POOR MAN'S PARADISE
Robert Barrie
I HAVE sailed at odd times on Barnegat Bay, and one summer
kept a launch there, and pottering about found it more interesting than
I had supposed. It is the largest of the lagoon-like sheets of water on
the New Jersey coast, and a pretty good place for the small boat sailer
and lover of open air life. With a land breeze on a summer's night the
mosquitoes are the bugbear of the place, but then there are mosquitoes
at Mt. Desert and Nantucket when the conditions are right.
The greatest length is about thirty miles; this is in a
north and south direction from Bay Head to Harvey Cedars. At the lower
end, opposite the Inlet, the width is about five miles; this width
gradually decreases up to Bay Head, but there are quite a number of
broad and deep indentations on the western shore, such as Toms River,
the Metedeconk, Forked River, Cedar Creek, Kettle Creek, Oyster Creek,
and others that considerably increase and add variety and interest to
the cruising ground.
It seems as though these rivers must one day have emptied
directly into the sea. The western shore is quite bold; for instance,
the bluffs at Island Heights are eighty feet high, and it would have
been a nice piece of coast, with several good harbors up these rivers,
if the action of the sea had not beat up a long range of sand dunes.
which commencing above Bay Head must have gradually worked down the
twenty-five miles to the Inlet, as these Jersey outlets are called.
Outlets they certainly must be, for if it were not for these
openings, kept clear by the surplus waters of the rivers, they would
certainly have closed long ago. Proof of this is to be found in smaller
bodies, such as Wreck Pond, north of here, where an easterly blow will
bank up a bar ten feet high that will completely close the opening,
which will remain like a dam until the pond behind it has filled up.
Once filled, however, as soon as the slightest stream begins to flow
over, the dam is doomed, for a rapidly increasing cut soon eats down to
low tide level and the "Inlet" is again in being.
The sand dunes, more picturesque in themselves than those of
Holland, are ranges of little hills covered in most places with long,
bright green, wiry grass and sturdy shrubs. In parts there are
wind-twisted cedars. The marshy spots are, in summer, covered with
large marshmallows. Indeed, the scene on the eastern shore of the Bay
-- on a morning in late summer, when after a squally night there is
generally a brisk northwest wind and cloudless sky, is one seldom
equaled outside the tropics. The western hills with pines of the
darkest blue, the waters a slightly lighter shade, and the sky a still
paler blue make fine contrasts to the almost inconceivable gayness of
the other colors, no mere tints, that range from pure white of the
sands through the pinks of the marshmallows to the riot of the bright
yellows, greens, and vivid reds of the marshes. It is a paradise of
color for painters.
The western shore is bordered with large patches of pine
woods, stretching far back into the country, which give to the water in
the upper reaches a coffee color, but there is no muddiness, and the
water is perfectly transparent. Where the good land comes down to the
Bay there are prosperous farms; these are seen at their best near Toms
River. In general, however, the shores are as wild and deserted as the
most violent hermit could wish. In winter these pine-strewn glades
should be fine camping grounds for consumptives.
The average depth of water in the channels of the upper Bay,
that is above Barnegat Pier, is about five feet; in some rivers there
are stretches with thirty feet. The depths appear not to change, and
the reason is found when one anywhere in a channel shoves over the
bronze end of a boathook and feels the clank as it strikes the shale on
the bottom. Apparently, the floor of the whole thing is glacial drift
not likely to change in centuries. Out of the channels there is a
mixture of mud and sand; in the lower Bay generally only the latter,
perfectly clean and hard. For some reason the Bay is a great place for
breezes; possibly because Barnegat, the elbow of Jersey, so sticks out
into the ocean; at any rate, there are seldom calms and any are of
short duration.
In addition to sailing, fishing and shooting are the great
sports of the Bay. In summer when the weakfish are running they can be
hauled out as fast as one can bait; down by the Inlet and outside all
sorts of sea fish are to be had, with, in particular, bluefishing in
season. Beach birds and duck will fill the cruiser's larder if he is a
shot, so that to the man in a small, light draft boat this little world
makes a pleasant little cruising ground.
For the racing man there is plenty of fun; the sneakbox and
cat classes show some clever sailing. The Barnegat gunning sneakbox has
been so often described that it seems unnecessary to do so again here;
the boats used in racing are a development of the same idea, twenty-one
feet over all, nine feet beam, eight inches draft; the crack boats
being fitted with hollow spars and silk sails. Morton Johnson, the boat
builder at Bay Head, seems to be the most successful designer and
builder of these; at any rate, owners of his boats seem to win the most
prizes, and the Bay Head Yacht Club, where many of his boats are owned,
appears to be at the head in this class. The catboats, generally about
twice the size of the "boxes," are from the boards of well-known
designers, such as Cary Smith and C.D. Mower. William P. Kirk, of Toms
River, is the most successful builder in this class, and in this the
clubs at Seaside Park and at Island Heights generally come off best.
These little yacht clubs on the Bay are wonders; they all
have a good membership of live men who take an active interest in
sailing. Their initiation ($10 and dues ($5) are as modest as in the
English clubs. They have surprisingly good houses and the members get
remarkable service; for example, the care of a boat costs but five
dollars for the season; this means pumping out, drying sails, bringing
in to the landing stage for owner and taking back again to mooring
every day in the four months of the season if he wishes it. A good
mooring, made of cement, can be rented for two dollars per season; so
the man without a bulging purse does very well. The weak point is that
sleeping accommodations and restaurants are not, but where the clubs
are there are hotels. These clubs are at Bay Head, Mantoloking, Toms
River, Island Heights, and Seaside Park, the two latter have the
largest clubhouses and best anchorages, and are the most convenient as
to trains for Philadelphians. Bay Head can be reached in two hours from
almost any part of north Jersey. Seaside Park itself is a Godforsaken
looking place, without a bush or blade of grass, on the sand dunes
between the Bay and ocean, with buildings of an unutterable ugliness;
but a fine healthy spot that might be made as green as the New Yorkers
have made Seabright, where the conditions are precisely the same.
Seaside Park has the great advantage to Philadelphians that there one
has saltwater within ninety minutes of Broad Street.
If there was a yacht club station with bed and board and a
shipkeeper at the little harbor at the western end of Barnegat Pier it
would be a fine spot to keep a little boat, for from there there is
ample sailing ground, and a short run of twelve miles would take one
down to the Inlet, where there is a good harbor, the dike behind the
Sunset House, and plenty of salt, and fishing, and bathing. As there is
good train service up in the morning and cheap commutation, it would be
a boon to the business man who wants to get into old clothes and a boat
and have a sniff of the sea, but does not care for Atlantic City with
all its silly caravansaries and the summer boardwalk rabble. An ideal
spot for a sailing headquarters could be made at the deep cove known as
Winter Anchorage at the lower end of the long stretch of land that runs
down from Bay Head. It is at the north side of the Inlet, protected on
the south and southwest by a small island and on the north and
northeast by the hook of the land, has ten to fourteen feet of water at
low tide, with sticky bottom.
The twelve miles of this land below the Pier all belong to
the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, which could create a fine cottage
colony there if a good road were built down to the point. It would be
practically an island, as it would be surrounded by water in every
direction; the ocean on the outside and the Bay on the inside would
make the nearest land five miles away and practically no breeze could
be a land breeze. A lot of Japanese could turn it into a garden spot;
today, within a couple of hours of the two largest cities in the
country it is absolutely deserted except for a couple of lifesaving
stations.
If the new places like Seaside Park are appalling in their
rawness, the villages of old Barnegat, Waretown, and Toms River on the
western shore, with their overhanging elms and oldtime flavor more than
compensate. The best of these to my mind is Toms River, of
revolutionary date, which has a little the air of Nantucket village
about it. It is at the head of navigation on the Toms River, seven
miles from Seaside Park, the longest east and west stretch to be had on
the Bay. Here Kirk has his shop and seems to do a good business, both
in building and laying up. Faunce Brothers are also here, but further
down stream at the deeper water, so they get the larger craft. Still
further down, at Island Heights, are shops and hauling out yards; so
that, bearing in mind those at Bay Head and old Barnegat one sees that
this little sheet of water is the best supplied in this respect of any
of its size and depth in this country. Indeed, there are few bits of
water, cut off as it were by themselves, that can equal Barnegat in
turnout of small sailing craft, and some of them are high sided, able
seagoing vessels that surprise one until he sees what they have to face
down at the Inlet.
Engines are being put into lots of old boats and all the new
cruisers have them. There is a horror of grass, but this terror can be
got rid of by a quick reverse. The engines take the place of poling as
a means of getting home on quiet nights; before they came, when the
wind died out, the plan used to be to work over into shoal water and
then one could pole along on the sand as fast as a man could walk along
the deck; some tall stories are told at Bay Head about this sort of
work.
The people about the Bay appear to have all the good
qualities that we are in the habit of attributing to Anglo-Saxon water
folk all the world over; their records on the lifesaving stations are
equal to any, and if there was wrecking and robbing by decoying vessels
ashore in the old days, as historians and romancers claim, the habit
does not descend to the present generation, for prices are no worse
here than at other sailing centers. Barnegat men make good sailors; I
have known several yacht hands who have become masters. They are spunky
too; one man when a boy of thirteen used to make regular trips from
Toms River to New York in his father's trading schooner in the days
before the railroad. Rough runs outside they of course sometimes had;
they risked it once too often, and one night the schooner went ashore
just above Sea Girt and broke up, and all the father saved was his boy,
whom he managed to bring ashore on his back through the surf.
It must have been a ticklish run, for although the Inlet is
over a mile wide and the channel is deep, yet it is crooked and
shifting, and the two outside entrances north and south of the Shoals
are not easy to pick up. The Shoals themselves, stretching out almost a
mile to sea, are nasty. I have seen them on a moonlight autumn night in
a dying southeaster twisting and boiling, like the rapids at the
whirlpool below Niagara, in an awe inspiring way. I was on shore, I am
thankful to say. Struggling along against the wind I passed down to the
beach near the lifesaving station; here the wind was driving along the
sand about a foot above the beach in a never ending stream that
produced the same feeling of dizziness that one gets in looking closely
at the road from a fast motorcar. Nearby, as I went back awed and
cheerfully gloomy, I passed gruesome reminders of the Shoals' work in
the shape of over a dozen figureheads of wrecked ships decorating the
grounds of a bungalow.
In the Bay the small boat cruiser, the fisherman, the
gunner, and the lover of wild life in general, has pasturages which may
not be the greenest and best in the outdoor world, but which are far
from being the worst by a long shot. If he thinks he can better them he
can go south inside through the various bays and sounds almost to Cape
May, but will come back sadder and wiser and assured that, in Jersey at
least, there is no better place for the purpose to be found. If the
Englishman had Barnegat he would have painted it, and written books
about it, and gloated over it as he has the Norfolk Broads, but in our
great wealth of cruising grounds it is almost entirely overlooked.
REVIEWS ON FIRST EDITION
"Fourteen little sketches written by two men who clearly
know how to get the most of marine life along shore. They set forth
their adventures in an easy unpretentious style that brings readers
close to the scenes described . . . there is also a quality of
enthusiasm about it that is an inspiration to everyone to indulge in
yachting . . . The authors have done a service by showing at close
range things of historical interest along and near the Chesapeake Bay,
and in addition have set forth, perhaps more clearly than anyone else,
the pleasure to be obtained in cruising along the coast of our own
country." -- Boston Evening Transcript.
"Has proved the best reading we have blundered across in
many a day . . . an easy and familiar narrative. We advise all those
who love a good yarn and a good ship to read the book." -- Yachting,
New York.
"A collection of wonderfully absorbing tales giving a good
deal of historical information." -- The Marine Journal, New York.
"All these sketches are full of the true boatman's love of
his boat and of the water, and the authors' enjoyment of the sport
gives them a go and a liveliness that make for the reader's
entertainment, whether or not he be a boatman, too." -- The Times, New
York.
"A companionable book . . . these cruises have a refreshing
tang of the salt air in them . . . The Barrie brothers have caught and
conveyed to their readers some of the subtle and compelling influence
that broods over the rivers, creeks, and inlets." -- Evening Telegraph,
Philadelphia.
"Good reading for yachtsmen, indeed for any man or woman who
loves the sea. The authors, experienced and ardent yachtsmen, have
managed to convey by the printed page a full measure of the charm of
cruising . . . exceptional among books of its kind." -- The Boston
Globe.
"Readers will remember those interesting logs, not only for
their value as records of cruises, but also for the many items of
gossip and history concerning the wonderful coastline passed. They give
delightful thumbnail sketches of those American people one seldom hears
about, but which constitute a very strong factor in the country and its
social life." -- The Yachting Monthly, London.
"Very pleasantly written, these cruises do not pretend to
yachting in the sense of the word that means to many people only large
vessels, large crews, and much luxury." -- The Field, London.
"A book of much originality and cleverness ... long cruises,
the descriptions of which they make so interesting indeed, and the
whole of which they treat with so much sportsmanlike and seamanlike
freshness and skill. The pleasure of reading is decidedly increased by
the large number of exquisite pictures." -- Sporting-Zeitissig, Vienna.
"Sketches of yachting life by two enthusiasts who love the
water and know how to enjoy a boat." -- The Inter-Ocean, Chicago.
