A frozen harbor is a rare sight indeed, reminding us of just how fragile our moated existence can be. Standard ocean water has a 3.5 percent salinity, and can ice over at 28.4°, providing the surface remains relatively still. Thus, with its constant motion, an oceanic harbor will rarely fully freeze, but we know that ours both can and do.
In the winter of 1778, storms of such magnitude came that, according to some reports, the ocean ice was formidable enough that “it was possible to drive with horse and sleigh to New Bedford.”
That same winter, another blizzard hit the Vineyard with such blasts that a school of black bass was supposedly found frozen in Lagoon Pond. And Tom Mayhew of Vineyard Haven recalls seeing cars drive on the only brackish southern end of the Lagoon, as recently as 1972. Of course that was down at the head of the Lagoon, where fresh water joins the sea water heading in from beneath the Oak Bluffs–Vineyard Haven drawbridge.
There’s a reason for that part of the Lagoon having the heartiest and most frequent freezes: The southern end is breached by a spring-fed pond; fresh water freezes at 32°.
Ralph Packer of Vineyard Haven, who has been running tugs, barges, and cargo in and out of the port for most of his life, remembers seeing his harbor freeze over a few times, mainly in the 1960s and 1970s. He says the real problem comes when a storm from northeast runs all the ice from the Cape Cod shore over to his town’s port. He added that if it were too blocked up, that the Coast Guard icebreakers would come and break up the jams from the jetty in to the docks.
In 1978, Allen Look, who was running Burt Marine at the time, along with his wife Carly and their two kids, walked out across the Vineyard Haven harbor to Rez Williams’ Vineyard 18, “The Druid,” and had sandwiches, then walked back ashore. Allen also recalled that around that time, Nat Benjamin and the late Stan Hart skated from Squibnocket to Edgartown, across all the ponds, de-skating and trekking between the natural rinks, before skating off across the next one.
Allen’s cousin, Virginia Look Brooks of East Chop, remembered that her father Frank — Francis Byron —Look, who ran the SSA from just after in WWII Navy service, leaving as a Lt. Cmdr., until his death in 1967, had stories. She said: “I don’t remember him calling in ice breakers, but I do remember him saying that he had been told as a youth that there were past winters so cold you could walk to Woods Hole.” She added: “He would have heard these stories as a boy growing up in West Tisbury on his grandfather’s farm. Crow Hollow, in the early part of the 20th century.”
Trader Fred Mascolo of Edgartown remembers seeing an icebreaker clear the ferry’s path in the early 1970s. Fred is also a bit of a folklore tome on Island whaling Captain George Fred Tilton of Chilmark (1861–1932). Fred read and speaks fondly of the autobiographical Cap’n Fred, Himself, which features Tilton’s trudge across some 1,700 miles of arctic ice to rescue eight whaling ships, trapped in a jagged expanse off Alaska in 1898.
George Fred Tilton was a burly captain who first tried to flee to sea at age 14, but his father caught him and brought him home — only to have the lad sail off again that year, aboard the whaler Union out of New Bedford. He did prevail, embarking on a career in which he eventually skippered seven different whaling ships and conquered a myriad of seas.
He was also the go-to guy for any icy peril. In 1917, he was hired by the Monjo company to investigate the disappearance of a schooner in Hudson Bay. Sailing north aboard the schooner Pythian, he documented that the vessel in question had, indeed, burned and sunk, and then returned home. That’s all fact.
However, one of the most poorly founded tales of Captain Tilton has him walking back to the Vineyard across ice jams from an ice-locked whaling vessel offshore, sometime around the turn of the century.
My old pal, the late Basil Welch of Menemsha, a hunter, whittler, carver of magnificent decoys, and historian, once told a tale about his pal Jim Andrews walking across the ice from the Island to Woods Hole, dragging a dory. Basil knew his history, and I believe a man who wears red suspenders and a belt to harness his trousers in place.