Cape Cod Canal

Most of the canal is located in the town of Bourne, but its northeastern terminus is in Sandwich. Scusset Beach State Reservation lies near the canal's north entrance, and the Massachusetts Maritime Academy is near its south. A swift-running current changes direction every six hours and can reach 5.2 miles per hour (8.4 km/h) during the receding ebb tide.

The waterway is maintained by the United States Army Corps of Engineers and has no toll fees. It is spanned by the Cape Cod Canal Railroad Bridge, the Bourne Bridge, and the Sagamore Bridge. Traffic lights at either end govern the approach of vessels over 65 feet (20 m).

The canal is occasionally used by whales and dolphins, including endangered North Atlantic right whales, which can cause closure of the canal.

History

Construction of a canal was first considered by Myles Standish of the Plymouth Colony in 1623, and the Pilgrims scouted the low-lying stretch of land between the Manomet and Scusset rivers for potential routes. William Bradford established the Aptucxet Trading Post in 1627 at the portage between the rivers. Trade prospered with the Indians of Narragansett Bay and the Dutch of New Netherland, and this was a major factor enabling the Pilgrims to pay off their debt.

In 1697, the General Court of Massachusetts considered the first formal proposal to build the canal but took no action. In 1717, a canal was created in Orleans, Massachusetts called Jeremiah's Gutter which spanned a narrower portion of the Cape some distance to the east, but it remained active only until the late 1800s. More energetic planning with surveys took place repeatedly in 1776 (commissioned by George Washington), 1791, 1803, 1818, 1824–1830, and 1860. None of these efforts came to fruition.

The first attempts at actually building a canal did not take place until the late 19th century; earlier planners either ran out of money or were overwhelmed by the project's size. The engineers finally decided which route to take through the hillsides by connecting and widening the Manomet and Scusset rivers. The first excavation began in 1880, when the Cape Cod Ship Canal Company hired 400 immigrant Italian laborers to begin digging with shovels and wheelbarrows. The effort ran out of money almost immediately, and the laborers were unpaid and forced to beg for food in Sandwich. In 1883, the Cape Cod Ship Canal Company reorganized under engineer Frederick Lockwood. The company used a bucket dredge to clear nearly a mile of channel through the Sandwich marshes before shutting down in 1891.

Private construction

On June 22, 1909, construction finally began for a working canal under the direction of August Belmont Jr.'s Boston, Cape Cod & New York Canal Company, using designs by engineer William Barclay Parsons. The canal engineers encountered many obstacles, such as large submerged boulders. Divers were hired to blow them up, but the effort slowed dredging. Another problem was cold winter storms which forced the engineers to stop dredging altogether and wait for spring. Nevertheless, the canal opened on a limited basis on July 29, 1914, and it was completed in 1916. The privately owned toll canal had a maximum width of 100 feet (30 m) and a maximum depth of 25 feet (7.6 m), and it took a somewhat difficult route from Phinney Harbor at the head of Buzzards Bay. Several accidents occurred due to the narrow channel and navigation difficulty, and these limited traffic and tarnished the canal's reputation. Toll revenues failed to meet investors' expectations as a result, despite shortening the trade route from New York City to Boston by 62 miles (100 km).

Public takeover and expansion

On July 25, 1918, the Director General of the United States Railroad Administration took over jurisdiction and operation of the canal under a presidential proclamation. Four days earlier, the German U-boat U-156 surfaced three miles (5 km) off Orleans, Massachusetts on July 21, 1918, and shelled the tugboat Perth Amboy and her string of four barges. The canal remained under government control until 1920, during which the United States Army Corps of Engineers re-dredged the channel to 25 feet (7.6 m) deep.

In 1928, the government purchased the canal for $11.4 million as a free public waterway, and $21 million was spent between 1935 and 1940 increasing the canal's width to 480 feet (150 m) and its depth to 32 feet (9.8 m). As a result, it became the widest sea-level canal of its time. The southern entrance to the canal was rebuilt for direct access from Buzzards Bay rather than through Phinney Harbor. Before construction began, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology built a huge scale model of the canal (9 feet to a mile, roughly 1⁄587 actual size) to study the hydraulic effects of tidal currents on the enlarged and rerouted canal.

World War II

During World War II, shipping again used the canal to avoid U-boats patrolling offshore. It was protected by coastal artillery batteries at the Sagamore Hill Military Reservation at the northern entrance and the Butler Point Military Reservation at the southern entrance. The artillery was never fired in defense of the canal.

The Mystic Steamship Company's collier SS Stephen R. Jones was grounded and sank in the canal on June 28, 1942. Shipping was routed around Cape Cod, and the Liberty ship SS Alexander Macomb was torpedoed by the German submarine U-215 on July 3 with the loss of ten lives. The canal reopened on July 31 after the wrecked Stephen R. Jones was removed with the help of 17 tons of dynamite.