod fishery, the fresh fishery; pinkies, shallops, dories, hermaphrodite brigs, clippers, schooners, trawlers, draggers.

There’s been too much hollering about the Mayflower and the Pilgrims, since they were with us (at Provincetown) for only a couple of weeks. Tell rather about Captain John Atkins who fell into the open jaws of a whale and lived to tell it, of the old whaling captain who was asked, `Do you know that man very well?’ and replied, `I ought to, I ate his father!’

These scraps of sea lore, if brought together, would compose a very thick volume, a history deserving of a monument taller than our granite reproduction of the Torre de Mangia. But the best monument is the town itself, which has preserved its seagoing natural flavor, and long may it maintain it!

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