True Grit and Grace

Sea swells clap and thunder against rusty granite boulders as I climb down to the beach for a closer look at nature’s fury. I live only a half-hour away, and this is where I come to recharge: the nub of land 30 miles north of Boston called Cape Ann. Sometimes a few hours is enough. Often--but not often enough--I take a few days to rejuvenate body and soul.

For the traveler, this seems to me the essence of coastal New England: quaint old towns that look lifted from scenic postcards, and weathered factory towns, and the mighty Atlantic giving it all an ever-changing background.

On this day I’m here to work. A gale is blowing, a fitting prelude to my assignment: to interview author Sebastian Junger, whose bestseller, “The Perfect Storm,” revived interest in Gloucester. Junger stood here in October 1991 and watched awe-struck as a freak storm slammed onto these shores and, far out to sea, killed the six men on a Gloucester fishing boat, the Andrea Gail. (The movie based on the book opened last week.)

Gloucester is, as Junger sketched it, a working harbor town, more muscular than romantic. For romance, there’s pretty little Rockport three miles up the cape coast.

Not that Gloucester lacks a sentimental strain. Capt. John Smith, the same fellow who caught Pocahontas’ eye, sailed past here in 1614 and named the cape Tragabigzanda, after a Turkish courtesan whose charms had deeply impressed him on earlier travels. There is a Tragabigzanda Road in Gloucester, a short residential lane that gently slopes toward the Atlantic. I measured it to be about 150 paces, symbolic perhaps of Smith’s short-lived romance.

By 1623 English adventurers were drying fish on these shores, which by then had become Gloucester (pronounced gloss-ter), a nostalgic nod to the town they left behind in their homeland.

“They that go down to the sea in ships” reads the inscription beneath Gloucester’s landmark monument, “The Man at the Wheel,” a calendar image that attests to the city’s seafaring tradition. The words from Psalm 107 invoking God’s protection and the tense figure of the seaman gripping a ship’s wheel speak a terrible truth about fishing and fishermen. The statue is a memorial to an estimated 10,000 Gloucester men who have perished at sea over the centuries. Another memorial, inside City Hall, lists the roughly 4,000 lost between 1874 and 1994.

Since reading Junger’s book in 1997, I’ve considered every piece of fish on my plate as settlers did, as “sacred cod.” Walter Scott, in an epigraph Junger uses, put it bluntly: “It’s no fish ye’re buying, it’s men’s lives.”

One balmy day last summer, I hooked up with a walking tour that pays homage to this dangerous industry and to the last voyage of the Andrea Gail. I stood with guide Malissa Bach and a handful of visitors on the dock from which the 72-foot swordfishing boat sailed 1,200 miles out to the Grand Banks that October day and was caught in “the perfect storm”--as Junger defines it, “the meshing of three completely independent weather systems to form a hundred-year event.” The swordfisher and its crew of six disappeared off Nova Scotia without a trace.

We continued along the waterfront, with our guide explaining the techniques of trawling for herring and mackerel. Soon we were passing the Americold Industries and Gorton’s plants and hearing about Gloucester’s role in the frozen fish industry.

The federal government has imposed limits on fishing in Georges Bank, 180 miles off Massachusetts’ coast. This has curtailed Gloucester’s once-booming fleet, but there still are enough boats in and out of the harbor for lucky fishers to make good money; they just have to sail farther out, to the Grand Banks.

We stopped in at the Catholic church of Our Lady of Good Voyage, founded by the area’s large Portuguese American community, many of whom came from seafaring stock in the Azores. Outside, a 10-foot statue of the Madonna cradles a fishing schooner in her arms; inside, ship and boat models adorn the walls.

Our tour concluded with a fish chowder lunch at the Crow’s Nest, the ill-fated crew’s hangout on Rogers Street. At midday the tavern was clean, dimly lighted and quiet. On the bulletin board hung a hand-drawn sign announcing July birthdays of the regulars. In the upper floors, temporary lodgings are available, mostly for fishermen for whom a bed, a chair and a table are enough to make a home away from home.

I devoted the early afternoon to a look at the posh side of Gloucester. In the 19th century, Boston Brahmins summered here with their families and servants, in estates built along Eastern Point. One of them, named Beauport, is an elaborate “summer cottage,” a monument to, or perhaps obsession of, Henry Davis Sleeper of Boston, a pioneer in the field of interior design.

Knowledgeable members of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, which owns the house, provide guided tours of the eclectic-style wood shingle and brick retreat.

Sleeper, who studied architecture in France as a young man, engaged local architect Halfdan Hanson to design the house but left the interior for himself. I found it challenging to understand his artistic statement. At once ostentatious and playful, pompous and simple, Beauport is one man’s fantasy played out over 26 years of redesigning, collecting and refurbishing. He loved the color red, which functions as a connecting skein throughout the 25 rooms that are on view.

Apparently Sleeper, who designed home interiors for the rich and famous, including such Hollywood luminaries as Joan Crawford, John Mack Brown and Frederick March, was not without serious heroes. His game room honors Benjamin Franklin with a bust and two portraits. Lord Nelson, Lord Byron and Horace Walpole have niches of honor in rooms named after them, done up with appropriate decorative arts and furnishings.

Sleeper died in 1934, and by then Beauport had grown to three stories and just under 50 rooms (depending on what counts as a room). What remains is a sizable collection of the authentic and eccentric tastes of one aesthete who bought what he pleased and built the environments to display them. The tour ends in the dramatic, high-ceilinged Chinese Room, from whose balcony a house guest, Eleanor Roosevelt, was once persuaded to read poetry.

From Eastern Point I took the short, scenic drive on Atlantic Road to Rockport, pausing at Bass Rocks to listen to the Mahlerian symphony performed by the sea against the mile-or-so stretch of granite tumbled on the shore.

To enter Rockport on South Street is akin to stepping backward, if not to another century, then to a gentler time. Antique houses are situated on every corner, bragging of their survival on tiny shingles inscribed with their dates of origin and the names of their original owners. Picket fences laced with seasonal flowers line many yards. In July, beach plum blossoms perfume the air with natural sweetness.

Bearskin Neck, the spit of land with its elongated breakwater and clusters of touristy shops, gets crowded on hot summer days. The nautical kitsch--Moby Dick ashtrays, maple-sugar lobsters and sea gull knickknacks--is overdone, especially for a place that takes pride in its fine art heritage. For the real thing, there are at least two dozen working studios and galleries open to the public between Gloucester and Rockport.

One thing you won’t find in Rockport is alcohol. If you want a drink with your meal in one of the “dry” town’s 13 restaurants, bring your own.

If the fishermen’s monument is Gloucester’s emblem, Rockport’s is the building called “Motif No. 1,” probably the most-painted fishing shack in the world. The simple red-stained, rustic building covered with lobster trap buoys was named by local artist and teacher Lester G. Hornby in the 1920s, when one of his students innocently showed him his latest work. Hornby reportedly cried out, “What--Motif No. 1 again!” The name lasted even though the building didn’t. In a fierce storm, the backlash of the Great Blizzard of 1978, the original shack was wrecked by high seas. But eight months later Motif No. 1 was rebuilt through public effort and subscription.

Rockport maintains a network of public footpaths that wind through town and out to the Headlands, a steep promontory of bright granite with a spectacular view: to the left, Bearskin Neck with Motif No. 1 and Rockport’s glittering harbor; to the right, the Atlantic, reaching to the horizon.

After inspecting the work of five artists painting their impressions of the shack, I followed signs pointing to the Old Garden Path, which meanders through a residential neighborhood. At some points I had the feeling I was trespassing on private property, but I was in the clear. The local Rights of Way Committee defends with vigilance the public’s access to the beautiful vistas enjoyed by beachfront property owners. I recalled the inscription I’d seen on a bench at the Headlands: “True beauty can be enjoyed by all rich or poor--It is free.” I turned at a hedgerow, and blue ocean beckoned. Beach plum, Queen Anne’s Lace and a host of other flora carpeted the bluff, providing natural protection against erosion on the steep drop-off to the sea. This true beauty was free, and it was exhilarating.

On the quirky side, there is the mysterious Dogtown Commons, a 3,600-acre conservation area a mile or so inland from Rockport. It’s a ghost town of sunken, overgrown cellar holes and moors (most easily accessible from Route 127 and Reynard and Cherry streets in Gloucester). In the early 18th century farmers and fishermen wanted a sanctuary from pirates, so about a hundred families moved there for protection.

The name derives from the days of decline when only a half-dozen homes remained there, most of them occupied by ill-tempered old women, each of whom owned a watchdog. Other wild dogs roamed the land. Outcasts and vagrants gravitated there. Stories circulated that some of the women were witches. Dogtown’s unsavory reputation spread.

Now mountain bikers, hikers and walkers come to soak up the mystery and isolation of the swamps and bogs and the tangle of long-deserted roads.

I’ve hiked through there in the past, so on my latest visit, I passed. The walk to the Headlands and the Old Garden Path and back to my car was enough to build my appetite.

With so much of Cape Ann’s lifeblood tied to the sea, it’s no wonder that seafood is the food of choice here. Every level of eating establishment, from sidewalk cart to four-star restaurant, serves just about anything edible from the ocean. But I’m always interested in beginnings, so I left Rockport for the inlet town of Essex about 12 miles away.

Essex claims to be the birthplace of the fried clam. I heard the story told this way: At a ramshackle takeout stand on Main Street, a Gloucester fisherman named Tarr suggested to trolley motorman-turned-roadside chef Lawrence “Chubby” Woodman that fried clams might be tasty.

Initially, Woodman laughed off the idea. Clams are mollusks with shells, good only for boiling in stew and chowder. But he thought again. Clams were free for the picking in the tidal flats nearby. Maybe they could be fried.

So Chub (he weighed 250 pounds) melted a pot of lard in an iron kettle on the wood stove, dipped clams in batter and dropped them in. Tarr pronounced them delicious, and they went on Chub’s menu. It was July 3, 1916.

The story is gospel at Woodman’s, still on Main Street and still staffed by Woodmans--the third generation--who still use the 84-year-old recipe. It’s no longer a roadside stand (there are old-fashioned booths inside), but Woodman’s has the salt-stained appearance of one. “Eat in the Rough” is still their motto.

I stood in line outside the order window, trying to decide whether after my hardy day I deserved a lobster fresh from the tanks outside or I should get my usual fried clams.

When a waitress delivered my clam plate, I broke into a wide smile and headed outside to a picnic table to dine near the tidal flats. Tasting this succulent fruit of the sea the way it’s been prepared for generations, I gave thanks that some things can’t be improved with time.

In a world that is sometimes “too much with us,” as the saying goes, it’s a blessing to find such a spot as Cape Ann. All getaways should be as scenic and as genuine.

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GUIDEBOOK

Seafaring on the Massachusetts Coast

Getting there: American, Delta and United airlines fly nonstop to Boston from Los Angeles. Round-trip fares begin at $358.

It’s 35 miles--a 45-minute drive on weekdays--from the airport to Gloucester via U.S. 1A and 1 north, to Interstate 95 north, to Massachusetts Route 128, to Gloucester and Route 127, which loops around Cape Ann.

Getting around: Gloucester Guided Tours offers “The Perfect Tour” at 11 a.m. Thursdays and Sundays. The price is $15, which includes lunch at the Crow’s Nest. Reservations required. Telephone (978) 283-4194.

Schooner Sails, Seven Seas Wharf, Gloucester. Daily through Labor Day. Price starts at $29 for a two-hour sail. Tel. (978) 281-6634.

Beauport (Sleeper-McCann House), 75 Eastern Point Blvd., Gloucester; tel. (978) 283-0800. Closed weekends.

Cape Ann Historical Assn., 27 Pleasant St., Gloucester; tel. (978) 283-0455. Good selection of notable area artists. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

Where to stay:

Emerson Inn, 1 Cathedral Ave., Rockport, MA 01966. A traditional grand seaside hotel; some view rooms are upstairs (no elevator). Doubles $145 to $245. Tel. (800) 964-5550 or (978) 546-6321, fax (978) 546-7043.

Harborview Inn, 71 Western Ave., Gloucester, MA 01930; tel. (800) 299-6696, fax (978) 282-7397. Doubles $139 to $149.

Seaward Inn, 44 Marmion Way, Rockport, MA 01966. Doubles $139 to $229 daily and cottages $1,113 to $1,463 weekly. Tel. (877) 473-2927, fax (978) 546-7661.

Where to eat: In Gloucester, I like Halibut Point, 289 Main St., local tel. 281-1900, and Sailor Stan’s on Rocky Neck Avenue (no phone) for down-home cooking.

My Place By-the-Sea, Bearskin Neck, Rockport; tel. 546-9667. My favorite for waterfront dining.

Woodman’s, Main Street, Essex; tel. 768-6057.

For more information: On the Web, https://www.cape-ann.com.

Also, Massachusetts Office of Travel and Tourism, 10 Park Plaza, Suite 4510, Boston, MA 02116; tel. (800) 227-6277, fax (617) 973-8525, Internet https://www.massvacation.com.