704 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Oct. 30, 1909. 
The Cape Cod Canal. 
According to Engineer W. Barclay Parsons, 
il there are no accidents, the canal that is to 
be cut through Cape Cod will be finished in 
about two years, and then the voyage from 
New York to Boston will be reduced by more 
than 50 miles, and that part over the shoals, 
where so many lives are lost each season, will 
be cut out of the route. This canal will not 
only do much for navigation along the coast, 
but will be quite a boon to yachtsmen, and it 
will then be an easy matter for those who are 
fond of trips from here to eastern waters or 
from the east to these waters to sail across 
Cape Cod Bay, enter the canal at Sandwich, 
leave it again near Gray Gables and continue 
the voyage through Buzzard’s Bay, and so do 
away with the perilous trip along the Cape 
Cod coast, navigating the treacherous shoals 
and then through .Nantucket and Vineyard 
Sounds. . 
Work on this canal is progressing favorably. 
Sand is being scooped up and carried away 
without the bluster and fuss that usually marks 
such an important piece of work. In some re¬ 
spects it is an easy job because there are no 
great cuts to be mads with consequent uses of 
tons of explosives, no rattle of machinery 
drilling through rocks and over hanging cliffs, 
no expensive condemnation suits to be aired 
in the courts, no villages to be destroyed nor 
expensive properties to be torn away. It is 
simply a case of digging and nature has helped 
those who are putting the work through won¬ 
derfully. In the first place, according to. an 
article in the Sun, the tight miles which it is 
necessary to cut across to connect the. waters 
of Buzzard's Bay with Gape Cod Bay is made 
up in chief by the Monument River to the south 
and the Scusset River to the north, while sepa¬ 
rating them is a ridge that at the highest point 
does not exceed thirty feet above sea level. 
In the second place, the whole of this storm 
swept arm of Massachusetts from where it is 
joined to the mainland at its termination to its 
termination at Provincetown is of a curious 
geographical formation. Everywhere it is flat, 
with but few hills, and is composed entirely of 
sand and gravel. 
You will nearly have reached the end of your 
walk across the cape from Buzzard’s Bay be¬ 
fore you come upon the real obstacle that has 
hitherto discouraged engineers and financiers. 
At the southern entrance to the canal Buzzard s 
Bay is landlocked and affords an excellent har¬ 
bor, but the northern entrance is directly from 
Barnstable Bay, which has no natural protec¬ 
tion. This body of water, as everybody knows 
who has seen it in winter, is open to the fury 
of storms from the north and northwest. 
The builders of the canal saw that there, then, 
was their most serious problem. If they had 
not realized it front the very outline of the 
coast they would have discovered it from what 
remains of a former effort at canal building, for 
here lies a great ditch into which twenty-five 
years ago men dumped a million dollars with as 
little result as though they had dumped the 
money into quicksands. 
The old work itself remains, but the connec¬ 
tion with the bay is sealed as closely as if it 
never existed. The relentless storms have piled 
the sand high along the beach and piled it so 
tightly into the gap men endeavored to make 
in the shore line that not a sign of their work 
remains. 
IIow these former builders hoped to over¬ 
come the difficulty is not material, but the 
present builders have gone deeply into the sub¬ 
ject and after much study of tides and winds 
have undertaken a renewed struggle with the 
elements. William Barclay Parsons, the chief 
engineer of the work, proposes to provide pro¬ 
tection against the winds by building a break¬ 
water out beyond the jetties. 
This breakwater will be three thousand feet 
long, running in an east and west direction and 
extending to a six-fathom curve at low water, 
so that vessels entering from the bay even in 
rough weather will be able to obtain smooth 
conditions before going into the canal. This, 
of course, is the work of the canal company, 
but it is expected that in addition the United 
States Government will construct a harbor of 
refuge by the building of other breakwaters, so 
that vessels after having passed the canal may 
lie at anchor until they are ready to continue 
their voyages. 
It is upon this stone work that the money of 
the company will be expended and the genius 
of the engineers put to the test. The jetties 
are already taking on a definite form from the 
pile of rock that lies out in the bay and an- 
ather pile that lies on the beach. 
Schooners with granite from the rugged Cape 
Ann coast are daily discharging their loads into 
the devouring sands. That the beach has al¬ 
ready begun to collect its toll from the canal 
builders is evidenced by the wreckage of 
lighters that may be seen around the construc¬ 
tion works. 
The natives who are familiar with the con¬ 
ditions of the coast and have all their lives 
battled with its tides and winds find an almost 
endless subject of discussion in this effort to 
control the shifting, treacherous sand. They 
are arguing long and zealously whether after 
all the jetties will not collect sand fast enough 
to choke up the canal entrance unless it is con¬ 
stantly dredged. 
The old canal, which looks not unlike a ditch, 
will save the excavators some work, for it will 
be turned over to the use of the new builders, 
and the line of the survey passes through its 
center for its entire length. From its beach 
end, choked now with its marsh weeds and 
grass, to its ending in a pasture it stands as a 
melancholy reminder of one of the most im¬ 
portant of the many projects that were formerly 
advanced for a Cape Cod canal. 
It was a project of F. A. Lockwood, who had 
invented a dredge which he had made an un¬ 
successful effort to sell to the French Govern¬ 
ment when it was engaeed in the construction 
of the Panama Canal. He interested capitalists 
in his scheme and for a time it seemed that the ' 
canal would really be built; but the dredge was 
out of order about half the time, and Mr. Lock¬ 
wood's death brought to an end the efforts of 
this particular company. He had succeeded, 
however, in digging a channel one mile long, 
too feet wide and 16 feet deep. 
His scheme was not by any means the only 
project that has ever been advanced for the 
building of a Cape Cod canal. Back as far as 
1676 one of the citizens of Sandwich had the 
idea of making a continuous waterway by join¬ 
ing the two rivers. The records of the Massa¬ 
chusetts Bay Colony show that an order for a 
survey of a waterway at this same point was [ 
entered and that Gen. Thomas Machin, an en¬ 
gineer of reputation, was appointed to superin¬ 
tend the work. The outbreak of the Revolution, 
however, checked this plan at a very early stage. 
In 1791 and again in 1818 the most famous 
engineer of the day, Loammi Baldwin, made 
several surveys based upon those of Machin 
and recommended the building of the canal. 
Again nothing was done, and the project was 
forgotten until 1824; when a Representative 
from Massachusetts induced President Monroe 
to recommend in his annual message that a 
commission be appointed to determine the ad¬ 
visability of the construction of the canal by 
the Federal Government. 
In i860 and again in 1875 plans for the build¬ 
ing of the canal were revived, but they all came 
to nothing. Then followed a long series of 
private schemes either of visionary dreamers or 
of swindlers whose efforts gave no promise of 
success. In most of the projects mismanage¬ 
ment and dishonesty were the chief character¬ 
istics and in none of them were more than a 
few spadefuls of earth turned. Not until Lock¬ 
wood’s time was actual work on a canal pro¬ 
ject undertaken. 
The canal zone is 1,000 feet wide, the width 
of the canal at the top will be from 250 to 300, 
and 125 feet at the bottom. The depth of the 
