CAPE COD GEOLOGY 



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clearly shown by the changes at Monomoy, but is less obvious from the charts 

 and surveys of Great Point, on Nantucket. Nevertheless, as the headland 

 on the east side of Nantucket recedes with the attack of the sea, so must the 

 flying beach attached to it recede with the recession of the shore. Handkerchief 

 Shoal, off the southwest end of Monomoy, actually extends the flying beach about 

 one-third of the space between the southern point of Monomoy bar and Great 

 Point. This shoal has grown southward since accurate surveys of it were first 

 made. On the other hand, Great Point, the end of the flying beach from Nan- 

 tucket, has been nearly stationary, and its underwater extension turns abruptly 

 northeastward. In fact, the end of the bar has receded several hundred feet 

 during the last century, whereas Monomoy has been built out as much as two 

 miles. Thus, while the space between the points is becoming narrower the 

 Monomoy beach is working southwestward and forcing the current southward 

 against Great Point, and this process will apparently continue for a long time, 

 because more sand is available for transportation from the shore of Cape Cod 

 than from Nantucket. Furthermore, the coast of Cape Cod, unlike that of 

 Nantucket, is not defended by off-shore banks and shoals. 



WEBB'S ISLAND 



Local histories repeat an account of the disappearance of ' 'Webb's Island," 

 which once lay southeast of Chatham or of Stage Harbor, and hence outside 

 of the existing Chatham or Monomoy bar, in such manner as to have been ex- 

 posed to the attack of the sea. The earliest account of the disappearance of this 

 island is given by a writer 1 in the Massachusetts Magazine for December, 1790, 

 who says: 



When the English first settled upon the Cape, there was an island off Chatham, three 

 leagues distant, called Webb's Island, containing twenty acres, covered with red cedar or 

 savin. The inhabitants of Nantucket used to carry wood from it. This island has been wholly 

 washed away for almost a century. A large rock that was upon the island and which settled 

 as the earth washed away, now marks the place; it rises as much above the bottom of the 

 sea as it used to rise above the surface of the ground. The water is six feet deep on this spot. 



The article quoted fails to give the direction in which the island lay from 

 Chatham. As the island seems to have disappeared about 1700 it ought to 

 appear on charts published before that year and to be missing from those pub- 

 lished later. Henri de Champlain shows no such island on his chart of the 

 coast drawn in 1606, nor does Captain John Smith or later navigators, though 



i Quoted by William C. Smith in A history of Chatham Hyannis, 1909, Part I, p. 11, footnote 25. 

 Smith supplies the direction "southeast from Stage Harbor" in his account, stating that the existence 

 Of the island is established by unanimous local tradition. 



