WGBH Journal; Nantucket

Good evening and welcome to GBH Journal. I'm going to get Gerald into liked on this beautiful summer's eve. The journal takes a trip to Nantucket Island community 25 miles south of Cape Cod. Joe Morgan produced his portrait of the island which we'll hear right after a look at the local news with Amy said. You can walk down the street a bus and there are so many women I think it was me probably 9 out of 10 wouldn't couldn't tell

you where it was. It is a different place. Easy going the pressures out there that really the hospital isn't there on the mainland it seems that you know everybody is going to her to go you know where the whole myth about the island the faraway island. The idea of getting away from it off because when you initially go out there there's that long ride on the ferry and it's the air is more east and you come into the town and it's just the images are so beautiful no matter where you walk you most always find yourself either headed. Down by the either you serve down by with a boat. It almost seems almost as if the person is just automatically attracted to where the water is that unique it's a different more peaceful way of life you don't have your. Street lights you don't have neon signs. We have the more hours in the morning I believe in us. Follow up with. The Red Cross will be absolutely beautiful to

look at when it snows. The whole line will look like a picture postcard of Nantucket Island location 30 miles off the coast of Cape Cod Massachusetts dimensions three miles wide 15 miles long. Year round population approximately fifty five hundred people. Most common means of transportation to and from the Island boat. And as one old island saying goes when you arrive on Nantucket Island you leave the United States of America and the 20th century behind. And in many ways that's still true. The cobblestone streets winding between the old wailing captain's homes complete with the legendary picket fences and widows walks visually reinforce the island's strong commitment to the past. Somehow the islanders do manage to keep much of the mainland stress and strain away from their somewhat insulated community and as a result the islanders continue to live lives that are greatly influenced by the beliefs and attitudes of the earliest Nantucket settlers. Edouard Stackpole native

Nantucket her and historian outlines the major historical forces that are still largely responsible for the Nantucket world view of today. The history of Nantucket is probably. And usually because of the physical area the location and geographical location of Nantucket. The nearest point of land to the mainland used 20 miles to islanders. Roger Young a Nantucket selectman and Susan King director of the tourist information office comment island and is isolated today as it was years ago it's closer like everything else there are things close by. You take me two days to come from within Massachusetts home because of the boat schedules there were planes flying them. Well I think you have a degree of feeling secure because the only way they can. Get over here is by boat or plane. And I think you have a sense of safety here. When I was a child they had

the one voted day and you knew very well if they if they didn't have to or somebody you know they wouldn't be able to get out of here before they would be missed. The fact that this island was selected by the first settlers who wanted to escape from the domination of the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay and deliberately sought a place where they could exercise their rights as Englishman. Having come directly from England some years before so that you could say the first great influence in the history of Nantucket was this character of the first settlers the self-reliant character. I personally like the idea that our children would grow up in a small town where they were known by adults and their peers and kill on a real estate agent married an islander and moved to Nantucket 30 years ago where they had freedom to get about without a lot of chaperon

a jury room worries on my part. I thought it was nice to be in a place where when you called your plumber or your carpenter that it was a person you sat down to had coffee with break and discussed maybe things of church or school of common interest. I feel that there is a great deal here to absorb somebody who perhaps has. A reasonable independence. Doing their own thing. Then the second great influence was the coming of the new way of life which made them wait on them. And the first whales were the type of court along shore which such as other communities found. But what made Nantucket different was that instead of waiting for the whale to come to them they want to after the whale and established a new colonial industry called this southern whale fishery. And the third was the coming of the friends of the

Quakers. She was out and 16 90. Some of the traveling friends came here and found there were there was no established religion. There was no minister no church. Because you see the settlers had come here to escape this rigid just Puritan domination. So you take these three major factors. And the amalgamation of them gave Nantucket a new. Complex quite different on the mainland because here they literally became like a kingdom in the sea. The way we have to work to stay there is really like I think the initial settlers there or the pioneers or whatever because you're constantly going I don't know one couple on that island that doesn't do three or four things for a living.

If you're a person that doesn't have money when you come Kathie Kalman artist emigrated with her family to Nantucket Island six years ago. It's really a hard existence except it's a very close existence and the family is a cohesive unit and the land and the sea and the drones of the wind and all those things kind of feel like they close you in these major influences isolation self-reliance and independent business and religious attitudes all contributed to the early political beliefs of the Nantucket population Stackpole explains. Nantucket decided to become neutral. First of all course being Quakers they didn't believe in war and secondly they had acquired this independent attitude where they were able to carry on an industry without having any political influence as far as the mainland was concerned. One of the strangest political moves ever attempted

was a pact of neutrality which the Nantucket is designed and introduced and was able to persuade the commander in chief of the Royal Navy blockading New England to agree to this pattern or try as he would given that and take away our ships the rights to sail without being captured by the British. Costas didn't go over too well with the Americans or the especially the. General Court in Boston but they could do nothing about it. The math fact that it was negotiated shows that the Islanders still regarded themselves as a little kingdom in there and in their own right and so it's historically predictable that the Nantucket population of 977 was threatened to secede from that oh so distant United States of America when their state representative was redistributed to include a greater concentration of people. The very core of the

Nantucket philosophy and political tradition had been violated. Some of the island's residents respond without representation. I mean we're just another pebble on the beach. Van Van Arsdale Nantucket resident for 35 years. You've got to have a voice in things if you don't you're outta luck. So all we're going to do is be just another onion in a bag for oil. Well so likely all Tea Party days you know taxation without representation that's about what it's coming down to. We quote are not losing our representative from them in fact that we have a direct representative but we still have we're still going to be represented in the General Court. Roger Young Nantucket selectman the fear is that the people don't think that the people in the area that is going to represent us will realize what our problems are because in the related with them. But why can't we elect somebody from

there and cook it to be this representative. I personally feel that we can't necessarily hang on to that indefinitely and Kellen real estate agent where a representative would be speaking for a year round population of approximately forty five hundred people here where an equal representative might represent how many thousand might 25000 or 30000 in some other area. So I think the handwriting has been on the wall for a long time. 13 a gallon ship. To the lookout in the crosstrees. There's a will there's a way. She cried. Friend of yours. Once again the same influences self-reliance an independent business beliefs

contributed to the course of Nantucket economic history Stackpole continues in the peak of our whaling prosperity. I was in the 1840s and the competition was breaking in because Nantucket had had the handicap the physical handicap of two stand by us which stretch across the mouth of the harbor. The jetties were not built then you were built too many years later. It was harder to get a vessel fitted for sea you had to bring it out over the bar and take these sorts of lighters out and I would put it. Similarly when the vessel came back with a lot of oil I had that I don't want it outside the bar. And this was a very very much of an extra expense and added a good deal to the economic situation in competition with the mainland. Then.

They designed a very interesting and genius idea of a floating dry dock which they call the camels. An idea they borrowed from Holland. They have who had two pontoons which they would pump using steam pumps in the end the vessels themselves pumped full of water. Lashed them alongside the whale ship and then pump the water out. And later the vessel to the point where they could taut over the bar. This had come ten years early and would have had a good deal to do with saving the industry but it came at a time in the eight hundred thirty nine thousand forty one. Actually it came too late. The population had decreased from

8000 people in the team for me to three thousand eight hundred seventy. And by 1870 to when some of the visitors it reported coming here declaring it was like a ghost town. Something about this little historic community that appealed to people. One about a new syringe and the allergist suddenly discovered they were having a new business call some a business. Sometimes I think in Romans you know often not very often but sometimes. And they can't believe that I could possibly have spent my whole life in one house. You can't believe it. And I think a lot of them don't believe me. But while it's true funny Van

Arsdale Islander and self-taught artist writer cook and sometimes rents out guest rooms in my. My father bought this house for six hundred fifty dollars and a hundred dollar wagon. And we've been offered. We've been offered over fifty five thousand dollars for 10 years ago through here you don't you don't get to try to be in the same house but when it gets so you February when the snow is on the ground Christmas is gone by in the hollow excitement of the holidays is that it has gone by. And it comes between winter and spring and that is the time that we get what we call Island happy and Eileen happy is being like you would like to be anywhere but in Nantucket. And you don't have the money to leave. So what do you do. Just wow did you just work it out you just go on take a walk

somewhere and see what you can pick up for artifacts and stuff along the roads. And what do we do on Sunday. And people still do it from way back from the time when I was a little kid. What do you do on Sunday you go out to look at the surf. You're surrounded by water but you always go and look at the surf. Because a surfer is always ever change and sometimes is flat calm and sometimes it's roar and in the air sometimes it's green sometimes it's blue sometimes it's heavy dull gray looking the same color as the sky. It's where the ocean is forever changing so whatever forever fascinated I think everybody here they can know even their glee connectome so were the first settlers. Does it. Susan King Islander and director of the tourist information office. My family dates back to 16 59 when the first 20 settlers arrived and we

are directly descendant of eight of the original 11 families. My father was off and he lived here almost 50 years and he would not talk at all. He was not accepted as an interpreter even though my mother was up until a few years ago. Most everybody was related to somebody here. When they brought the Navy and he during your years it began did a lot of girls married Navy personnel Wazza girls and so you get a lot of outside blood was probably needed. Then across the way I want to change the complexion of the town considerably with a with the influx of war. Van Van Arsdale was one of these so-called outside blood a result of the influx of war. Well I came here in 1943 by courtesy of Uncle Sam. There was a group of us came here crash crew in the Navy.

A quarter point it was a Packer gear that we were being so to then talk of none of us had ever heard of target. We had no idea where it was. As far as like in the island goes I love and to the greater part of my life. But Cathy cam is an injection of even newer blood into the mainstream of Nantucket population. But unlike man she came to the island voluntarily drawn by the island itself and the life it can yield. Initially as a child my parents and I used to sail on in Tokyo and come to Nantucket and so I was very much aware of the island as land sea and textures and so forth. There's a lot more people that are new like myself that are coming that are staying that are really having a lot to say about the input and the activity of the island the winter island now and six years ago is very very different. Basically there are there's this very distinctive thing with the island or in the

Islander There's the summer tourist who owns a home. There's the Day Tripper who comes on and off who's looked on with askance. There's the new people like ourselves there's the established new people that have been there 30 years here and then there's the Islander. But what has and I think become a rather unfortunate face post to life is the coming of the developer. Because the developer can very easily destroy the charm of the island. I always think of Nantucket as being like a jewel and the island is a setting and if you destroy the setting it has a very damaging effect on the jewel itself. The developer is a serious threat to the land still available on Nantucket Island but there are

other major problems that threaten the lifestyle on the island as well. Islanders and residents alike voice apprehension and frustration with the external forces that presently plague their once impenetrable and insulated security present any area there's only a certain amount of resource for a certain number of people. Vann Island resident for 35 years put them all straight on the water situation has gotten to the point where. This Sunday I was in the center of town in the southern part. At this particular time the riders are fairly decent but on the West on the island where they were populated with a rooted pond out there they're getting sued you know poor and getting sued in a drink of water that's eventually going to start happening down the other end of the

island. Here we are 30 miles at sea in a burning of the dump. First of all we have to use a land fill program no. In Nantucket just so many square miles of land. Roger Young selectman and I dump area as a restricted area and once that. Is used up where we go where we are how do we get rid of our garbage. And therefore I think that when they make a mandate in the state I think it should be first for specific areas and not the whole general state in toto. I don't know how it's going to be with the or the drilling that will be going off here would that worries a lot of Nantucket people Fuddy Van Arsdale Islander especially. People that do fission they're all tracks that are as close as twenty four miles to the island which is too close in case one oil spill.

It would be a disaster if they found oil on Georges banks because the first place they don't need that coil source is plenty of others and the destruction of the fishing grounds is the determining factor here. It's the most prolific fishing grounds in the entire coast and to threaten it by a few oil wells is I think it is tantamount to disaster preservation. It's goes hand in hand with protection. I think Nantucket needs that kind of protection now now ever before and wide Stackpole Pora. Hundred. And let me see and let the roaring of the way. Myself in many ways Nantucket Island has tried to stay in the past to bury its head in the sand. But the problems it now faces are forcing the island as a whole to come forth with their strength of old to meet the present

and future as a new challenge. Edouard Stackpole speaks of this time of transition and redefinition. You're apt to think in terms of that of the glorious past but I don't think at all that there's anything about the future which is in nature the word a discouraging Vista because the future of Nantucket can be. It's just as exciting as many of the preachers of the past. If we can keep the island itself the sort of refuge for people who live in the in the big cities of the mainland or the industrial centers of the mainland I think come here and find something about the semblance of the past which she gives him a new lease on life I think then that's on reason why you should do everything we can to preserve Nantucket and Margaret Pope a

76 year old emigrant to the island is a living testament to Stackpole dream that Nantucket can be a refuge offering both the heritage of the past and serenity for the present and future. Margaret left the mainland and started a new life setting up a doll shop that is now a legend of its own. I am mixed dreamily allergic to tobacco smoke and I was just suffering the tortures of the Damned. I was going to another specialist and having a polyp. Paul applied they say for a parole board its hands were burnt out of my nose and he told me he said it was just a living death by him are good to go through that and so I said to be a one day you know some day I'm going to be where I will not be weird going around smokers. So on my vacation 52 I came to the island and I'd brought and tall then I dreamed of nothing else bought and much to do. I didn't know but I knew I could breathe and oh it was just so different.

And my hobby has always been dollars I just robbed all use them to decorate the one looking out the window up so as you're to sit at the auger and this is the thing I have never once left the island not once but for the people who dream about living on an island like Nantucket. Well for those who really do live there the most important thing is that it be home. Kathy Callum an Immigrant Artist she has her feelings for the enchanted island that boasts of its past and struggles with its future. Nantucket to me I kissed first is of a very beautiful place to be. The island and its nature. And second is its home. You know I think when I think of it I think of my home I think of my family I think of the wood stove the hearth and then it makes me think of a heart you know its like where we are as one. And

and its a chance to have this as well as to be in a really beautiful place. This program was produced by Joan Morgan the engineer for this program with Miles Siegel.