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.
